THE LOVER TO HIS DEPARTING LOVED ONE. To warp and to wean thee from infancy's ties; And freshness and beauty will dazzle thine eyes. Thou hast promised thine heart, love, but now, ere we part, love, We have grown up together like green moss and heather, And now thou art going where life will be glowing And a rarer Elysian may shut from thy vision Our fairy romance and the old hawthorn tree. If thou findest another whose presence can smother Should come with the thought that thy will is not free; Think not I would gain thee if duty but chain thee, Think not that I deem thee unchangeably mine; That thy young love had vanished, and feelings were banished, I see by thy smile, love, thou'rt thinking the while, love, And perchance I am wrong, love, in breathing a song, love, So I'll tell thee no more, love, but that I adore, love, And that if thou wilt come, love, unchanged to thy home, love, PHYSICAL AND MORAL FORCE. WHILE physical force is seen with frowning aspect in armies, in navies, in fortifications, in burnished ammunition, in defiant and furious looks, in bloody actions, in humiliated defeats and selfish victories; while it is significantly felt in interrupted commerce, in disarranged DIAMOND DUST. Do what you have to do just now, and leave it not for to-morrow. Ir implies a want of feeling, amounting almost to baseness, to deride any one on account of bodily defects. Every generous man avoids even the slightest allusion to such misfortunes. THERE is a certain distance at which opinions, as well as statues, must be viewed. THERE is a thread in our thoughts, as there is a pulse in our hearts. He who can hold the one, knows how to think; and he who can move the other, knows how to feel. PHILOSOPHY becomes poetry, and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of genius. Look in thy heart and write. He that writes to himself, writes to an eternal public. As the diamond is found in the darkness of the mine, as the lightning shoots with most vivid flashes from the gloomiest cloud, so does mirthfulness frequently proceed from a heart susceptible of the deepest melancholy. In the arrangements of nature there is nothing done in vain. GREAT minds differ from small in nothing more than this, that they can afford to bestow praise, which the latter cannot. THE sun of truth may be obscured, but is never eclipsed. GOD hath often a great share in a little house, aud but a little share in a great one. SELF-RESPECT is the key to, and generator of, a more elevated tone of sentiment; and where this is not quite lost, efforts will still be made to preserve it. IN the presence of a mother, we feel that our childhood has not all departed. THERE is nothing so exhilarating to the human mind, and there is nothing so bracing and useful to the human faculties, as progress. If you wish a pig to go forwards, pull it backwards by the tail. For the same reason, when dealing with an obstinate person, persuade him to do just the reverse of what you want, and you will gain your end. ART is but a mirror, which gives back what is cast on its surface faithfully, only while unsullied. glides ever along with the actual life, stream by stream To eyes that can see, and hearts that can feel, romance to the dark ocean. a BETTER keep under an old hedge, than creep under new furze-bush. THERE is more fatigue in laziness than in a life of labour. DOMESTIC Society is the prime charm of life. If our fire-side is comfortable, we may despise the malevolence or the ingratitude of the world, and bear with fortitude the injuries of fortune. finances, in wounded freedom and social dilapidation; moral power presents itself in the sublime attitude of reason and religion, with the beacon of love upon its brow, with reconciliation and forgiveness on its tongue, and with peace and prosperity around its feet. Physical force, whether used as an instrument for the subjugation of tyranny or liberty, crushes the body; while moral BORROWED thoughts, like borrowed money, only reveal power developes the mind. Physical force tries to sub-the poverty that compelled the loan. due violence by violence, to extinguish fear by fear, but this it cannot of necessity do; while moral power carries on its silent operations in the sanctuary of the mind, and accomplishes its designs by the might of conviction. Physical force works with gunpowder, bayonets, prisons, and scaffolds; moral power uses irresistible kindness, and expands the soul with the warmth of truth and love. Physical force, in any of its angry manifestations, is the offspring of certain conditions of mind; moral force penetrates beneath such manifestations, and, by improving and elevating the inward man, destroys the causes of war. Moral power tells despotism that it cannot destroy freedom by violence; it also tells freedom that it cannot put down wrong by wrong. Tyranny can only be put down, and liberty can only be secured, by intelligence and moral sunshine.