could not find in England to meet this longing every true man and woman has to find their way to the human heart and life which is all about them, and not to live apart in a splendid isolation. When I went to stay near Windsor last summer, and said to my kind host and hostess, "Does her Majesty ever neighbor with you here on the edge of the forest?" I could only ask the question as a thing to smile at: if I had asked the same question in the Highlands, it would have taken another tone. And when I said to a selfmade guide, "I should like to go into that pretty park over there," he looked at me as if some Hebrew of the common sort in the old time had said, "I should like to go into the holy of holies"; and his voice took a tone of awe, as he said, "Only her Majesty walks in that park, sir, and her family and attendants." And so it is and must be: wherever this good woman turns in England, only one life is possible, - this that is imprisoned in the trammels of royalty. But in the Highlands, I notice they can live a fine, free, simple life, as he did who fled away for seven years from the royalty of Babylon to the sweet, green lands.

They drink tea in simple, rustic places, and admire the things their hosts give them, and tell each other how he who has left them would have liked this, and how he used to say things tasted better in small places. They wander away, all through the mother's record, into the woods or to the waters and moors, and want to make some tea in the open air, but find they have forgotten the kettle and have to borrow one. Or they make a fire that will not burn, and watch the kettle which will not boil, and the mother is full of concern about it. Then they get some hot water from near by, but we all know the motto about "except the water boiling be," and what they manage to make is mere slops.

This Majesty of England comes to Donald Stewart's house at Hallowe'en, and falls in with the lovely old custom, taking her torch with the rest, and compassing the house three times. Then they make a bonfire of the torches, while the young people dance reels to the pipes. They

drive to a place where you must ask permission to enter, but do not like to ask, and so turn away and go home. There is a dance on a holiday in the servants' hall: the good, kindly eyes notice two are absent who should be there,

mere gillies, to be sure; but the gentle queen is vexed until she hears they had no shoes fit for the high occasion. This royal lady falls in with a woman who rather insists on shaking hands with her, and then pats her on the shoulder; goes on a journey, finds her luggage has gone all wrong, as it is very apt to do over there; wants her dinner; has no cap, but makes a wonderful success, with the children to help her out, of a twisted veil; goes to Abbotsford, and when they ask her to write her name in Sir Walter's journal feels it is a presumption in her to do so; is greatly diverted when a small boy wanting to present some flowers misses the carriage, and rather insists they shall stop and let him try again; has the royal gift of minding names, and will have none of the fashion we are catching,-of calling those who serve us only by their second name, when we are rich enough to do so, and they are servile enough to stand it. The Majesty of England remembers the full Christian name, and uses it with the perfect courtesy of a womanhood so good and true, and is proud to tell us how long they have been with her,- twenty-five years, thirty or thirty-five, and how they have won her deep and true regard. Has a sweet and simple story to tell us of how nervous she was when she had to make a speech five lines long, all out of her own heart; and how she eats sheep's head once,a dish we should scorn, and small blame to us, -and finds it very good. How they buy simple presents, and arrange them so that nobody will be forgotten; and look up cows and a dairy, and come on a policeman fast asleep to his vast dismay, poor man! and watch the women shearing sheep, and admire their deftness, while the mother's pride peeps out as she tells you of one of her daughters who can do almost everything for herself; and, when young Lorne comes to ask for the maiden whose heart he has won already, you notice

"The mother wi' a woman's wiles can spy

What makes the youth sae bashful and sae grave,

Well pleased to see her bairns respected like the lave."

