to leap over. I have a confused recollection of tearing down the apron, and springing beyond the carriage-wheel to the ground. A-—— did the same, and when we looked round an instant afterwards, the carriage and horse had entirely vanished. I felt for a moment as if the roof of my head had flown off! Having at length summoned courage to take a glance over the parapet, and ascertain the worst, I saw our vehicle lying upside down on a bank beneath, and our traitor of a horse struggling in the shafts, while a crowd of women, who had assembled so rapidly, they seemed to have grown out of the ground, were using their utmost efforts to assist A in righting the whole equipage. Meantime I sat down to recover from the shock of my impromptu descent, while a venerable grey haired man, like a missionary, came up to me, making many suitable reflections. No one can imagine how much real kindness and sympathy there are in the world till they be needed, and with my senses perfectly scattered by the adventure, it seemed quite providential that a person so able and willing to direct my thoughts in an appropriate channel, should be on the spot.

Before we had time to fix on any plan for proceeding towards Dornoch, a gig drove up, the proprietor of which stopped on observing the disabled state of our equipage, and obligingly offered us the use of his own. Gigs were by no means in fashion with me now, but our new friend was so persevering in his offers of ser

vice, that it ended in A walking to the ferry, two miles off, and the stranger's driving me there, though I could not but commiserate my own case, in being obliged to trust to any four-legged animal again.

Some days afterwards A― transmitted an account of our accident to the Provost of Tain, suggesting that the great stone should be tried by a Court Martial and broke, as the lives of Her Majesty's lieges were endangered by so formidable looking an object near the highroad; but an answer arrived by return of post, stating, that the said stone was a great geological curiosity, a special favourite with scientific men, and that sixty years ago our correspondent's own mother had nearly been killed by her horse taking fright on the same spot, but he could then obtain no redress. A suggestion was made, at that time, to cut up this wonderful phenomenon into mile-stones, but the town of Tain rose in arms against so flagrant a proposition; and, in short, every traveller's bones may be broken rather than this illustrious rock,-but it would be desirable that the horses in that neighbourhood should learn better notions of geology.

If you are fond of our Scotch dish, "hotchpotch,” my letters may often bring it to your mind, and the phrenological world would see more "casualty" than" concentrativeness" in these new "Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life." At book-clubs now, to judge from the works we see most in de

mand, nothing appears to excite so much general interest at present, as the life and adventures of highwaymen, the more daring and atrocious the better; but I hope you will be satisfied, in this long web of a letter, to read a few highway incidents, though not seasoned, unluckily, with anything in the robbery and murder line. I thought, when paper currency ceased in England, and we were all obliged to carry gold on our travels, that the race of Turpins and Jack Sheppards would have revived; and now that the days of knight-errantry are restored in the higher circles, perhaps the lower orders, in reading the spirited descriptions of times gone by, may be fired with emulation to imitate those heroes of the road, who are so eloquently held up as objects of interest and admiration to all classes. Such works seem on the whole, mere lessons of depravity, especially as the pill is gilded with a great deal of wit and humour.

Now that we are about to visit some friends in the neighbourhood, I must draw my lucubrations to a close, that the letter-carrier may "stand and deliver" at your door in due time. Perhaps you may give a hit at my loquaciousness, as Sydney Smith did once to a certain young lady, who had become very fluent on the subject of an author's drollery and humour, remarking, that his book was filled with flashes of wit, when he looked sternly at his talkative companion, saying, "I sometimes prefer flashes of silence."

THE END.