-J. P. Edwards. A GREAT fortune with a wife is often a bed full of brambles. A RUPTURE in the friendship of sensitive and refined natures is generally serious in its consequences. Coarse stones, when fractured, may be cemented again, precious ones never. Printed and Published for the Proprietor, by JOHN OWEN CLARKE, (of No. 9, Hemingford Terrace, East, in the Parish of St. Mary, Islington, in the County of Middlesex) at his Printing Office, No. 3, Raquet Court, Fleet Street, in the Parish of St. Bride, in the City of London. Saturday, November 17, 1849 NATIONAL WIT AND HUMOUR. WIT and humour seem to be as indigenous in countries, as their song or their patriotism. Each nation's store of food for laughter derives an individuality from its social peculiarities, as well as from the character of its people. How national is the light, vivacious punning of the French; the heavy, philosophical wit of the Germans; the generous, mellow bonhommie of the English; the brilliant and sparkling repartee of the Irish; the dry humour of the Scotch; and the wild exaggerated burlesque of the backwood Americans! Probably wit and humour constitute a not unimportant element of a people's happiness. There is a great deal of enjoyment and hearty pleasure in their exercise; and there seems, among all civilized nations, to be a powerful instinct and appetite for their enjoyment. Look at the poor Irishman; borne down by burdens innumerable, tasked like any galley-slave, toiling and suffering from day to day, and yet sustained throughout by his own cheerful nature-never becoming sulky or morose-naturally gay, witty, and humorous in his disposition; thoroughly imbued with a love of fun, no matter at what hazard; with a heart full of generous sympathies and affections; and who shall say that the poor Irishman has not his glimpses of happiness as bright as falls to the lot, even of those who so luxuriously lord it over him? [PRICE 1d. found the best history of Ireland, he answered, "In the Ireland, above all other countries, can boast of a There is always a hearty flavour about the Irishman's national wit and humour, as strongly marked as its min- wit, by which it may be pronounced genuine. It comes strelsy, as popular as its likings, its prejudices, and its anti- spontaneous and unstudied. Sir Walter Scott gave a poor pathies. It is genuinely national, for it is found the most fellow a shilling on one occasion, when only sixpence strongly marked among the poorest classes; it is as bril-was the fee. "Remember you owe me sixpence," said liant in the hut as in the hall, sporting between life and Sir Walter. "May your honour live till I pay you," was death, and is heard alike amid the sounds of lamentation the answer. Only an Irishman would have thought of and of social enjoyment. And truly the poor Irishman saying this. Hear again his witty answer to a traveller, needs all his humour and native good-heartedness to ena- who was complaining of the badness of the roads. ble him to bear up under the sad calamities of his lot. "Well, Sir, if the road's not good, sure an we give you good measure; " alluding to the great length of the Irish miles. Dean Swift, rather a sharpshooter himself, on revisiting a plantation after some years' absence, exclaimed in admiration to his peasant attendant, "Dear me, how wonderfully those trees have grown!" Arrah, an where's the wonder, Sir," said Pat, "sure an they have had nothing else to do." The wit of the celebrated Sir Hercules Langrishe was often strongly expressive of his national feelings. On one occasion, when riding with the Irish Lord Lieutenant in the Phoenix Park, his excellency complained of his predecessors, and asked why they had left the place in such a wet and swampy state? Langrishe replied, "They were too much occupied in draining the rest of the kingdom." On another occasion, being asked where he There is sometimes a cool impudence about the Irish man's wit, which is highly diverting. An Irish car driver was presented with a shilling at his journey's end, and grumbled loudly at the smallness of the fare. Faith," said he, "it's not putting me off with this ye'd be, if ye knew but all." The traveller's curiosity was excited. "What do you mean?" Faix, that ud be telling." Another shilling was tendered. "And now," asked the gentleman, "what do you mean by saying, if you knew but all?'" "That I druv yer honer the last three miles widout a lynch-pin!" A beggar woman in the country followed a gentleman to his great annoyance, for about a mile, and on bidding him good-bye, had the modesty to ask him for "a little sixpence." "For what," asked the gentleman, "what have you done for me?" "Ah then shure, haven't I been keeping yer honer in discoorse?" The memoirs of Curran, Sheridan, Langrishe, O'Connell, and other distinguished Irishmen, abound with their exquisite sallies of wit and humour. But it is not so much among the educated, that we are to look for the best illustrations of national character. The tendency of education is to efface national and local characteristics, and to make men feel and think more as citizens of the world, than as the inhabitants of a particular district. Hence the educated classes of all countries will be found to approach very nearly to each other in respect of their external characteristics; and the educated man of Vienna, of Paris, of London, or of Dublin, will pass current without much observation, if he can speak the language, in either of these cities. But it is very different among the mass of the people. The lower we descend among them, the more striking do the national feelings, prejudices, and characteristics appear. In fact, it is generally in the very lowest depths of poverty that the essential features of a people are the most strongly marked; and hence in