I notice another reason for this preference toward Scotland, or perhaps I should say the Highlands,- always a simple and unselfish devotion to you there for your own sake, if you once win their heart and take captive their imagination, so that there is no room for any other sentiment. It was this that made the bonnie Prince Charlie so strong in the Highlands that they poured out their blood for him like water; and when they lost the day, and he had to flee for his life, taking refuge among them with a price of thirty thousand pounds, if I remember, set on his head, seven poor men, who knew this very well, and would have counted thirty thousand cents no small fortune, guarded him at the peril of their lives, until he got away to France. It is that same old loyalty in John Brown and all the rest who gather about the widow and children in the Highlands. They are simple and true and self-respecting, not servile ever or self-seeking; and, as I watch them, they never seem to think more of the reward than the service, which would be just as faithful and true if they had to starve for it, like old Caleb in Lammermoor. So I spell out this Highland character. We have nothing like it in this New World, except the devotion which is now passing away of the colored people in the South to those who had once won their hearts. They found this devotion when they went to sojourn there in the early happy days, and the sorrowing lady became a still more sacred trust to them when he, who was the strength of her heart, was taken and she was left; and he had only one thought, the good Highland henchman who is dead,- to watch over her, and give his life for her, if the need should come, at any moment, just as they did in the old times for her hapless kinsman. And so, now that she has lost him, she says, with the simplest pathos,

"A truer, nobler, trustier heart,

More loyal and more loving, never bat
Within a human breast."

And I do not envy the man who can sneer at the good queen's regard for good John Brown, either in England or America.

I love to note, also, how this Majesty of England will sit down to her wheel and spin like the daughters of Charlemagne, while Dr. Macleod reads "Tam O'Shanter" to her, and the great song of humanity,

"A man's a man for a' that."

And how easily she can drop into the folk speech, for she says it is "muggy" weather, and tells us how she has the most "biddable" dog she ever saw. And how she hammers pennies into an old tree, which seems to be a survival of some old superstition. They have done that time out of mind, and no one ever picks the pennies out again. Think of that, for the nineteenth century! And they are dreadfully bitten by midges now and then, a sort of low-down mosquitoes, but the best they can raise over there. I asked a farmer last summer how many sheep he had, and he said, "A good few." But, when I said again, "What's a good few?" he said, "Why, it's a good few." Her Majesty, I note, meets a "good few" farmers, but solves the problem. She goes to see a poor woman who has lost two children in the water, and is full of pity for her and sympathy. And to the funeral of her fine old servant's father, who was an elder in the kirk; and the queen and the widow stand side by side while the minister prays, while before this she minds a story she has heard of a poor woman who had lost her husband and many children, and when some one said to her, "How could you bear it?" she answered, "Ah, when he went awa,' it made a great hole, and all the others went through it," and so this queen, who is also a widow, says it will be with her.

I note again how this true-hearted woman stands well over toward the sunnier side and sweeter of our common faith in God, and nourishes a noble liberality. The Queen of England must be a member of the Church of England, or no man can even imagine what would happen. The

queen cannot be other than she is, because Church and Crown go together; but the woman can, and this leaning to views a good deal broader than those commonly accepted began to show itself many years ago, when John Caird, of the Scotch Church, was invited to preach before her, and preached a noble sermon on " Religion in our Common Life," in which a friend says the preacher took no more notice of the dogmas of Orthodoxy than if he had never heard of them. Her Majesty requested that the sermon might be printed.

There is a work also called The Queen's Hand-book of Devotion, printed under her eye, and used in the royal household. It is translated from the German, and was a favorite of the good prince. I have seen no copy; but a wise and careful reader on the other side the water tells me it has nothing to say about the fall of man, like that you find in the old New England primer,

"In Adam's fall

We sinned all,”—

allows no personal devil or eternal hell, and allows the prerogatives of reason as well as of faith in matters of religion. I notice, too, Bunsen said, long ago, "Her Majesty's views of religious instruction for her children are serious but liberal, and she hates all formalism"; and when she was still a girl, almost, Sir John Hobhouse reports how she said she did not like the bigotry of one of her commanders in India, who would not let the regimental bands attend the Hindu religious festivals. She said then, "The zeal of some persons for Christianity defeats its own object." And when some one said, "But, your Majesty, he is a very devout person," she simply answered, "So I hear, and so is his wife." This leaning toward the larger and more liberal thought may often be noticed in this journal. The good queen said to Macleod, when he took his place among her preachers, "I want you to preach anything you feel in your soul to be true"; and, reporting a sermon or talk by him, she says, "He dwelt then as always on the love and goodness of God,