this, with Burns' monument and Ferguson's humble grave-stone in view, they spoke of their past and present fortunes and misfortunes. Burns could point to his piles of marble reared by Posterity, to which Ferguson replied, "Rather far let me have yon humble stone, which the hand and heart of Genius raised, than the proudest monuments of an interested and unsympathizing Posterity." Burns himself wrote the following lines under a portrait of Ferguson:

"Curse on ungrateful man, that can be pleased
And yet can starve the author of the pleasure."

And afterwards asks:

"Why is the bard unpitied by the world,
Yet has so keen a relish of its pleasure?"

Descending from the monument I soon walked along the

"Banks an' braes o' bonnie Doon,"

which led me to "the key-stane o' the bridge," where Tam O'Shanter's mare lost her tail. Tam happened to get on a spree one night in the town of Ayr, as his habit was, and belated himself, so that he had to go home through a thunder storm. The lightning making night more hideous, stirred up the guilty fears of his bad heart. At midnight he started for home, "well mounted on his gray mare Meg." After he had passed the bridge she suddenly stopped, and lo! Tam saw ghosts and spectres grim and ghastly. There is a saying among the common people that evil spirits have no power to follow a person beyond the middle of the next stream. So he wheeled his mare around and made for the keystone of the old bridge, with the whole train of furies after him. Just as the mare approached this stone, hard pressed by these unearthly hob-goblins

"One spring brought off her master hale
But left behind her own gray tail."

A short distance down the Doon is the new bridge, on which I stood a long while watching the rippling waves that played down the stream. Then I rambled far down the stream along a road running parallel with it at a short distance. All along it was overhung with a bower, formed by venerable trees. It was about sunset. On one side sheep were grazing and bleating, on the other the Doon winded along, its little waterfalls muttering pleasant sounds; above and around were birds warbling their vesper hymns. Seldom have I tasted such unmixed pleasure, as when I roved through this peaceful solitude in undisturbed meditation. It reminds me vividly of my native Conestoga. I passed a little cottage, the abode of an elderly laboring man. Had it been Saturday evening, I think I would have entered to get an illustration of the "Cotter's Saturday Night." And I passed a rosy-cheeked maiden, which I thought must bear a close resemblance to the "Highland Mary." On my return I entered the old grave-yard in which the church of Alloway stands, which was said to be haunted. It was just about twilight, "the true witching time, when spirits hold their wonted walk." I peeped through their iron doors, but all was silent as death

Having no taste for superstition, my thoughts soon turned to graver themes. The yard is enclosed within an old ivy-covered wall. At the entrance is the grave of Burns' father, "the friend of man, to vice alone a foe." I saw the graves of a number of Wilsons and McClures, names which awakened transatlantic associations. I had a desire to spend the night amid such hallowed scenes at the Burns Hotel, but there was no room in the inn. Now, then

"Bonny Doon, so sweet at twilight,
Fare thee well before I gang."

This will end my tour in Scotland. Would that the end were not yet. Scotia is a lovely land. I love her history and heroes, her poets and her peasants, her mountains and her moors. Should I live to return to my native land, I will read her bards with greater pleasure, and try to be a better man for having visited the scenery which their genius has embellished and the blood of heroes enriched. In the meanwhile a fond adieu to the

"Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,

Land of the mountains and the flood."

I took a steamer across the Irish Channel to Belfast, which swung me into a squall of sea-sickness again. It was soon over, but—whew! Commend me to the solid earth. Horace somewhere asks whether a man could ever be brave after he had endured the lash with his hands tied on his back, expecting every moment to be the last. I wonder whether Horace had ever been sea-sick; for no calamity can inflict a more cowardly spirit on a man.

The following morning I went to the northern coast of Ireland to visit the Giant's Causeway. I procured a guide and descended to the base of the cliffs, from three to four hundred feet high. I drank of the water gurgling out at the Giant's Well, pure and fresh. The guide pointed out indistinct columns which seemed to have been melted into a mass, from which some geologists ascribe its formation to the action of fire. In some places the columns precisely resemble a large petrified honeycomb. They have from four to nine sides, and these again bounded by the sides of so many other columns. Sometimes one column is walled in by the sides of nine others. They are so compactly blocked together that some of the joints are impervious to water. The columns above the surface are from ten to forty feet in height, and perhaps a foot in diameter. They are all perpendicular, except one cluster imbedded in a solid rock, called the Giant's Cannon, because they lie horizontally and look like cannon aimed at the sea. How came these to fall over? The columns are all formed by blocks from six inches and upwards in length. Their joints appear in irregular cracks along the outer surface, but within this narrow crust each block has a smoothly-polished convex and concave top and base, always one of each, and these lie so tight in their sockets that no breath of air can penerate them. A short distance from the base is a circular row of columns, with both ends laid in solid rock, called the Giant's Organ from their resemblance to organ-pipes, and on the top of a tall cliff projecting into the sea is a piece of rock called the Giant's Grandmother. It looks like a trembling old lady

suddenly petrified while sitting at her work. It made me think of Lot's wife.