Ireland, we find the best instances of national wit, humour, and repartee, are to be found among the beggars. The natural wit of this class seems to be remarkable. Mrs. Hall gives numerous instances of this in her book on Ireland. A beggar on receiving a refusal of alms from a Poor Law Commissioner, called after him, "Ah then, it's little business you'd have, only for the likes of us." "You've lost all your teeth," was said to one of them. "Time for me to lose 'em, when I'd nothing for them to do," was the reply. A person who was solicited for charity by an Irish woman, told her very coarsely to go to a bad place the woman turned up her eyes, and with inimitable humour said, "Ah, then, it's a long journey yer honour's sending us; may be yer honour 'll give us something to pay our expenses !" ladyship please to pass over?"-not aware that he was thus unconsciously imitating the well-known polite act of Sir Walter Raleigh towards Queen Elizabeth, centuries ago. The national wit of the Scotch is altogether different from that of the Irish. Indeed, the Scotchman is not witty, so much as satirical. If he perpetrates a pun or a joke, it often carries a sting in it. He may raise the laugh, but see if it is not at somebody's cost. The following is a good illustration :-A meeting of the elders of a certain kirk had assembled for the purpose of determining about the position of a stove, which was to be erected for the purpose of warming the building on Sundays. After considerable discussion, an old man, who had hitherto said but little, was asked for his opinion: "In my humble opinion," he said, "the stove should be placed in the poopit, for it is by far the cauldest place in a' the Kirk." The Scotchman has also a provoking way of answering one question by putting another. For instance: A puffing schoolmaster, one day, asked poor Tam, a kind of natural of his village, "how long a man might live without brains?" Tam, laying hold of the dominie's button, and gazing for a few moments in his face, asked, "How lang hae ye lived, dominie?" The Scotch, though not witty, have a strong relish for the humorous. For "pauky" humour-for saying good things in a sly way-the Scot has not his match. He can even be boisterous in his humour; and on these occasions you may hear jokes bandied about like brick-bats, producing a succession of something like hard knocks on the head, but which nevertheless excite loud explosions of laughter. "Scotch wit," says a writer in the London Spectator, (if we mistake not, himself a Scotchman,) "is at once intellectual and coarse. The former quality may be attributed to the uniform training in the highly metaphysical school of the Westminster divines; the latter, partly to a natural want of sensibility, only to be operated upon by something analogous to their peat-reek whiskey-something that, in their own phrase, tak's a grip o' the mouth;' and partly to the revulsion of buoyant animal spirits controlled "by the most rigid Pharisaism extant." The same writer contends that it is a gross mistake to suppose that the Scots are naturally a stern, severe race; and he adds that "no merrier circles, within the limits of becoming mirth, exist anywhere than in the domestic circles of the most zealous ministers of the most strait-laced sects of Scotland." Besides being witty, even the poorest Irish are extremely eloquent. They possess the power of saying alike the most severe and the most gentle things-of cursing and blessing with equal force-of pronouncing the most outting sarcasms and paying the most beautiful compliments. Of the latter, take the following instance :-A lady stood by a poor Irish basket-woman, in London, purchasing a moss rose. A beautiful and bright-complexioned girl was buying flowers at the same stand, and bent over the rose which the other lady was admiring and about to purchase. The Irishwoman fixed her eyes upon the young girl, and whispered, "I ax yer pardon, young lady, but if it's plasing to ye, I'd thank ye to keep yer cheek away from that rose; ye'll put the lady out of consate with the colour of her flower;" an exquisite compliment, which must have made the girl's heart throb. It may be objected that the Irish are too complimentary, and thus they lay themselves open, on many occasions, to the charge of insincerity. There is, however, a great natural politeness about them, which speaks alike in acts and words. A lady of our acquaintance was, on one occasion, picking her way across a muddy road, and at last came to a stand still; when a poor Irishman, seeing her dilemma, at once whipt off his bit of old hat, laid it in the dirt, and said, "will your The English people are not famous for the brilliancy of their wit, either. Their great qualities are all of a solid kind. They enjoy themselves, quietly, like Master Silence, and are not given to "quips, and cranks," and wreathed smiles." They "take their ease in their inn." What wit they have, is chiefly intellectual and literary; although there is a large portion of humour, and a strong appreciation of it, existing among the people at large. The national stock consists, however, rather of a set of conventional sayings, which men agree to laugh at, than of those natural coruscations of wit which distinguish the Irish character. Diggory, in She Stoops to Conquer, when his master charges him not to laugh with the guests