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pleasant exercise, that constant lightness of heart | made her almost handsome. The young music teacher thought her more than almost handsome, for her affectionate soul shone more beamingly on him than on others; and love makes all things beautiful.

When the orphan removed to her pleasant little cottage, on her wedding-day, she threw her arms round the blessed missionary of sunshine, and said, "Ah, thou dear good aunt, it is thou who hast made my life Fairweather."

WHO STOLE THE BIRD'S NEST ?

BY MRS. L. M. CHILD.

To whit! to whit! to whee!
Will you listen to me?
Who stole four eggs I laid,
And the nice nest I made?
Not I, said the cow, Moo-oo?
Such a thing I'd never do,
I gave you a whisp of hay,
But did 'nt take your nest away.
Not I, said the cow, Moo-oo!
Such a thing I'd never do.
To whit! to whit! to whee!
Will you listen to me?
Who stole four eggs I laid,
And the nice nest I made?
Bob-a-link! Bob-a-link!
Now what do you think?
Who stole a nest away
From the plumb tree to-day?

Not I, said the dog, bow wow,
I would n't be so mean,
I vow,
I gave hairs the nest to make,
But the nest I did not take.
Not I, said the dog, bow wow!
I would n't be so mean, I vow.

To whit! to whit! to whee!
Will you listen to me?
Who stole four eggs I laid,
And the nice nest I made?

Bob-a-link! Bob-a-link!
Now what do you think?
Who stole a nest away
From the plumb tree to-day?

Coo coo! coo coo! coo coo!
Let me speak a word too,
Who stole that pretty nest
From the little yellow breast?

Not I, said the sheep, oh no,
I would n't treat a poor bird so,
I gave the wool to line,

But the nest was none of mine.
Baa baa! said the sheep, oh no,
I would n't treat a poor bird so.

To whit! to whit! to whee!
Will you listen to me?
Who stole four eggs I laid
And the nice nest I made?

Bob-a-link! Bob-a-link!
Now what do you think?
Who stole a nest away
From the plumb tree to-day?
Coo coo! coo coo! coo coo!
Let me speak a word too,

Who stole my pretty nest
From the little yellow breast?
Caw! caw! cried the crow,
I should like to know,
What thief stole away
A bird's nest to-day?

Cluck! cluck! said the hen,
Don't ask me again,
Why I haven't a chick
Would do such a trick.

We all gave her a feather,
And she wove them together!
I'd scorn to intrude
On her and her brood.
Cluck, cluck, said the hen,
Don't ask me again.

Chirr-a-whirr! chirr-a-whirr !
We will make a great stir!
Let us find out his name,
And all cry for shame!

I would not rob a bird,
Said little Mary Green;
I think I never heard
Of anything so mean.
"Tis very cruel too,

Said little Alice Neal;

I wonder if he knew

How sad the bird would feel?

A little boy hung down his head
And went and hid behind the bed;
For he stole that pretty nest,
From the poor little yellow breast;
And he felt so full of shame,
He did n't like to tell his name.

ON THE YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL COUNTESS PLUTER,

Who organized and commanded a troop in the late Polish Revolution; and when the independence of Poland was finally crushed, died of a broken heart.

THE missile with resistless fury sent,

Though fragile be its nature, in that flight Gains fresh endurance and unwonted might, Through all opposing strength to force a vent; But that new nature, for the purpose lent,

Enduring only till its task is o'er,

It then resumes the same it owned before, And falls and shivers as its power is spent ; Thus was a woman's heart, for Poland's sake, Inspired with energy before unknown, And armed with strength and firmness not its

own.

Thus did that heart, its trial ended, break,

To prove, when all that made it move was past,
That it was still but woman's at the last.,
R. F.

From Chambers' Journal.

MY NEPHEW THE LAIRD.

as he writes for several of the higher-toned periodicals.

