"And though, perchance, a smile may gleam
Of casual mirth,

It doth not own whate'er may seem,
An inward birth:

We miss thy small step on the stair;
We miss thee at thine evening prayer;
All day we miss thee, everywhere-

Casa Wappy!

"Yet, 'tis sweet balm to our despair,
Fond, fairest boy,

That heaven is God's, and thou art there
With him in joy.

There past is death and all its woes,
There beauty's stream for ever flows,
And pleasure's day no sunset knows,
Casa Wappy!"

After leaving the grave, which had called up many solemn yet pleasing thoughts, and near which I could have lingered much longer, we wended our way homeward by a different route; and I found that, though no costly monumental memorial marked the resting-place of the poet, he had not been forgotten by his townsmen, who are justly

proud of him. In one of the most conspicuous parts of Musselburgh, and close to the waters of the Esk, a monument has been erected to his memory—a pillar, on which stands a figure of the poet. The following words engraved on it bear testimony not only to the talents which won him a niche in the temple of fame, but also to those sterling virtues which add an undying lustre to the very highest abilities:

"Beloved as a man,

Honoured as a citizen,
Esteemed as a physician,
And celebrated as a poet."

These few short sentences, uttered by the public voice speak volumes for his moral worth and intellectual superiority. But he might have been all that is there recorded, and yet lacked one essential part; we will therefore add— remembered as a conscientious Christian. And is not this the most precious memory of all ?-the only one that can be a true and unfailing source of consolation to the friends of the departed? And though we admire Dr. Moir as an author, it is not to his writings we would desire to turn the reader's attention, but to this bright and beautiful point in his character. Caressed, flattered, and surrounded by all the allurements which his fame as a writer and his cheerful and amiable disposition caused to be held invitingly before him, he yet remained steadfast to the pure faith of the Saviour, and ever preferred the humble path of duty to the more attractive one of ambition and inclination.

There is one very pleasing and truly Christian instance of his sacrifice of self-interest recorded in his memoirs by his attached friend, Mr. Aird. As he rose in eminence in the world of letters, his numerous friends thought that his native town of Musselburgh-where he practised as a physician-was too narrow a circle for one of his abilities, and urged him to remove to Edinburgh, as being a place likely not only to be more congenial to his literary tastes, but also as offering a wider sphere for his professional duties. Dr. Moir declined this friendly advice; and we are told that his reason for so doing was not, as some supposed, a love for the quiet retirement of the country, but the following noble and disinterested motive. “We have strong reasons for supposing," says Blackwood's Magazine, that a higher and

better motive induced him to refrain from abandoning the scene of his early labours, and permanently joining, in the metropolis of Scotland, that social circle which contained so many of his dearest friends. He could not bring himself to forsake his practice in a locality where the poor had a claim on him. During the terrible visitations of cholera, which were unusually and indeed unprecedentedly severe in the parish to which he belonged, Moir was night and day in attendance upon the sufferers. He undertook, with more of the enthusiasm of a youth, a toil and risk which he might well have been excused delegating to other hands; and often has the morning found him watching by the bed of some poor inmate of a cottage, whom the arrow of the pestilence had stricken. That any man with the brilliant prospects that were undoubtedly presented to Moir, and certainly within his reach, should nevertheless have preferred the hard and laborious life of a country practitioner, must appear inexplicable to those who did not know the tenderness of his heart, and the exquisite sympathy of his nature. Of his profession he took a high estimate. He regarded it less as a means of securing a competency for himself, than as an art which he was privileged to practise for the good of his fellow men, and for the alleviation of their sufferings; and numerous are the instances which might be cited, though untold by himself, of sacrifices which he made, and dangers which he incurred, in carrying aid and consolation to those who had no other claim upon him except their common humanity. His, indeed, was a life far more devoted to the service of others than to his own personal aggrandisement—a life whose value can only be appreciated now, when he has been called to receive his reward in that better world, the passport to which he sought so diligently-in youth as in manhood, in happiness as in sorrow-to obtain.'