while he is telling his stories, protests, that if he is so to refrain, his master must not tell the story of "the old grouse in the gun room." The honest Diggories are, we believe, a large majority in English society. Of the wit occasionally found in the lower spheres of London life, Sam Weller, in Pickwick, is a capital illustration; though it must be confessed, too, that Sam owes a good deal to the genius of Dickens. The working classes throughout England have generally little wit, but strong humour. None relish a game at horseplay as they do. They bandy hard hits, and laugh heartily and gene rously. If they are short of words, they can at least grin * Pulpit. liarity than could be described in a general sketch of the manners and the times. In the minister, self-indulgence had induced its retribution, by establishing in the appro through a horse-collar, and roar at the clown's tricks in the pantomime. The humour of the Yorkshireman and the Northumbrian resembles that of the Scotch: it is sly, pauky, and often hits hard; but it is cordial and gene-priate region of his frame a troublesome twinge of truly rous nevertheless. aristocratic gout, which, being of a rheumatic nature, American humour mainly consists in strong exaggera- not only inflamed and stiffened the joints of the worthy tion, and is ludicrous chiefly from its incongruity. The man's large toe, but made such occasional incursions up Americans, by pitch-forking together the most odd and the whole limb, as at times totally to impede his locoheterogeneous ideas, force you to laugh in spite of your-motive powers. The minister's temper, under these. self. This kind of burlesque humour has already become attacks, was usually none of the best; nor did that their national type: its best specimens are to be found in sensitive portion of his composition derive any manner Sam Slick and Major Downing's Letters. The ludicrous of improvement from the tone of conversation which, at is a lower order of humour than the witty. It is difficult, such periods, ensued between him and his man. John however, to define in what the difference consists; and had his dignity to preserve; and one of his principal men generally agree to laugh on in their own way, expedients for so doing consisted in the assumption of as without definitions. much equality in his bearing towards the minister as circumstances would permit. The infirmities of body and mind which beset the minister, afforded the man the rarest opportunities of asserting his independence, and he never suffered these advantages to escape unimproved. MAGGY THIRD; OR, A CURE FOR THE GOUT. THE relations of the minister and his man possessed, once, a peculiarity in Scotland now scarcely understood. But under the reign of what has been termed "Moderatism" in the Scottish Church, when, certainly, there were more bons vivants than evangelical divines amongst the clerical order, the power and authority of the minister's man were parochial, and fell little short of that of the minister himself. Was it not this functionary who carried the huge Bible down through the church, and up the pulpit stairs, solemnly depositing it, in face of the congregation, upon the pulpit-desk? Did he not publicly precede the clergyman on his way to the rostrum, and finally close the door upon the preacher as he threw himself back into his seat? The minister's man thus rendered conspicuous Sabbath by Sabbath, could scarcely fail in being somebody in the eyes of the people. He derived, however, a far more dread importance from that closer connection with the minister into which his week-day avocations threw him. The minister's man was not then, as he is now, the servant of the church or congregation-he was the factotum of the minister. In this capacity, a species of extraordinary familiarity frequently sprung up betwixt minister and man, which greatly enhanced the standing of the latter amongst the parishioners. The clergyman of a country parish, thrown upon his own resources, in consequence of that vacuity which the very stinted discharge of his duties, assigned him by the fault or fashion of the times, occasioned, fell back too often on the gossip and good-fellowship of his immediate dependents, the chief of whom was, in most cases, the minister's man. There was also, to be sure, in some cases, the minister's maid, generally an admirable specimen of the antiquated spinster, in all the unbending pride of feminine independence. In fact, the minister's maid was usually a much less amiable character than the minister's man, and scarcely manageable at times by the minister himself, but certainly never by any other power. An anecdote is told of a minister in the east neuk of Fife, who, having ordered in some hot water to regale his friends with "toddy" after dinner, ventured to ask his maid the question (a very essential one to the quality of the mixture), "Janet, is this water boiling?" Janet, who knew little of the true secret of making whiskey toddy with boiling water, and against whose fiat, in what she conceived her own department, there existed no appeal, instantly retorted, "No! it's no just boilin'-but it's as het's ye can tak' it." And the minister, with his company, were literally obliged to submit to the pernicious deficiency of caloric. In the rural parish of Abercathro', situated in the woodland district of a central