wi' the extra touch of mortal lips, has made ye duller than ye're wont. What's to hinder the Kelpie, when he gets the bridegroom on his back, to take the bridle atween his teeth, and seek his ain palace in the Kelpie Loch, and let the knight find his way back how he can ?'

"The Brownie laughed louder than ever. 'I called ye a witty quean,' he said; and now I may ca' ye a wicked one. But there's nae great wickedness, after a'; for were he not drowned by the Kelpie, he should be strangled by me, and a' for stabbing his friend i' the dark, and for daring to bed with my bonnie young mistress. Now, away with you. I have spoken mair to a mere mortal to-night than I have spoken before since Eve sinned; and a penance must be endured for the same.' May ran up to her chamber, which opened on the Kelpie Loch; and looking from the casement, saw the Brownie, at three strides from the tower, reach the lake; heard him give an eldritch squeal, which made all the wild teals start from the reeds, and brought up the Kelpie in the shape of an aged man, with a mane of hair down his back, and eyes which shone like-shooting stars. Down they sat on the gowany bank, and lang and, nae doubt, satisfactory, was their conference.

"Weel, ye see, the bridal-day dawned at last; the sun raise resolved to shine its best; the bridegroom came glittering in silk and scarlet, and fine twined linen, and needle-work of Brussels, if not of Egypt. The very hilltops were crowded with anxious faces, for a sough had run round the land that something queer might be expected. Ane thought that the bride wad take the gee; and anither thought that

young Locherben wad go and cut the bridegroom's thrapple, and go to bed in his stead. But deil a ane kenned rightly what was to happen but May, the bower-woman, and the page that rode by her side. The bridegroom and his party had but five miles to ride, yet all their horses looked as if their way had been through water save the horse of the knight himself: it had not a turned hair on its skin; and for beauty and grace of motion was the wonder of all who looked at it. I shall give it to my fair bride,' said the bridegroom; 'as soon as she is mine, it shall be hers.' The fair maid had not yet opened her lips; she looked a little pale, as young brides do: nor did she once turn her eyes on her bower-woman, who rode at her ease, and looked resolute and composed. The way to Crossmichael Kirk lay along the side of the Kelpie Lake. When they came to this very stane on which I sit, a horse, or something in its shape, rose from among the reeds and nichered; and the page-and wha was it but Brownie-waved his arm, and uttered a scream sae wild and thrilling, that it would have shaken the very nuts from their husks had the nuts then been ripe. As it was it startled the whole band; and Sir John's horse, uttering a neigh in chorus with that elfin cry, dashed at once into the Kelpie Lake at the deepest place and disappeared. Ance gane, and aye gane-neither Sir John nor his horse were ever seen mair. The bridal train could scarcely sit in their saddles with astonishment. The bower-maiden, only whispered to the page, Deftly done, Brownie - ye shall have honey and cream, and maybe a kiss too for that.' So that is the tale of wicked Sir John and the Fair Maiden of Monkland.'"

they kept no such thing, I was fain to accept a glass of sherry, a couple of Banbury cakes (which are something like our Passimaquoddy bannocks), and a large lump of pork-pie.

So provided, I jumped lightly into my seat again, taking a glance at the talkative member of parliament in the next carriage (a tall, pale, hooknosed man, in a fur cap, with a very pompous gold band to it), and in a few moments we were in motion again; and I sunk back to think of America,—and to sleep.

I could scarcely have been asleep two hours when the whirring machine suddenly stopped, and the guards, as at Derby, yelled into the ears of all persons that here we stopped forty minutes for refreshment. 'Twas an early hour in the morning, but, sooth to say, a good meal never comes too soon; and entering one of the handsomest refreshment-rooms I ever saw, I discussed a grilled chicken and ham, with a bottle of Guinness's porter. The charge for the whole repast was seventy cents. It would have been one dollar twenty cents at Astor House, or at the hotel of your excellent father, the dear major.

By this I thought it was full time to go to sleep; and continued unremittingly in that occupation until we arrived at York, about seven o'clock, when an excellent breakfast of ham, hot rolls, eggs, tea and coffee, &c. awaited us after the fatigues of the night.

Fancy, then, that on a certain day in June we left York city, bound to some other city in some other county in England; but what the name of that county is no power on earth, no coaxing, and no tortures, shall induce us to tell. I have been absent eighteen days, and during those eighteen days I must have been somewhere -that's clear. Here, therefore, let curiosity pause, or content itself with partial satisfaction.

