Let us rejoice with trembling that we live in an age and under a government so widely different from those now referred to; and whilst on our knees we pour forth the tribute of thankfulness to God, let us teach our children to prize the precious inheritance so dearly purchased by our forefathers.

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THE STORY OF MARY BROWN.

If the reader of what I am going to relate for his or her edification, or for perhaps a greater luxury, viz. wonder, should be so unreasonable as to ask for my authority, I shall be tempted, because a little piqued, to say that no one should be too particular about the source of pleasure, inasmuch as, if you will enjoy nothing but what you can prove to be a reality, you will, under good philosophical leadership, have no great faith in the sun—­a thing which you never saw, the existence of which you are only assured of by a round figure of light on the back of your eye, and which may be likened to tradition; so all you have to do is to believe like a good Catholic, and be contented, even though I begin so poorly as to try to interest you in two very humble beings who have been dead for many years, and whose lives were like a steeple without a bell in it, the intention of which you cannot understand till your eye reaches the weathercock upon the top, and then you wonder at so great an erection for so small an object.  The one bore the name of William Halket, a young man, who, eight or nine years before he became of much interest either to himself or any other body, was what in our day is called an Arab of the City—­a poor street boy, who didn’t know who his father was, though, as for his mother, he knew her by a pretty sharp experience, insomuch as she took from him every penny he made by holding horses, and gave him more cuffs than cakes in return.  But Bill got out of this bondage by the mere chance of having been taken a fancy to by Mr. Peter Ramsay, innkeeper and stabler, in St. Mary’s Wynd (an ancestor, we suspect, of the Ramsays of Barnton), who thought he saw in the City Arab that love of horse-flesh which belongs to the Bedouin, and who accordingly elevated him to the position of a stable-boy, with board and as many shillings a week as there are days in that subdivision of time.

Nor did William Halket—­to whom for his merits we accord the full Christian name—­do any discredit to the perspicacity of his master, if it was not that he rather exceeded the hopes of his benefactor, for he was attentive to the horses, civil to the farmers, and handy at anything that came in his way.  Then, to render the connection reciprocal, William was gratefully alive to the conviction that if he had not been, as it were, taken from the street, the street might have been taken from him, by his being locked up some day in the Heart of Midlothian.  So things went on in St. Mary’s Wynd for five or six years, and might have gone on for twice that