My sister-in-law is certainly more in her natural sphere where she is. She does not affect to conTHE prophetic doubts of my good aunt, the cap-ceal that the change is agreeable to her. The tain's shrewd-judging lady, did not fail in time to perpetual little party-giving is quite to her mind; be very painfully realized. Though widely sepa-so are the dressing, the morning calls, the cardrated from my Highland kindred, I had kept up a playing her taste for this mode of getting through correspondence with the principal members of my part of her time having rather increased as more brother's family, sometimes hearing from himself youthful inclinations have declined. Unluckily of some new golden project, now and then from for my brother, the loo she so much delighted in his wife-latterly to complain of an increasing dul- was not always limited; but years had brought ness in the neighboring society-and very con- some degree of prudence along with them, and her stantly from the elder children, to whom I had gains are beginning to preponderate over her had the extreme comfort of sending a young losses. She was still a fine-looking woman when woman, of superior understanding, as their gov- I last saw her ten years at least younger in erness. About the time that my two eldest appearance than her real age. She had latterly nephews came to England, to a public school, devolved the management of her household on her rumors of my brother's embarrassments began to eldest daughter, who has been taught by adversity be current around him. Without any very expen- the prudence ordinarily the result of half a life's sive habits, he and his lady got through large experience. The second daughter, who, from the sums of money, which even the better resources more intellectual expression of her countenance, of their improved management failed to supply. surpassed even her mother's early beauty, had Besides their hospitable summers, there were win- married just as the family were leaving the Highter visits to Edinburgh, Dublin, and sometimes lands. She had married greatly-the young London; with no farm at hand to aid in house-"master" of the neighboring noble domain, who keeping, when some ready money being of abso- discovered, at the prospect of parting, that he had lute necessity, it had often to be raised at ruinous interest. Then came the system of long credits, bills renewable, a trust-deed-all vain attempts to stave off, for some indefinite period, the crash, which every expedient to avert tended but to aggravate the weight of. It came at last, and it was overwhelming. The trustees entered upon the administration of the property, and my brother had to remove with his family, to live where he pleased, on a very slender annuity.

been cultivating the society of the brothers for the sister's sake. Though the bride was portionless, she was received with affection, and parted with without elation: like sought like. There was nothing the Highlanders considered uncommon in an accident which we, more worldly-minded, thought so fortunate.

My brother's eldest son, he more peculiarly the subject of my present sketch, had been educated, while at school, with my own boys, passing, too, At first they went abroad, but the continent not the most of his holidays with us. Before his colsuiting either himself or his wife, principally from lege days, the funds were wanting to complete their ignorance of modern languages, they were what had been begun he studied one year only advised to fix at Cheltenham, to which they were at Edinburgh. The two following he spent at a the more inclined, as we were enabled to lend German university, which he left to accompany his them a house there. Our Indian uncle, the colonel, family home, upon their tiring of the continent. had bought a villa on the outskirts of what was We thought him anything but improved by his then a pretty village, and this his widow had foreign travels, and we fancied his character still lately left to me. Soon after the completion of further deteriorated by a couple of seasons at this arrangement, our younger brother, who had Cheltenham, where, as a handsome beau-à musgone out early in life to Madras as a writer, re- taches-he lounged away the mornings, with other turned home a wealthy man; and he too settling idlers, in the High Street, or in the billiard-rooms, at Cheltenham, to be near the "laird"-for never or on the cigar benches, while at the evening balls has he been heard to call his elder brother by any he was the coveted partner of every fair exhibitor, other name and also with a view to the happiness unchecked in his advances by any maternal of his wife, who was of a Gloucestershire family, frowns; it being well known that the Highland he gathered his scattered children from their vari-estate was entailed, and of course redeemable. ous homes, and, applying to the "laird" for ad- His mother rather encouraged his numerous flirvice in every circumstance of the life equally novel tations, almost glorying in his easy conquests: his to both, the old age of two men, used to the most father, occupied in his study, knew little of what active habits in totally dissimilar spheres, where was going forward the gentle rebuke of his siseach had commanded, is gliding away, I believe, ter he only laughed at. Suddenly he vanished: in quiet happiness. I had feared that my brother he joined a party to shoot in the Highlands, and "the laird" would have felt very painfully his returned no more. He had ventured to his own descent in position: but no; his seems to be a glen; he wrote his sister word; and he meant to mind which accommodates itself without effort to remain there on a visit to my old friend the foresevents. He considers himself the victim of phi- ter. The next thing we heard of him was, that lanthropy; and, persuaded that his patriotic he was in Edinburgh at college again; then doattempts to improve his place and people were the mesticated in some farmer's house in the Lothisole cause of the ruin brought on him and them, ans; next back to the Highlands; and then came he hardly even regrets it. It was the consequence a joint letter from the trustees to announce that, of good intentions; and the schemes in the High- being dissatisfied with the gentleman hitherto lands failing, he has begun another series in the charged with the management of the property, south, not so costly at any rate, being princi- they had relieved him from his duties, and had pally confined to his study, where his fertile appointed in his stead the person most interested brain and ready pen occupy him very profitably, in the retrieval of its difficulties, and, in their esti

