frame already injured, brought on a succession of slow and lingering feverish attacks, which greatly impaired his health, and at length rendered him incapable even of the sedentary duties of the school, on which his bread depended. Fortunately, old Mr Whackbairn, who was the principal of the little parochial establishment, was sincerely attached to Butler. Besides that he was sensible of his merits and value as an assistant, which had greatly raised the credit of his little school, the ancient pedagogue, who had himself been tolerably educated, retained some taste for classical lore, and would gladly relax after the drudgery of the school was over, by con ning over a few pages of Horace or Juvenal with his usher. A similarity of taste begot kindness, and he, accordingly, saw Butler's increasing debility with great compassion, roused up his own energies to teaching the school in the morning hours, insisted upon his assistant's reposing himself at that period, and, besides, supplied him with such com

forts as the patient's situation required, and his own means were inadequate to compass.

Such was Butler's situation, scarce able to drag himself to the place where his daily drudgery must gain his daily bread, and racked with a thousand fearful anticipations concerning the fate of those who were dearest to him in the world, when the trial and condemnation of Effie Deans put thecope-stone upon his mental misery.

He had a particular account of these events from a fellow student, who resided in the same village, and who, having been present on the melancholy occasion, was able to place it in all its agony of horrors before his excruciated imagination. That sleep should have visited his eyes, after such a curfew-note, was impossible. A thousand dreadful visions haunted his imagination all night, and in the morning he was awaked from a feverish slumber, by the only cir cumstance which could have added to his distress the visit of an intrusive ass.

This unwelcome visitant was no other than Bartholine Saddletree. The worthy and sapient burgher had kept his appointment at MacCroskie's, with Plumdamas and some other neighbours, to discuss the Duke of Argyle's speech, the justice of Effie Deans's condemnation, and the impro bability of her obtaining a reprieve. This sage conclave disputed high and drank deep, and on the next morning Bartholine felt, as he expressed it, as if his head was like a “confused progress of writts.”

To bring his reflective powers to their usual serenity, Saddletree resolved to take a morning's ride upon a certain hackney, which he, Plumdamas, and another honest shopkeeper, combined to maintain by joint subscription, for occasional jaunts for the purpose of business or exercise. As Saddletree had two children boarded with Whackbairn, and was, as we have seen, rather fond of Butler's society, he turned his palfrey's head towards Libberton, and came, as we

have already said, to give the unfortunate usher that additional vexation, of which Imogene complains so feelingly when she

says,

"I'm sprighted with a foolSprighted and angered worse.".

If any thing could have added gall to bitterness, it was the choice which Saddletree made of a subject for his prosing harangues, being the trial of Effie Deans, and the probability of her being executed. Every word fell on Butler's ear like the knell of a death-bell, or the note of a screechowl.

Jeanie paused at the door of her lover's humble abode upon hearing the loud and pompous tones of Saddletree sounding from the inner apartment, "Credit me, it will be sae, Mr Butler.-Brandy cannot save her. She maun gang down the Bow wi' the lad in the pioted coat at her heels.

-I am sorry for the lassie, but the law, sir, maun hae its course

"Vivat Rex,

Currat Lex,"

as the poet has it, in whilk of Horace's odes I know not."

Here Butler groaned, in utter impatience of the brutality and ignorance which Bartholine had contrived to amalgamate into one sentence. But Saddletree, like other prosers, was blessed with a happy obtuseness of perception concerning the unfavourable impression which he sometimes made on his auditors. He proceeded to deal forth his scraps of legal knowledge without mercy, and concluded by asking Butler, with great self-complacency, "Was it na a pity my father didna send me to Utrecht? Havena I missed the chance to turn out as clarissimus an ictus, as auld Grunwiggin himsell?-Whatfor dinna ye speak, Mr Butler? Wad I no hae been a clarissimus ictus ?-Eh, man ?"

"I really do not understand you, Mr