eyes why the angels sang chorals of delight over the manger at Bethlehem-to that golden Christmas Day when “the new commandment" shall be kept in the light of the old one, rightly understood, and the "peace" of loving God indeed shall have banished fear, as the "good-will" towards each and all who bear "His image" shall have banished pain.

MARSTON MOOR.

66
FROM PICTURES OF THE PERIODS.'

THE pale moon shone solemnly down on Marston Moor, thick-strewn with the manifold wrecks of a battle, whose roar, scarcely yet faded into silence, was lingering in faint sounds of pursuit on the south-western horizon. Culverins, detached from their carriages, and plunging their snake-like barrels in the trodden soil-arcubus and caliver, petronel and dag-broken swords-pike staves snapped in twain-banners draggled in dirt and blood-drums with rended vellum-fragments of armour and military dressstrewed the plain in scattered heaps. The track of the terrified rush, which the beaten Royalists had made at last towards York, gleamed in the moonlight like a river of steel, for blades and barrels, cuirasses and helmets, were flung aside at every step by the competitors of this ignominious race. But sadder far than the wreck of such things were the heaps of dead and dying, which cumbered the gorse and heather of the moor. Mingled with the distorted bodies of dead cuirassiers, whose armour glittered in the white light, and dragoons, whose silent dragons hung by a swivel-hook from the belt that crossed their quilted buff coats, were men of the inferior but not less serviceable

grade, who fought on foot. Here lay a musketeer with his clumsy gun twisted in the forked rest that had supported its barrel. The fringe of bandoleers, little tin cases, each holding a charge of powder, which encircled his waist beside his bullet-bag, had lost a pendant here and there at every shot he fired. Not far off a pikeman writhed over the broken shaft of his eighteen-foot weapon, struck down by a sabre stroke, as he was vainly striving to tear his long straight sword of defence from its scabbard. Even amid the ghastly mutilations of the battle-field, the strongly-marked distinction between Puritan and Cavalier was visible. Gone were the grace, the jaunty bearing, the gallant hardihood of the plumed and curled fops, who rode that day for the last time under the banner of their king. But gleams of brilliant satins, rent to rags and blotched with a dull red stain, and bits of torn embroidery and lace, fluttering from corpses in the midnight breeze, proclaimed the side on which the dead hands had wielded steel; or, perchance, an iron cap, with plated lappets to protect the cheeks, had rolled from a close-cropped head; and the sad-coloured doublet below, with its angular severity of cut and fashion, betrayed a Puritan hatred of bright colour and flowing outlines. There was one spot on the battle-ground where the dead and maimed, more thickly heaped than elsewhere, displayed these rival badges with remarkable distinctness. It was the rye-field in which Rupert's cuirassiers had met the Ironsides of Cromwell, only to be driven through the summer dusk in huddled groups of fugitives. There, for the first time, the royal cavalry had met with a decided check. The longhaired cavaliers, giving loose rein to their blood horses, and swinging their sabres with the easy grace of men used to the weapon and certain of success, followed "the Prince of

Plunderers" to battle, with the expectation that the foe would melt before their advance, as had happened in every battle of the earlier war. But no! That grim, slovenly colonel with the granite face musters his buff-coats and steel-pots in a triple line, shouts the word of command with a cracked and tuneless voice, and rides audaciously at their head, as the trot quickens to a thundering gallop, and the spurned clods fly in broken showers to the rear. A rain of pistol balls-a flashing of lifted sabres-and the Ironsides are among the broken, flying relics of the royal horse, trampling and cleaving them down, not without much gallant resistance, but always invincible, with pitiless hoof and sabre-edge.-Dr W. FRANCIS COLLIER.

EDINBURGH.

EVERY true Scotsman believes Edinburgh to be the most picturesque city in the world; and truly, standing on the Calton Hill at early morning, when the smoke of fires newly kindled hangs in azure swathes and veils about the old town-which from that point resembles a huge lizard, the castle its head, church spires spikes upon its scaly back, creeping up from its lair beneath the Crags to look out on the morning world-one is quite inclined to pardon the enthusiasm of the North Briton. The finest view from the interior is obtained from the corner of St Andrew Street, looking west. Straight before you the mound crosses the valley, bearing the white Academy buildings; beyond, the Castle lifts, from glassy slopes and billows of summer foliage, its weather-stained towers and fortifications, the Half-Moon Battery giving the folds of its standard to the wind. Living in Edinburgh, there abides

above all things a sense of its beauty. Hill, crag, castle, rock, blue stretch of sea, the picturesque ridge of the Old Town, the squares and terraces of the New-these things, seen once are not to be forgotten. The quick life of to-day, sounding around the relics of antiquity, and overshadowed by the august traditions of a kingdom, makes residence in Edinburgh more impressive than residence in any other British city. I have just come in—surely it never looked so fair before. What a poem is that Princes Street! The puppets of the busy many-coloured hour move about on its pavement, while across the ravine Time has piled up the Old Town, ridge on ridge, gray as a rocky coast washed and worn by the foam of centuries; peaked and jagged by gable and roof; windowed from basement to cope; the whole surmounted by St Giles's airy crown. The New is there looking at the Old. Two Times are brought face to face, and are yet separated by a thousand years. Wonderful on winter nights, when the gully is filled with darkness, and out of it rises, against the sombre blue and the frosty stars, that mass and bulwark of gloom, pierced and quivering with innumerable lights. There is nothing in Europe to match that, I think. Could you but roll a river down the valley, it would be sublime. Finer still, to place one's self near the Burns Monument and look towards the Castle. It is more astonishing than an Eastern dream. A city rises up before you painted by fire on night. High in air a bridge of lights leaps the chasm; a few emerald lamps, like glow-worms, are moving silently about in the railway station below; a solitary crimson one is at rest. That ridged and chimneyed hulk of blackness, with splendour burning out at every pore, is the wonderful Old Town, where Scottish history mainly transacted itself; while

opposite, the modern Princes Street is blazing throughout its length. During the day the Castle looks down upon the city, as if out of another world; stern with all its peacefulness, its garniture of trees, its slopes of grass. The rock is dingy enough in colour, but after a shower its lichens laugh out greenly in the returning sun, while the rainbow is brightening on the lowering sky beyond. How deep the shadow which the Castle throws at noon over the gardens at its foot where the children play! How grand when giant bulk and towery crown blacken against sunset! Fair, too, the New Town, sloping to the sea. From George Street, which crowns the ridge, the eye is led down sweeping streets of stately architecture to the villas and woods that fill the lower ground and fringe the shore; to the bright azure belt of the Forth with its smoking steamer or its creeping sail; beyond, to the shores of Fife, soft, blue, and decked with fleeting shadows in the clear light of spring, dark purple in the summer heat, burnished gold in the autumn haze; and, farther away still, just distinguishable on the paler sky, the crest of some distant peak, carrying the imagination into the illimitable world. Residence in Edinburgh is an education in itself. Its beauty refines one like being in love. It is perennial, like a play of Shakspere's. Nothing can stale its infinite variety.

ALEXANDER SMITH.

SUPERFICIAL REFORM.

FROM SHOOTING NIAGARA, AND AFTER?"

CERTAIN it is, there is nothing but vulgarity in our people's expectations, resolutions, or desires, in this epoch. It is