mation, best qualified for a task of such delicacy, | to meet another new line of road, connecting dis

from the high testimonials he had brought forward tricts hardly known before. The castle was in both as to character and abilities. In short, the high preservation, the pleasure-grounds much exnew manager was my nephew, who, awakened to tended, and beautifully kept; while the wide the value of all he was well-nigh losing, had been meadow on either side the stream lay in large fitting himself to attempt the recovery of his birth-level fields, bearing the most luxuriant crops, far right. We regretted his next step; for, after a year or two, he married a wife of high degree, brought up in a home of luxury-a daughter of the noble house into which his sister had been adopted. Years passed on, and when events brought my nephew into prominent notice again, the measures he was carrying through necessitated my brother's revisiting Scotland, from whence he returned indeed landless-having made over his whole inheritance to one sole trustee, his son, forever; who took upon himself every existing debt, and commenced his reign of undivided authority by doubling the annuity paid. by the estate to his father.

All the news that ever reached us from the north indirectly, told of the wonderful improvements my nephew the laird had been successfully carrying on there. But a few appeals had been made directly to the old laird concerning the consequences of certain of his son's changes, which had filled his affectionate heart with grief. In some cases whole families, whose existence upon the lands had been coeval with our own possession of them, having been deprived of their small holdings, had emigrated to America; others had abandoned their homes to settle in the burgh town, or to seek their precarious fortunes elsewhere; while a few lingered on where they were born, loath to leave scenes that were dear to them, though without any means of subsistence beyond the charity of their relations. My brother felt some delicacy in interfering with a son who had acted so generously to himself, while he was distressed at the idea of abandoning the interests of those over whom Providence had once placed him as their protector. From my nephew having passed so much of his boyhood in my family, he knew that he had an old affection for me, and that I had some influence over him; so he thought it would be of considerable use to all parties if I could make up my mind to pay a visit to the glen. It was not altogether an agreeable duty; but it was one which seemed to have been thrown in my way, and from which, therefore, I did not feel it right to shrink; so I consented.

:

My former journey north had occupied nearly a fortnight we were five days on the road between London and Edinburgh, and five more between Edinburgh and the glen, with a rest in Edinburgh, much needed. On the present occasion we landed at my nephew's door on the third evening after leaving town, travelling by railway to Liverpool, by steamboat along the coast, and up the lochs to the new pier, built out near the promontory where stands the church, just concealed by a bank of weeping-birch from the castle. A thriving village had risen round the pier, in which was a good inn, several shops, and a post-office-the mail now going regularly across that part of the country which was formerly termed the new road; besides two coaches-one daily, the other thrice a week -and an omnibus, for tourists only, who engaged it for the trip, which always occupied the same number of days, and embraced the same round of scenery. A road really new to me turned up from this village through the glen, passing the old castle, and stretching up across part of the forest