This is a stupendous geological mystery. Those small blocks with their smooth concave and convex bases, and regular yet diversified sides. And these forming symmetrical columns, morticed together into a columnar pile, and this again supporting a solid mass of rock, on which a smaller series of columns rest, as if nature were endeavoring to make all these columns converge in a Gothic spire pointing to the Great Architect, these are phenomena that fill the beholder with amazing wonder. But what laws of nature, what agents of God, assisted in their erection, and laid those blocks in their places, whether water, flood, or fire, or all, this still remains a matter of doubt and conjecture.

On my return to Belfast the following morning, a young man entered the car at one of the stations, just starting for America. His aged mother and sisters clung to him with moving tenderness, and wept as though the cars were to be his grave. When the train gave the signal for starting, they again rushed to the door of the car, re-embraced him, clasping and wringing their hands in pitiful agony, until the conductor closed the door by force, and the train sped him toward the setting sun. There was something exceedingly affecting in the parting scene of these humble peasants. Perhaps he was the only stay of his aged mother in this poverty-ridden country, and the pride of his sisters. Many were the country comrades that escorted him hither-hale and generous looking youths, who crowded around him in strange confusion to get his parting grasp. As the cars began to move, they shouted him a last farewell with uncovered heads, and his mother and sisters threw up their hands as if to hold the cruel train that tore him from their embrace. Such is life.

DUBLIN, May 10, 1856.

THE FIRESIDE.

THE fireside is a seminary of infinite importance. It is important because it is universal, and because the education it bestows being woven with the woof of childhood, gives form and color to the whole texture of life. There are few who can receive the honors of a college, but all are graduates of the hearth. The learning of the university may fade from the recollection, its classic lore may molder in the halls of the memory, but the simple lessons of home, enameled upon the heart in childhood, defy the rust of years. So deep, so lasting, indeed, are the impressions of early life, that you often see a man in the imbecility of age holding fresh in his recollection the events of his childhood, while all the wide space between that and the present hour is a blasted and forgotten waste. You have, perhaps, seen an old half obliterated portrait, and in the attempt to have it cleaned and restored you have seen it fade away, while a brighter and still more perfect picture, painted beneath, is revealed to view. This portrait, first drawn upon the canvass, is an apt illustration of youth, and though it may be concealed by some after design, still the original traits will shine through the outward picture, giving it tone while fresh, and surviving it in decay. Such is the fireside the great institution furnished for our education.

PLEA FOR THE BIRDS.

THE following interesting passages are from a paper read by Mr. Townsend Glover, before the late meeting of the United States Agricultural Society, and published in the Washington National Intelligencer:

Here, however, let me change the subject, to put in a plea for mischievous birds, which appear to have been sent to keep the "balance of power" in insect life, which insects would otherwise multiply to such a degree as to be perfectly unbearable, and render the agriculturists' toil entirely useless. A farmer keeps a watch-dog to guard his premises, and cats to kill rats and mice in his granary and barn; yet he suffers an "unfeathered biped" to tear down his rails in order to get a chance shot at a robin, wren, or blue bird, which may be unfortunate enough to be on his premises; and yet these very birds do him more good than either dog or cat, working diligently from morn to dark, and killing and destroying insects injurious to his crops, which, if not thus thinned out, would eventually multiply to such an extent as to leave him scarcely any crop whatsoever.

True; but the

Birds are accused of eating cherries and other fruits. poor birds merely take a tithe of the fruit to pay for the tree, which, but for their unceasing efforts, would otherwise probably have been killed in its infancy. To exemplify the utility of birds, I will give one or two instances that have occurred under my own observation. Some years ago, I took a fancy to keep bees; accordingly, hives were procured, and books read upon the subject. One day a king-bird or bee-martin was observed to be very busy about the hives, apparently snapping up every straggling bee he could find. Indignant at such a breach of hospitality, as his nest was on the premises, I hastened to the house to procure a gun to shoot the marauder. When I returned, I perceived a grayish bird on the bushy top of a tree, and thinking it was the robber, I fired, and down dropped a poor, innocent Phoebe bird.

Hoping to find some consolation to my conscience for having committed this most foul murder, I inwardly accused the poor little Phoebe of having also killed the bees; and having determined to ascertain the fact by dissecting the bird, it was opened, when, much to my regret and astonishment, it was found to be full of the striped cucumber bugs, and not one single bee. Here I had killed the very bird that had been working for me the whole season, perfectly innocent of the crime for which it was sacrificed. After the circumstances, I determined never to let a gun be fired on the premises, excepting on special occasions; and at present the place is perfectly crowded during spring, summer and autumn with the feathered songsters, which build their nests even in my very porch, and bring up their young perfectly fearless of mankind; and although cherries, strawberries, &c., do suffer, yet the insects are not a quarter as numerous and troublesome as they were formerly.

In the Southern States I have seen the bee-martin chase and capture a boll-worm moth not ten paces from where I stood, and the mocking