of fun-genuine fun-and his jokes and queer turns of thought and word were often worthy of Cowper or Charles Lamb. We wish we had them collected. Being, from his state of health and his knowledge in medicine, necessarily 'mindful of death,' having the possibility of his dying any day or any hour, always before him, and that 'undiscovered country' lying full in his view, he must, taking, as he did, the right notion of the nature of things-have had a peculiar intensity of pleasure in the every-day beauties of the world.

'The common sun, the air, the skies,

To him were opening Paradise.'

They were to him all the more exquisite, all the more altogether lovely, these Pentlands and the Braid Hills, and all his accustomed drives and places; these rural solitudes and pleasant villages and farms, and the countenances of his friends, and the clear, pure, radiant face of science and of nature, were to him all the more to be desired and blessed and thankful for, that he knew the pallid king at any time might give that not unexpected knock, and summon him away.

HER LAST HALF-CROWN.

Once I had friends-though now by all forsaken;
Once I had parents—they are now in heaven.
I had a home once-

Worn out with anguish, sin, and cold, and hunger,
Down sunk the outcast, death had seized her senses.
There did the stranger find her in the morning-

God had released her.

SOUTHEY.

1

HER LAST HALF-CROWN.

HU

UGH MILLER, the geologist, journalist, and man of genius, was sitting in his newspaper office late one dreary winter night. The clerks had all left, and he was preparing to go, when a quick rap came to the door. He said 'Come in,' and, looking towards the entrance, saw a little ragged child all wet with sleet. 'Are ye Hugh Miller?' 'Yes.' 'Mary Duff wants ye.' 'What does she want?' 'She's deein'. Some misty recollection of the name made him at once set out, and with his well-known plaid and stick, he was soon striding after the child, who trotted through the now deserted High Street, into the Canongate. By the time he got to the Old Playhouse Close, Hugh had revived his memory of Mary Duff; a lively girl who had been bred up beside him in Cromarty. The last time he had seen her was at a brother mason's marriage, where Mary was 'best maid,' and he 'best man.' He seemed still to see her bright young careless face, her tidy

shortgown, and her dark eyes, and to hear her banter ing, merry tongue.

Down the close went the ragged little woman, and up an outside stair, Hugh keeping near her with difficulty; in the passage she held out her hand and touched him; taking it in his great palm, he felt that she wanted a thumb. Finding her way like a cat through the darkness, she opened a door, and saying, 'That's her!' vanished. By the light of a dying fire he saw lying in the corner of the large empty room something like a woman's clothes, and on drawing nearer became aware of a thin pale face and two dark eyes looking keenly but helplessly up at him. The eyes were plainly Mary Duff's, though he could recognise no other feature. She wept silently, gazing steadily at him. 'Are you Mary Duff?' 'It's a' that's o' me, Hugh.' She then tried to speak to him, something plainly of great urgency, but she couldn't; and seeing that she was very ill, and was making herself worse, he put half-a-crown into her feverish hand, and said he would call again in the morning. He could get no information about her from the neighbours they were surly or asleep.

When he returned next morning, the little girl met him at the stair-head, and said, 'She's deid.' He went in, and found that it was true; there she lay, the fire out, her face placid, and the likeness to her maiden self restored. Hugh thought he would have