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up into the birch wooding. My nephew did not live there. It was let, with the shooting, to an English millionaire; who paid nearly as much for his six weeks' amusement as supported my poor brother's diminished state at Cheltenham. My nephew lived in the new house, as it was still called; for the captain and his worthy lady were both dead. The widow had indeed been living when my nephew first returned to the glen; and he had gone, at her desire, to visit her-a visit which never ended, for they remained together till her death, when he inherited all her worldly goods, all the gatherings of her later savings, all the labors of her busy years, with the various heirlooms of the family, carefully collected and treasured up by this last of the old race. I had expected improvements to have been made at the mansion, but I was quite unprepared for their extent. The bare moor had become a perfect garden; large fields lay around, intersected by belts of plantations almost to the door, from which they were separated by a shrubbery, enclosing a perfect gem of a little flower-garden, with a small conservatory attached to the house. One of the square wings was gone, its materials having assisted in the erection of a commodious set of offices behind, to which all the straggling sheds of former days had also contributed. The other wing had had its front wall carried up to a gable end, its two narrow casements below altered into one large bay-window, the terraced roof of which, filled with flowers, served as a balcony to the two enlarged casements above. A wide porch had been added to the doorway, covered with creeping plants. And this in a wild Highland glen!wild no longer. The mountain range around, and the little foaming river, now scantily fringed with birch, were all that remained of the rude Highlands.

The change within was even greater. My mother's parlor and bedroom, thrown into one long room by the help of supporting pillars, was fitted up as a library, and was the sitting-room of the family. In the recess of the bay-window was placed a large, round table, covered with books and writing-materials; in the side-wall, doors of glass opened into the conservatory; at the farther end a pianoforte, a violoncello-case, and a high stand full of music, denoted the happy employment of many an evening hour; near the fire was the old cornered chair, new-covered with needlework, exactly copied from the faded, worn original: all my mother's chairs found places, too, as stationaries, intermixed with some of a lighter make; the little tea-table, with its egg-shell china, was set before a side window, opening on a small courtyard at the back of the greenhouse appropriated to pet birds. The whole thing spoke of home-occupations and home-happiness, to increase which, every memorial of the past appeared to have been studiously introduced; and it affected me even to tears when I found myself alone there, after walking up from the steamboat a mile and a half or more, unnoticed by any one; for we had not been expected-they had not looked for us till the next boat, not reckoning on our timing our changes of conveyance so accurately. By the

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advice of the governess shortly made her father's influence, had been of considerable use to appearance with the yo part of her happy-him in assisting plans he still pursued as a trustee. looking charge, I occupied the time that must be He lived upon the allowance he received as manapassed before the return home of my nephew and ger, grudging no outlay on the estate that would niece with their elder children, in taking a review afterwards pay, yet restricting even that to a cerof the pretty cottage into which the old house had tain annual sum, while faithfully, year after year, been metamorphosed. Taste and comfort were relieving the property of its heavy encumbrances. happily blended throughout all the arrangements, He had no factor, managing all his own affairs united with the most economical simplicity. Noth- himself. He had two working grieves and a foring my good Aunt Nelly had left was missing, ester, who received their daily orders, and had though there were many additions suited to modern their labors daily inspected; and he had a bookrefinement. The old dining-room had been short-keeper, chosen, like his other assistants, not for ened, to give my nephew not a study, but an his kindred or his destitution, but for his efficiency office; for it was plain that business was in earn-in his particular department. His farms were est pursued here. The back " jamb" had been models; and he had many-for here it