county, it chanced that about fifty years ago there was a minister and his man, who stood upon a footing even of farther advanced fami Amongst certain points of disputation which had become confirmed betwixt the minister and his man, there was one question of quite a metaphysical complexion; it related to the existence of ghosts, douillies, and bogles. John was a firm believer, his master an impatient sceptic, on the subject of these beings of another world. John Tamson, in his enthusiastic support of supernatural influences, had arrived at the conviction, that, if in the first instance apt to excite that electric agitation of the nerves, known as "a fleg," or fright, his friends from the other world performed a purpose of small utility, even by that very thing. He indeed descanted eloquently to the minister on the virtues and advantages of "a fleg," and failed not to adduce most potent instances of its value in the sudden cure of chronic maladies. John, in fact, felt satisfied that it required but a proper state of terror to take possession for a moment of the minister's own mind, and the gout itself would evanish for ever from his body. The minister, though imbued with totally opposite opinions, and utterly discarding the whole legion of invisible spirits that peopled honest John's philosophy, was, nevertheless, very open to receive the impression of fear, so earnestly desired by his faithful servitor for the deliverance of his body from pain, inasmuch as the clergyman's mind and character, it must be acknowledged, did not betoken, under the most ordinary circumstances, any great share of fortitude. His only panoply against that atmosphere of perpetual alarm for ghosts, in which his man might be said to exist, was his indignant denial of their ever being permitted to revisit the glimpses of the moon. This was the minister's sole mental refuge. It fully explained the phenomenon of a man of his timidity of disposition daring to indulge in a spirit of bravado against "uncanny things," as they were called by John Tamson. John, whose belief in ghosts no mortal persuasion could shake, and who beheld with equal horror and astonishment this trait, or, as he termed it, "temptin' o' Providence," on the part of the minister, had his secret consolation. John was not ignorant of the true character of his master. He well knew that, under circumstances of actual alarm, the ininister would be the last man to evince composure; and although he could not so much as surmise the cause of this overweening confidence concerning ghosts, he lived in hope that, sooner or later, it would succumb to the shock which, with an odd mixture of apprehension and delight, he anticipated would one day cure the clergyman of his scepticism and his gout. During the reign of this famous disputation in Abercathro' manse, there lived an old woman, in a lonely cot, in the lovely little and sequestered village. Her name was Margaret, or, as every body called her, Maggy Third. There is in general nothing remarkable in the natural history of old women in country villages, but there was in that of Maggy Third! Scarce fifty years previously, Maggy would have taken rank as a witch. The times however had, even now, so far altered, that the death of nobody's cow was laid at the old woman's door. The last person, in truth, to whom the country yokels would probably have attributed the evil agency that produced their pains and stitches was Maggy Third. Maggy in truth was popular; and we know the reason. Until the last few years of her life, she had taught a dame's school-an occupation for which increasing infirmities had at length unfitted her; and living, now, "without" what the police call "visible means of subsistence," instead of being supposed in league with the powers of darkness, as would inevitably have been the case in Scotland not a hundred years ago, Mrs. Margaret, participating in the benefit, small as it might be, of fifty years of human progress, was simply reputed-RICH. Such was the vulgar solution of Maggy's secret; for she had a secret, and, possibly, a mysterious one, since nobody, so far as we are aware, ever found it out. A poor, decrepid, bed-ridden object, Maggy Third still knew how to profit by such a reputation, and to her last moment it was dexterously preserved-not by pretending to the discovery of the philosopher's stone or the transmutation of metals, as we have since known to be done with success-but merely by keeping her own secret. This policy gave all the effect of positive certainty to the vague surmises of the countryside, till the wealth of Maggy Third became a thing as assured as daylight or darkness. Manifestations of Margaret's opulence never met the vulgar gaze. We believe sincerely that instead of confirming, the very first effect of any such thing would have resulted in annihilating the whole theory of ber independence. Maggy certainly was independent; and the mystery of her means and substance sustained her credit. Comforts and attentions which a very poor person would, in this unfeeling world, have vainly longed for, flowed in unsolicited on Maggy Third. Her individual conduct contributed considerably to maintain the delusion of the good people, her neighbours, respecting her-for a delusion, we are sorry to say, it was. Maggy Third was, however, not exactly an impostor. That is not