many a weary day before he could determine whether she cared one straw for him or not.

Her father saw and blessed their mutual attachment. They were wedded; and Jonson felt himself the happiest of men.

Good fortune now flowed on Jonson. His father-in-law was scarce gathered in extreme old age to his final rest, when news arrived from Britain, that another king had mounted the throne, that Jacobitism had now ceased to be a persecuted creed, that it would be safe for Jonson, if he chose it, to return. The estate of his ancestors, moreover, was at that very time exposed to sale. What inducements! - Ilis fair Creole had lost with her last parent the only hold that bound her firmly to Jamaica: they sold their property, and embarked for Europe. Knockhill was purchased for them, and they reached it in safety. What a hubbub was there at the brave Laird's home-come! What bonfires burnt! What floods of ale and stingo! What mirth and glee and universal jubilee! He had left it poor and broken and sick at heart, and going down to death; he returned rich, powerful, happy, and at his side "the fairest of the fair." The rude peasants blessed his lovely bride, she herself was moved with their affection. Jonson felt himself at last within the port: he collected all the scattered elements of enjoyment which fortune had spread around him, and found that they sufficed. He was tired of wandering, glad of rest; he built a stately mansion which still adorns the place; he planted and improved; he talked and speculated, loved and was beloved again. The squires around him coveted his company more than he did theirs. The trusty Cruthers, who had stood by him in the hour of peril and distress, was the first to bail him in the season of

THE OUTSKIRTS OF LIFE.

the

prosperity. Many a long night did they two drive away, in talking of old times, of moving accidents, of wild adventures, feuds, and hairbreadth 'scapes. In the fervour of his recollections, Jonson would fall upon his knees before lady he loved best, and swear that she was dearer to him still than life, or aught contained in it; that she had found him a homeless wanderer-had made him all he was: if he ever censed to serve her and cherish her in his heart of hearts, he should be the veriest dog upon the surface of the earth. She would sinile at this, and ask him not to ruffle the carpet, not to soil his knees. Cruthers owned that it

made his eyes water.

all

Here, however, I must end. Do you ask what followed farther? Where these people now are? Alas! they are dend: this scene of blessedness and pence, and truth of heart is passed away; it was beautiful, but, like a palace of clouds in the summer sky, the north wind has scattered it asunder, and driven it into emptiness and air. noble Margaret died first; Jonson shortly followed

The

her,

broken down with years and sorrow for his loss. Cruthers shed a tear over his coffin as he lowered it into a native grave. Cruthers, too, is dead; he sank like a shock of corn fully ripe'; a specimen of the "olden worth," of fearless candour and sturdy, bold integrity to his latest day. Moss grown stones lie above these friends, and scarcely tell tie silent bed of rest; the pageant of their history is vanished passer-by who lie below. They sleep there, in their ever like the baseless fabric of a dream. The scene which they once peopled and adorned, is now peopled by others. Has it gained by the change? I sigh when I look at the represen. tative of Cruthers, his grandson, a sot whom he despised.

Jonson never had a grandchild-his father's fields have passed into the hands of land-jobbers and paltry people who knew not Joseph. I look on the woods he planted, and the houses which he built, and muse upon the vast and dreary vortex of this world's mutability. It is weak to do

PETER NIMMO.

As upwards of two thousand men, or boys who at length become men, aunually attend the University of Edinburgh,

three

it follows, taking the average of their attendance at years, that within the last quarter of a century, Mr.—or,

have

as he is now entitled Sir Peter-Nimmo, must established some personal acquaintance with from sixteen to seventeen thousand British and Foreign individuals. During such length of time has Sir Peter studied, with assiduity, in that learned Establishment; and formed, indeed, the most remarkable object there. Allowing, farther, that each eye-witness of a wonder communicates orally his experience of the same only one hundred times over, which for most ready speakers is a very small allowance, we shall find that Sir Peter's fame has a quite amazing diffusion; that already in more than a million and a half of partially cultivated heads some picture of him must be reposited. On such portion of its readers can any Universal Periodical, in treating of Sir Peter, hope to confer an altogether peculiar satisfaction.

But independently of peculiar and personal considera tions, the world itself is interested in these matters:

Fraser's Magazine, February 1831 (No. xiii., vol. iii., pp. 12-16)

singular men are at all times worthy of being described and sung; nay, strictly considered, there is nothing else worthy. If common men are, as it were, the common letter-press in the Book of Life, and impart little to us save the narrative of Accidents and Offences, Prices Current, and Lists of Births, Marriages, and Denths; if at most Kings and Prime Ministers are the Capital Letters or Illuminated Characters there,-then are your intrinsically singular men like so many Hieroglyphs and prophetic Runes, that from time to time diversify the pages, and attract every eye. To the idle, indeed, they are objects of idle wonder, and speculation almost childish; but to the thinking, to him that has a seeing eye, and not merely a gazing one, these Hieroglyphs are a true Sacred Writing: the Napoleon, the Nimmo, are mystic windows through which we glance deeper into the hidden ways of Nature, and discern under a clearer figure the workings of that inscrutable Spirit of the Time, and Spirit of Time itself, who is by some thought to be the Devil.

For these reasons, it strikes us, our respectable Contributor could, in that his state of embarrassment and detention, have done nothing fitter than reverting to his native city, and singing, according to ability, the chief charactor therein, the character, namely, of Sir Peter Nimmo. For whether Nimmo, as himself asserts, bo descended direct from Numa Pompilius or not, his procreation is undoubtedly derived from the earliest periods of History: farther, to such as understand what is meant by Devotedness to Science, the spectacle of a man studying for five and twonty years without the smallest faltering, and without the smallest fruit, cannot but have