was that extended indefinitely as part of a range of farm- the young laird had offended. The good of the offices, evidently superintended by a lady's eye. property was his aim so exclusively, that he never The entrance-hall alone looked feudal; for in it permitted private feelings to interfere with what he were neatly arranged upon the walls my father's thought essential to it. He said that where he had swords, the captain's pistols, and some old battle-found it possible, he had left all the old people in axes, leathern shields, old claymores, and such- their old places; but that the change of manners had like antiquities, intermixed with stags' horns and necessitated many removals. He required no band stuffed otters, which my nephew had fallen upon in of idlers round him; therefore some were thrown the garrets when remodelling his residence. I was out of bread, whose former dependent existence particularly touched with this careful preservation had quite unfitted them for regular work. A few of every object connected with the olden time; for he had quite reclaimed; some partly; some were even the flower-case and the filigree box of my not to be reclaimed, and they had either hung on poor old French governess remained in their own at home, living on more industrious relations, or place, though the drawing-room did duty now as they had enlisted or emigrated, often assisted by the children's study. Where the Grecian and himself, as he owed them help, and was willing to Egyptian curiosities had taken refuge, I know give it. He had had most trouble with his class not probably in the bedrooms of the castle; for of small tenants-honest, respectable men, living no remains of them were to be seen in the cot-poorly enough on the few acres their ancestors for tage, and the millionaire had entirely refurnished centuries back had tilled, much in the same style, his reception-rooms in what he called the Highland too, with their own slovenly system of managestyle-all tartan, dirks, broadswords, and bog oak.ment; for they were proud, idle, poor, and dogI was warmly welcomed by my nephew and gedly opposed to any innovations on the habits of niece; made of the family at once; consulted, their forefathers. These continued to live in the and employed, and appealed to as another of them-smoky turf-huts, and to lie in the airless box-beds: selves; where all big and little, master and servant, they called trees big weeds, and thought flowers parent and child, seemed to have but one common an encumbrance; and the better crops, and the ininterest. We were early up, early to bed, busy all day; and we enjoyed our short evening as only those can enjoy the hours of relaxation who have earned them by daily duties well performed. We did not live alone. Several of the nearer landed proprietors, whose pursuits were beginning to assimilate in some degree with my nephew's, with the addition, occasionally of the family retainers, formed an agreeable society, amongst whom no formalities existed, and who seemed to enjoy the easy intercourse prevailing in their unceremonious visits to one another all the more, that display was altogether unthought of as a mode of entertainment. Higher sources of enjoyment have opened upon the rising generation than were ever dreamt of by their ancestors. Conversing with my nephew on his wonderfully altered habits, he told me that he dated the change from the time that a sense of duty dawned upon him. He had wakened from the follies of a frivolous existence to see the inheritance of his family passing from them; the He was opposed to the whole system of jobbing. people, whose interests had been delegated to his He said it had hitherto been the ruin of the councare, suffering from his desertion. His pride of try, as we might see in our own family, and in birth, first humbled, was then aroused, and the that of my poor Aunt Grace, the last of whose keen desire to redeem his station took entire pos- descendants, the boy she brought over the lake to session of his very energetic mind. Encouraged by see me on my former visit to the north, having just the forester, stimulated and assisted by the cap-started for Australia, after parcelling out what was tain's widow, he first fitted himself for the serious once a fine property amongst a whole bevy of task he had undertaken; and then beginning by small purchasers. He would put none into situamanaging for others' he proved himself to have tions they could not honestly fill; he would help become the best manager for all. His character the unfortunate to the best of his ability; but he had won him his wife. Her little fortune, and her would leave no land with Black Donald's son, or