And though his public duties and pursuits were so multifarious, and perhaps such as few men could have compassed in like manner, we find that amid them all there was a daily private duty never neglected-a privilege ever joyfully remembered that of assembling the members of his domestic circle, and approaching the footstool of the Almighty in family worship. What a striking lesson this is to many who, owing to the mere frivolities of life, can never find time for such an elevating and delightful exer

cise! He also felt that if a day passed over his head in which he had not individually perused the pages of God's book, that it had not been well spent. With him the great and important end of our sojourn here was never forgotten. Had he striven for mere earthly honours, they might have been his in a much higher degree; but he sought a more enduring prize than the fading laurels of this world's fame, the perishing nature of all life's enjoyments being deeply engraven on his soul. In his fine sonnet on "Vicissitude," he gives expression to his sad and somewhat pained feelings, on observing how frequently this is forgotten by the majority, and how little the momentous question of eternity occupies the mind; though death is written on every page of nature, and meets us wherever we turn our eye. The following is the sonnet alluded to:

"All things around us preach of death; yet mirth

Swells the vain heart; darts from the careless eye,
As if we were created ne'er to die,

And had our everlasting home on earth!
All things around us preach of death:-the leaves

Drop from the forest-perish the bright flowers-
Shorten the day's shorn sunlight, hours on hours-
And o'er bleak sterile fields the wild wind grieves.
Yes! all things preach of death-we are born to die :
We are but waves along time's ocean driven;
Life is to us a brief probation given,

To fit us for a dread eternity.

Hear, ye that watch with faith's unslumbering eye!-
Earth is our pilgrimage, our home is heaven!"

But, though feeling with so much solemnity the nothingness of all earth's fleeting and feverish dreams, he was no ascetic; and neither stern nor naturally grave in his temperament, but deeply alive to all pure and innocent emotions of pleasure, he possessed such a keen sense of the ridiculous, as obliged him to guard it with jealous care. His pen dashed off many a brilliant jeu d'esprit, so totally different from his tender and pathetic verses, that his writings might be likened to an April day-sunshine and tears. As a prose writer, we believe he is best known as the author of Mansie Wauch," the inimitable humour of which was relished by high and low, not only in the author's own Caledonia, but in the sister kingdom of England, and also across the broad waters of the Atlantic. Let no one, therefore, say that religion has the effect of destroying innocent

cheerfulness in the disposition: it is only levity that it seeks to curb, with a loving and gentle hand, by giving what is far better. During the life-trials of this gifted and pious poet, it was a comforter such as words are weak to express -healing each wound with heaven's own balm, and pointing o'er the drear ocean of time to the radiant shore of a blessed eternity. I believe the death of the beloved children before mentioned was the first dark cloud on the path of Dr. Moir. They both died within a year. To one after another did the heavenly visitant come, and their little voices-the sweetest sound on earth to a parent's earwere as a remembered dream, and no longer heard in their former home, where their smiles had been sunshine, and their tiny footsteps music's own tone. Very bitter was the bereavement to the keenly sensitive feelings of the poetfather's heart; but it was a grief which had the blessed mitigation of divine light, shining with no feeble lustre through its darkness; he sorrowed, but not as those who have no hope; and we find him saying, in reference to the loss:

"Yet while thinking, oh! our lost ones,
Of how dear ye were to us,

Why should dreams of doubt and darkness
Haunt our troubled spirits thus?

"Why across the cold dim churchyard
Flit our visions of despair?

Seated on the tomb, faith's angel
Says, 'Ye are not there!'

"Where then are ye? With the Saviour

Blest, for ever blest, are ye,

'Mid the sinless, little children

Who have heard his 'Come to me!'"

Oh how sweetly soothing to the parent's heart must be the hopes embodied in these lines!—the thought inexpressibly blessed, that his children are safe beyond the reach of sin-that dark destroyer of all that is holy, peaceful, and beautiful on earth. Yes, the face of death, on whose calm brow the halo of hope is resting, is the truest comforter to the bereaved; for then we can think of them as not lost, but only gone before.

Dr. Moir himself was not to be very long a sojourner in this world of mingled light and darkness. When little past