tenantry at Clanmarina, by their excellent and exemplary minister, the Rev. Donald McTurk."

Why Dr. McTurk had never yet received the usual testimonial of a watch and appendages, from his " grateful and attached congregation," or a gown and pulpit-bible from the ladies, it were hopeless to conjecture, though in the mind of one modest, meritorious individual, the unaccountable omission became a subject of ceaseless wonder. The worthy minister, in a diary which he kept for no eye but his own, recorded his thoughts on the subject in a manner to touch the hearts and consciences of survivors, when, as a matter of course, it should hereafter be published. In his still more private, solitary cogitations, he thought himself precisely the sort of man who does, in this best of all possible worlds, generally receive a public panegyrical dinner, followed by speeches and plate. Like everybody else in the creation, Dr. McTurk believed his own case to be one of peculiar hardship, in being shamefully under-rated by a misjudging world. "But," thought he, determined to be consoled, true merit never is appreciated in our profession, until we depart, either by death or translation."

Death tested the merits of the old minister and of the old Chief about the same period, for in August 1829 they both drank their last tumbler

of toddy together, and during September following an advertisement appeared in the newspapers, announcing the "Memoirs of Dr. McTurk," in seven volumes crown-octavo, collected from his private diary and confidential letters, with a portrait and autograph. From the account of his preaching it became evident that the greatest of orators might have been improved by hearing him, and the best of men got a lesson from his virtues. It was obvious, in short, that had Dr. McTurk lived for ever, he might have rivalled Blair or discovered the philosopher's stone. Memorandums of his death-bed sayings were taken down on the spot, by an inconsolable cousin, who, being summoned to the spot after an estrangement of thirty years, wrote a heart-rending letter of grief and admiration at the conclusion of the last volume, and who, having thus complied with every direction in the will, then deservedly succeeded to all the doctor's savings, amounting to about 9,000.

Old Sir Allan McAlpine's unexpected death was of no more personal concern to the survivors around than if a hack cab had been suddenly called from the stand where it once occupied a place; but most magnificent were the melancholy festivities which took place at his funeral, while his tenants endeavoured to look as sober and heartbroken as circumstances required. The great old

venerable gate swung open, the leopards rampant which surmounted the pillars, one headless, and the other with his paw broken off, appeared more suitably dismal than the clansmen flocking with excited looks to the long-forsaken castle, and the immeasurable line of gloomy fir-trees groaned in the blast, while bagpipes which had not been inflated for half a century played in doleful strains "The McAlpines' Lament." Lips which had not for years tasted whisky, were now regaled at Cairngorum Castle with brimming bumpers, and there were some old veterans among these these poor, ignorant, neglected, half-starving clansmen at Clanmarina, who followed old Sir Allan's remains to their last home, not only with solemn features, black habiliments and downcast eyes, but also with a feeling of secret self-reproach, that they did not grieve more in earnest for so great a man as "The Chief of McAlpine!

"Good people all, of ev'ry sort,
Lament for Madame Blaize,
Who never wanted a good word
From those who spoke her praise.

"Let us lament in sorrow sore,

For Kent-Street all may say,

That had she lived a twelvemonth more,

She had not died to-day."-Goldsmith.

CHAPTER II.

"The wild-flowers spring amid the grass,

And many a stone appears,

Carved by affection's memory,

Drench'd with affection's tears."-L. E. L.

IN less than a week, Sir Allan, throughout all the wide domains in which he had, during half a century, reigned as master, was no more missed than an old moon, or a dead sparrow. "His name

was never heard!"

Nearly every figure was changed now on the magic-lantern of life at Clanmarina. The eldest son of Lord Eaglescairn, at all times the most unbrotherly of brothers, being on a cruise on board his own yacht, the Aurora, in the Mediterranean, where he cared for nothing, apparently, but which way the wind blew, wrote a few hurried lines to his father one day, announcing that his brother Tom had died of a fever at Corunna; and he understood from good authority that "Mrs. Tom," as he called her, "the Spanish wife," had now retired inconsolable to the convent of St. Bridget, from which his brother's imprudent and

short-lived marriage had been intended benevolently to rescue her.

Not many months after this intimation, the Marquis of Eaglescairn was thunderstruck at receiving a letter from the captain of his son's yacht, announcing that Lord Iona, the heir of his recently-acquired marquisate, had died of malariafever at Rome, after a few days' illness. If Lord Eaglescairn, when thus left sonless, felt or said that he "richly deserved it," his sufferings under the blow were not of long duration. Having overeaten himself, after being exhausted by a long Popish fast, Lord Eaglescairn suffered a fatal stroke of apoplexy next day; and, soon after, two gorgeous hatchments on the family residence, in Grosvenor Square, announced the total extinction of that branch which he represented in the ancient tree of De Bathe. Lord Eaglescairn, in his last moments, had frantically called for his solicitor, and spoken in almost delirious accents of a letter from his son Tom, whom he adjured to write once more,—to tell him all, and not yet to despair of his pardon; but the servants, to whose care he was committed, paid no attention to what they considered the ravings of fever, till at length the scene of mental and bodily suffering closed in death.

Very distant indeed was the cousin who now