creasing comforts of their more docile neighbors, all so many preparations for expediting the approach of the day of judgment. With such thorough men of the old school, it had been extremely difficult to deal. It was these principally who had emigrated to the new world rather than conform to the times in their old places; and some of them, despite their obstinacy, I could not but regret; for from amongst them, when thrown by different accidents into the current of the world, had sprung men who left these lowly roofs to rise, by their own exertions, to the highest honors of the state. But my nephew was not of an age or a temperament to believe there would ever be any want of force to fill the vacancies: to him these sturdy fathers of the great were so many obstinate old men, who were predetermined never to try to extract its full value from the soil; and therefore, in his eyes only encumbering it, he joyfully seized every opportunity of assisting in their removal.

any other body's son, who would not or could not with any, even of those drones whom he would improve it; nor should old Bell's grandson mis- banish from the hive. He was forgiven much, on manage a saw-mill, had the old woman been account of his position-acting, as they insisted, foster-sister to a score of lairds. The factor, our for my brother; redeeming his father's property cousin's son, need not have bristled up at the ill at his own risk-and they excused his stern utiliusage he met with in being passed over for a tarianism, on account of the several disadvantages stranger. He required no factor: the stranger he had labored under. A foreign mother, a bookkeeper did what the cousin could not do- foreign nurse, latterly a foreign education, they work; to which he had been bred, and for which could not expect his heart to be all Highland. he was well fitted. With these sentiments all in The wiser among them were beginning, too, to be active operation, the glen had indeed made strides. quite sensible of the substantial benefits his rule Three or four large farms, managed by my had brought with it; money, with all the comforts nephew's advice, were in the hands of young it can buy, being no longer scarce with the indusscions of some of the old stocks; the rest he super- tricus. They had regular pay, good houses, shops intended himself, and cultivated to the utmost-in the village at hand, a market at their door for large, level, well-fenced, thorough-drained fields, their produce, help in sickness, a good minister, bearing crops that were a marvel in the Highlands. and a good school. It was in these latter departStill I, like the old useless retainers, felt some ments that my nephew's wife most interested regret. A wise writer has remarked, that the ac- herself. tual living present has little interest for the bulk of mankind; that the young are looking hopefully forward to the unknown future; while the elderly return in thought to the fondly-cherished past, where the melancholy which forms the tenderest part of memory mingles with all recollections. It must have been this natural inclination of the mind which made me, in thinking of my native glen, pass over its present flourishing condition, and revert to it as I knew it in my youth, during the summer I spent among its beauties when my brother was the laird. The people were then just beginning to arouse from the sleep of ages; new ideas and new wants were just dawning upon the rising race, while the old feelings, and habits, and prejudices, were still the creed of their fathers. It was this that made them so interesting, so unlike the world we left when we came to visit them in the recesses of their mountains; and this was wearing gradually away before the advance of more useful business habits. I could never reconcile myself either to the smoke, and the fizzing, and the racket of the steamboat rushing over our once secluded lake, or to the bustle of the village on its shore. I missed too, through the glen, all the pretty crofts, stolen, as it were, from the birchwoods: they were all gone, the timber of their hanging banks cut and stacked for sale, the heights and hollows levelled, and all the little wild paths through this once graceful wooding, leading from one little sheltered farm to another, existed now only in the memory of such as I, who had loved to linger the long summer hours among scenes so quietly beautiful.

My niece was scarcely handsome, being fair and slight, and wanting height; yet she grew on me as beautiful, from her sweet, cheerful temper, her goodness, her activity, and her cleverness; all these resources of her mind, too, called forth solely by her love of home. It was to enliven her home that he produced her accomplishments, to improve her home that she exerted her various talents; regulating her household so quietly, pursuing her various employments so steadily, associating her elder children with all her works. She was really a help-meet for her husband, beloved throughout his whole estate, the support and the solace of all around her. No "lady" had ever yet so truly possessed the affections of the people. She was of ancient Highland blood too, and understood their ways, and shared most of their feelings. The young laird owed more of the respect he met with than he was at all aware of to the " gentle Lady Anne." The employment which, next to her home duties, appeared the most particularly to interest her, was her charge of the newly-founded schools, where she taught daily, not as in the old times of birch rods and Latin grammar, but according to the improving views of the age upon this most important subject. Then she had a school of industry upon a plan of her own, where all of any age got work, if they wished for it, with a small magazine where their labors were sold. A dispensary was under the care of an hospital assistant, whose practice was directed by the weekly visit of the doctor from the neighboring town, and who received a small salary from the laird to compensate for the low price of his advice and mediIn the forest too, we no longer came upon the cines. A soup-kitchen and a linen store belonged solitary woodman felling and barking his tree, or to the institution, carefully superintended by my on a half-ruined saw-mill with its leaking water-active niece. And all this was done so easily, so course, offering itself to the pencil with all its pic- cheaply, time being much more abundantly beturesque infirmities-the sawyer lazily reading, stowed than money. while the tardy log moved on. All this had vanished. A small part of the forest was cut down in rotation yearly, immediately enclosed, and left to nature to replenish. One band of active workmen felled, another barked, another stacked; all roots were raised; horses for the purpose carried the logs to the only mill, an immense building, with a large artificial supply of water, and a yard attached, where the wood was sorted. The thorough air of business interested me here in spite of myself: the regularity astonished me; as did the amount of work done, by which no one, however, seemed oppressed-method making all easy, even to Highlanders. With his workmen my nephew was a favorite, nor can I say that he was out of favor

Such is the glen as my nephew has made itchanged by the progress of years, aided by the energies of one powerful mind. He has taught his people to help themselves; he has altered their blind submission into a reasonable attachment; and though, from circumstances as much as from character, he may have been a little rigid in the straight course, the end was certain, and worth achieving at any price. Though the poetry of the connexion between the laird and the vassal has undoubtedly suffered by the tie to the race being broken, yet affection for the man, always given when deserved, may be a higher and a surer bond between them. With such thorough business habits, it will not be supposed that he much en

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