habits of industry, who teaches self-dependence, “to scorn delights, and live laborious days," does much better than they who, after working painfully themselves, leave to their children a fortune which will corrupt by inducing an indolence that will surely prove a curse.

J. H. FRISWELL.

XCVII.—BE PATIENT.

I.

BE patient! oh, be patient! Put your ear against the earth;

Listen there how noiselessly the germ o' the seed has

birth

How noiselessly and gently it upheaves its little way, Till it parts the scarcely broken ground, and the blade stands up in day.

II.

Be patient! oh, be patient! The germs of mighty thought Must have their silent undergrowth- must underground be wrought,

But as sure as there's a Power that makes the grass appear, Our land shall be green with liberty, the blade-time shall be here.

III.

Be patient! oh, be patient!-go and watch the wheat-ears

grow

So imperceptibly that ye can mark nor change nor throe—
Day after day, day after day, till the ear is fully grown-
And then again day after day, till the ripened field is brown.

IV.

Be patient! oh, be patient!-though yet our hopes are green, The harvest-fields of freedom shall be crowned with sunny

sheen.

Be ripening! be ripening!-mature your silent way,

Till the whole broad land is tongued with fire on freedom's

harvest-day.

R. C. TRENCH.

XCVIII.--VISIT TO A HIGHLAND SCHOOL.

S

OME years ago I was in one of the wildest recesses of the Perthshire Highlands. It was in autumn, and the little school-supported mainly by the chief-was to be examined by the minister, whose native tongue, like that of his flock, was Gaelic, and who was often awkward and ineffectual, and sometimes unconsciously indecorous in his English.

2. It was a great occasion: the keen-eyed, firm-limbed, brown-cheeked little fellows were all in a buzz of excitement as we came in, and before the examination began every eye was looking at us strangers as a dog looks at his game, or when seeking it; they knew everything we had on, everything that could be known through their senses. I never felt myself so studied and scrutinized before. If any one could have examined them upon what they thus mastered, he would have come away astonished, and, I trust, humble.

3. Well, then, the work of the day began; the mill was set a-going, and what a change! In an instant their eyes were like the windows of a house with the blinds down; no one was looking out; everything blank; their very features changed their jaws fell, their cheeks flattened, they drooped and looked ill at ease-stupid, drowsy, sulky-and getting them to speak, or think, or in any way to energize, was like trying to get any one to come to the window at three of a summer morning, when, if he does come, he is half awake, rubbing his eyes and growling.

4. So with my little Celts. They were like an idle and half-asleep dog by the fireside, as contrasted with the dog on the hill and in the joy of work; the form of dog and boy are there-he, the self of each, was elsewhere. I noticed that anything they really knew roused them somewhat; what they had merely to transmit or pass along, as if they were a tube through which the master blew the pea of knowledge into our faces, was performed as stolidly as if they were nothing but a tube.

5. At last the teacher asked where Sheffield was, and was answered; it was pointed to by the pupil as a dot on the skeleton map. And now came a flourish. "What is Sheffield famous for?" Blank stupor, hopeless vacuity till he came to a sort of sprouting Dougal Cratur—almost as wee, and as shaggy about the head, as my own terrier, whom I saw at that moment through the open door careering after a hopeless rabbit, with much benefit to his muscles and his wind-who was trembling with keenness. He shouted out something which was more like "cutlery" than anything else, and was received as such amid our rapturous applause.

6. I then ventured to ask the master to ask small and red Dougal what cutlery was; but from the sudden erubescence of his pallid, ill-fed cheek, and the alarming brightness of his eyes, I saw at once that he did n't himself know what it meant. So I put the question myself, and was not surprised to find that not one of them, from Dougal up to a young strapping shepherd of eighteen, knew what it was.

7. I told them that Sheffield was famous for making knives, and scissors, and razors; and that cutlery meant the manufacture of anything that cuts. Presto! and the blinds were all up, and eagerness, and wits, and brains at the window. I happened to have a jack-knife, with "Rodgers & Sons, Sheffield," on the blade. I sent it round, and finally presented it to the enraptured Dougal. Would not each one of those boys know that knife again when he saw it, and be able to pass a creditable competitive examination on all its ins and outs? and would n't they remember "cutlery" for a day or two?

8. Well, the examination over, the minister performed an oration, of much ambition and difficulty to himself and to us, upon the general question, and a great many other questions, into which his Gaelic subtilty fitted like the mists into the hollows of a mountain, with, it must be allowed, a somewhat similar tendency to confuse and conceal what was beneath; and he concluded with thanking the chief, as he well might, for his generous support of this "aixlent

CEMETERY of ædication." Cemetery indeed! The blind leading the blind, with the ancient result; the dead burying their dead.

9. Now not greater is the change we made from that low, small, stifling, gloomy, mephitic room, into the glorious open air, the loch lying asleep in the sun, and telling over again on its placid face, as in a dream, every hill and cloud, and birch and pine, and passing bird and cradled boat; the Black Wood of Rannoch standing in the midst of its own darkness; and far off in the clear ether, as in another and a better world, the Shepherds of Etive pointing, like ghosts at noonday, to the weird shadows of Glencoe;-not greater was this change than is that from the dingy, oppressive, weary “cemetery" of mere word-knowledge to the open air, the light and liberty, the divine infinity and richness of Nature and her teaching.

JOHN BROWN, M. D.

XCIX.-THE FACE AGAINST THE PANE.

M

I.

ABEL, little Mabel,

With face against the pane,

Looks out across the night
And sees the Beacon Light
A-trembling in the rain.

She hears the sea-birds screech,
And the breakers on the beach
Making moan, making moan.
And the wind about the eaves
Of the cottage sobs and grieves;
And the willow-tree is blown

To and fro, to and fro,

Till it seems like some old crone
Standing out there all alone,
With her woe!
Wringing, as she stands,

Her gaunt and palsied hands,

While Mabel, timid Mabel,
With face against the pane,
Looks out across the night,
And sees the Beacon Light
A-trembling in the rain.

II.

Set the table, maiden Mabel,
And make the cabin warm;
Your little fisher-lover

Is out there in the storm,
And your father-you are weeping!
O Mabel, timid Mabel,

Go, spread the supper-table,
And set the tea a-steeping.

Your lover's heart is brave,

His boat is stanch and tight;
And your father knows the perilous reef
That makes the water white.

—But Mabel, Mabel darling,
With face against the pane,
Looks out across the night
At the Beacon in the rain.

III.

The heavens are veined with fire!

And the thunder, how it rolls!
In the lullings of the storm

The solemn church-bell tolls
For lost souls!

But no sexton sounds the knell
In that belfry old and high;
Unseen fingers sway the bell
As the wind goes tearing by!
How it tolls for the souls

Of the sailors on the sea!
God pity them, God pity them,
Wherever they may be!

God pity wives and sweethearts
Who wait and wait in vain!

And pity little Mabel,

With face against the pane.