of his Highland entertainment, will be interesting to our readers :

My good Lord of Mar having put me into that shape, I rode with him from his house, where I saw the ruins of an old castle, called the Castle of Kindroghit. It was built by King Malcolm Canmore (for a hunting-house), who reigned in Scotland when Edward the Confessor, Harold, and Norman William reigned in England: I speak of it because it was the last house that I saw in those parts; for I was the space of twelve days after, before I saw either house, corn-field, or habitation of any creature, but deer, wild horses, wolves, and such like creatures, which made me doubt that I should never have seen a house again.

Thus the first day we travelled eight miles, where there were small cottages, built on purpose to lodge in, which they called "lanquhards." I thank my good Lord Erskine, he commanded that I should always be lodged in his lodging, the kitchen being always on the side of a bank, many kettles and pots boiling, and many spits turning and winding, with great variety of cheer, as venison baked, sodden, roast, and stewed beef, mutton, goats, kid, hares, fresh salmon, pigeons, hens, capons, chickens, partridges, moorcoots, heathcocks, caperkellies, and termagants (ptarmigan); good ale, sack, white, and claret, tent (or allegant), with most potent aqua-vitæ.

All these, and more than these, we had continually in superfluous abundance, caught by falconers, fowlers, fishers, and brought by my lord's tenants and purveyors to victual our camp, which consisted of fourteen or fifteen men and horses. The manner of the hunting is this: five or six hundred men do rise early in the morning, and they do disperse themselves divers ways; and seven, eight, or ten miles compass, they do bring or chase in the deer i many herds (two, three, or four hundred in a herd) to such or such a place as the noblemen shall appoint them; then when the day is come, the lords and gentlemen of their companies do ride or go to the said places, sometimes wading up to the middle through bourns and rivers: and then they being come to the place, do lie down on the ground till those foresaid scouts, which are called the Tinkhell, do bring down the deer. But as the proverb says of a bad cook, so these Tinkhell men do lick their own fingers; for besides their bows and arrows, which they carry with

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them, we can hear now and then a harquebuss or a musket go off, which they do seldom discharge in vain. Then after we had stayed there three hours or thereabouts, we might perceive the deer appear on the hills round about us (their heads making a show like a wood), which being followed close by the Tinkhell, are chased down into the valley where we lay; then all the valley on each side being waylaid with a hundred couple of strong Irish greyhounds, they are let loose as occasion serves upon the herd of deer, that with dogs, guns, arrows, dirks, and daggers, in the space of two hours, fourscore fat deer were slain, which after are disposed of some one way, and some another, twenty and thirty miles, and more than enough left for us to make merry withal at our rendezvous.

The sport was so exciting to the pilgrim that he produced two sonnets on the occasion, one of which, at least, does no discredit to his versifying abilities. But the best part of the sport for Taylor, with all his poetical sympathy, is clearly the eating and drinking which accompanies it— "such baking, boiling, roasting, and stewing." The scene is altogether most exhilarating; and "after supper a fire of fir-wood as high as an indifferent May-pole." But his welcome, when the hunting was over, in fair and stately houses, was as congenial as the banquets of the field. At Balle Castle there were threescore dishes at one board; with a train of footmen and horses daily feeding that must have exhausted the land like an invading army. His whole stay in the Highlands was five-and-thirty days; and at length he returned to Edinburgh, where, he says, "I stayed eight days to recover myself of falls and bruises which I received in my travel in the Highland mountainous hunting." At Leith he meets his "long approved and assured good friend Master Benjamin Jonson;" and it is delightful to have it recorded that the fine generous old dramatist gave his humble brother "a piece of gold of twoand-twenty shillings to drink his health in England." The pilgrim took a less wearisome mode in his progress back to London. He was invited by one of his Scotch friends to

ride in his company, and to be provided by him with everything on the road. The waterman was, no doubt, a most amusing fellow, full of quaint and original observation, as his book shows him to be; or he might have fared worse, in spite of the hospitality of that age. We conclude with his general description of the hospitality of Scotland, which is as curious and withal as pleasant a picture of the old times as it has been our fortune to meet with. We do not remember to have seen any reference to the more remarkable passages in the "Pennyless Pilgrimage," by any recent author. Probably Scott was familiar with it; but, if so, we think he would have mentioned the deer-hunt, and the description of old housekeeping.

I am sure that in Scotland, beyond Edinburgh, I have been at houses like castles for building; the master of the house, his beaver his blue bonnet, one that will wear no other shirts but of the flax that grows on his own ground, and of his wife's, daughters', or servants' spinning; that hath his stockings, hose, and jerkin of the wool off his own sheep's backs; that never (by his pride of apparel) caused mercer, draper, silkman, embroiderer, or haberdasher, to break and turn bankrupt; and yet this plain homespun fellow keeps and maintains thirty, forty, fifty servants, or perhaps more, every day relieving three or fourscore poor people at his gate; and besides all this, can give noble entertainment for four or five days together to five or six earls and lords, besides knights, gentlemen, and their followers, if they be three or four hundred men and horse of them, where they shall not only feed, but feast, and not feast, but banquet: this is a man that desires to know nothing so much as his duty to God and his king, whose greatest cares are to practise the works of piety, charity, and hospitality: he never studies the consuming art of fashionless fashions: he never tries his strength to bear four or five hundred acres on his back at once; his legs are always at liberty, not being fettered with golden garters and manacled with artificial roses, whose weight (sometime) is the reliques of some decayed lordship. Many of these worthy housekeepers there are in Scotland, amongst some of them I was entertained; from whence I did truly gather these aforesaid observations.

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The return of the Water Poet to London is characteristic of the man and of the age. The reluctance with which he goes back to his business exhibits much of the ease of mind which belongs not to our days of inveterate competition. He slyly entered London, after being absent three months, to a house within Moorgate, where he borrows money; and then returns to his inn at Islington, where he jovially stays two more days, on the last of which his friends come out to meet him, thinking he had just returned from his pilgrimage. "With all love I was entertained with much good cheer; and after supper we had a play of the Life and Death of Guy of Warwick,' played by the Right Honourable the Earl of Derby his men."

CHAPTER XIII.

THE STORY OF NATHANAEL BOWDITCH.

NE of the most extraordinary men of modern times in the pursuit of Mathematical Science was NATHANAEL BOWDITCH, of Salem, Massachusetts, in the United States. He became a truly illustrious man, but his origin was most obscure. His ancestors had been shipmasters for several generations; and when he left the sea his father earned a precarious subsistence, very scanty, by working as a cooper. Like so many great men, he had a truly noble and Christian mother. She directed his steps, she watched him, and put him on the pathway, perhaps, which led to the exhibition of talents so distinguished. When he was a lad at the first master's school he attended, the schoolmaster set him a very difficult sum in arithmetic: the scholar went to his desk, and soon returned with the sum done-and done correctly. The suddenness of his return surprised the pedagogue. He inquired who had done it for him; and on his replying, "Nobody, I did it myself," he gave him a severe chastisement for lying, not believing it possible that he could perform so difficult a task without assistance.

But very few were the days he spent at school, and few the advantages he received from any course of educational discipline. He was transferred to the shop of a ship-chandler, and he there manifested first that strong and irrepressible bent for figures, seized every moment of time he could from the shop and the counter to work out some