admitted. Yet, in these days of workhouse tests, it might be asked,-unless the woman had been rich, what business had she to indulge her passions? Now it behoves to be recorded, that Maggy Third had a passion, and indulged it. Maggy's passion was not for snuff or tobacco, like that of most snuffy or smoky old women, who, in the old Scotch rural districts, where the nicotian was scarce, habitually anticipated Grimstone in the matter of eye snuff," by taking a pinch of powdered herbs; and were fain enough to put the couch-grass roots of the fallow grounds, into their pipes and smoke them." Not even for tea-that universal panacea for all the ills of age, but too frequently made of oatmeal, and not of the Chinese leaf, in the poverty-stricken old Scotch village, where the first tea-leaves had the water poured off, and were eaten with butter,-did Maggy Third incline inordinately. We have already said that it was a sylvan village, the village of Abercathro', and Maggy's passion, originating, probably, out of the habits and usages of a woodland life, was one rather unusual amongst the human race, and indeed restricted chiefly to paroquets and other specimens of ornithology-it was for NUTS. This was a taste by no means expensive, under the circumstances, only it nearly made up, by its intensity in Maggy Third, what it lacked in extravagance; nevertheless Maggy could contrive to indulge it. Fortunately, the surrounding country would have supplied the means in abundance of gratifying the desires of thousands of epicures or gourmands such as she. Far as the eye could reach, from any vantage ground, the undulating surface waved with woods and copses, in which grew the hazel, beech, horse-chesnut, and other nut and wild-fruit trees. Parties of children from the villages perpctually ranged the woodland a-nutting in the season; the urchins of Abercathro' were mostly in the interest of Maggy Third, who was open to the receipt of any quantity of nuts, at a halfpenny a bag. Unable to move abroad in person, she liberally employed this method of gratifying her penchant, and many is the halfpenny bestowed for the purpose, out of her supposed hoard of savings. Next to appeasing their own appetites (since it is unreasonable to suppose that the juvenile propensity would flag under the influence of so laudable an example), the children desired nothing better than the congenial employment afforded by the lucky owner of an indefinite hoard of halfpence. Many were the day-dreams of these juvenile speculators a-nutting in the woods of Abercathro'. Fortunes innumerable, and quite akin to those of Jack of the Beanstalk, were built upon the slender foundation of the halfpenny reward to be earned at evening from Maggy Third. To do the old woman justice, her extravagance extended little farther than this. There was no denying her partiality for nuts; it was open-palpable; known not only to her allies and emissaries, the children, but notorious to the gossips; and, as already hinted, the talk of the country. One and all surmised that nothing short of a well-filled purse could ever have warranted Maggy Third in pursuing this peculiar propensity. They looked not into the domestic economy of the matter; and never, perhaps, dreamt of its being a pleasant device of Maggy's for sheer subsistence; yet, in all other departments of her household system, the most rigid economy, or, if possible, parsimony, prevailed. Nuts, which were but nuts to others, were meat and drink to Maggy Third. On nuts she lived; yes, and on nuts she died. Finding her latter days approaching, and knowing well how few there were to care for a poor forlorn creature like her, poor Maggy Third, with her usual prudence and decision of character, coolly undertook, in anticipation of her death and burial, the task of putting in train those arrangements that customarily follow the one event, and precede the other. She sent for the wright or undertaker of the village, bargained with him for the coffin, and paid his charge for it, when finished, with nearly the last coin contained in her slender purse. One stipulation only did Maggy Third earnestly enforce upon the coffinmaker. Below her head he was to form a receptacle for a bag of nuts. It was the ruling passion strong in death. And if possessed, as she appears to have been, of the means of gratifying her whim, why might not Maggy Third be committed to the tomb, her head reposing on a bag of nuts, as appropriately as Napoleon in the green and gold of the Chasseurs of the Guard, with his cross of the legion and his insignia of merit on his breast? The coffin, at all events, was duly constructed and delivered. There was space left expressly for the bag of nuts, according to the bargain; and the last dregs of Maggy's mystic purse having been actually paid over to the children by whom the necessary quantity were gathered and brought from the wood, Maggy Third breathed her last in peace and composure. Great was the sensation in Abercathro' on the death of Margaret Third. The whole village fancied itself her heir. The house of the departed was filled with people from the day of her death to that of her funeral; and, although no immediate funds were anywhere forthcoming, there were not awanting the means of decent and honourable interment for the remains of one who had expired in the odour of opulence, like Maggy Third. No |