Let us call the principal town Stuffington. It stands by a little river, over which runs a fair bridge. It has an ancient church, with a soaring pointed spire; and a modern church, built so as to look far more ancient than the old one for the former is of the style of architecture of Henry VII.'s time, whereas the

latter is after the most rigid fashion of the Normans. In Stuffington is a market-place, where every Monday (I don't care to own to Monday; and the reader may go look at the list of market-days, if he likes, hoping to light upon the real name of the town in question). It has, I say, a marketplace, surrounded by great old brick houses, with small windows, such as were built in Queen Anne's reign, or haply a little earlier. Among these houses may be mentioned the Sun Inn, the Hat-and-Feather Inn, the Fleece, the Talbot, the Packhorse, the King's Arms Hotel and Posting House; and over the bridge, a little old-fashioned alehouse called the Granby, where lives (the landlady's daughter) one of the handsomest girls to be seen of a summer's day. To be sure, a summer's day in the north is a queer, satirical kind of summer's day. In my experience of eighteen days, we have had 17% of hard rain, 16 of severe cold, and such as may be called great-coat days. About the 8th of July the gardener produced his first dish of pease, and the strawberries are yet in blossom. Stuffington market is frequented by farmers and their cattle; great stalwart, drab-coloured Argyll oxen, long horns and short: numberless black-faced sheep, that are very good and crisp in the eating; and little queer black cattle, which we Cockneys seldom see-not much bigger than Newfoundland dogs; having the drollest little calves imaginable. You see that you are advancing towards Scotland. The little printshops in the town have cheap coloured pictures for the farmers, representing Jockie and Jeanie, Jamie and Mysie. Honest Robert Burns's noble face hangs over an alehouse door. The horsemen ride into town with black-and-white plaids strapped across their shoulders. And the stranger from the south will not fail to be struck by the great prevalence of auburn heads among the lasses that he sees. Every man of any taste will like these auburn locks, as I fancy

Sweet auburn, loveliest ringlets of the plain,"

but rendering the pretty still prettier, I think. The writer of this, for his humble part, does not object

to downright carrots. Look at the complexions of the women bearing such head - pieces!-the rich, clear, laughing red and white!-they are generally healthy, full-limbed, redlipped, white-teethed, and goodhumoured. A truce, however, to such observations. In the middle of the market lie the shambles, the depôts of coarse country cloths and potteries. Here is the horse-market. By it you may behold some fellows perched on a wagon, and singing hymns. It is the election that has probably brought these worthy people from their meeting-houses, to chant and discourse sub Jove. And wherefore not? Heaven knows, the independent electors have need of preaching and warning, and these itinerant sermonisers have reason enough for their talk. The town swarms with Bethels, Bethesdas, NewJerusalems, meeting-houses, and Dissenters' chapels of all sorts. In the suburbs are long rows of neat houses, with spotless shining windows and doorplates, and trim grass plats. In or behind these you see placid Quakers calmly disporting. Yonder are the tall chimneys of the factories. And every now and then you hear the screams of the railway steamengines, announcing the arrival of their loads of passengers or coal.

There is a great bustle of posthorses and coaches; more pass in an hour than you would see in a French town in a week. I saw a huge van, or omnibus, dash into the market,a dismal-looking machine, that I thought was certainly a prisoner's van. But the landlord of the Sun, of whom I asked the question, turned away, laughing, with a contempt he could not disguise. The machine contained not prisoners, but racehorses; and a pretty figure does a Cockney cut in the north who does not know what such a vehicle means.

I have forgotten to mention the great edifice in the midst of the town of Stuffington-the town-hall. Let it suffice to say, that the mob broke every one of the windows on the day of the nomination.

All the phenomena carefully noted here were not, as you may fancy, made clear to me in a single day's observation. No, no. On the first day, as I entered, it was Friday, and the rain was coming down in tor

Yes,

rents. I ventured to say to a farmer in the coach (thinking there was no doubt of the fact), that it was exceedingly bad weather. The farmer looked at me with scornful wonder. "Bad weather!" says he; "it's the finest weather I ever knew in my life." Nor was this opinion of his at all intelligible to me, until afterwards, when I learned that the land had suffered greatly from drought, and had much need of all the moisture possible. Is there not a moral in this rebuke of the farmer? surely, the moral, that a gentleman should not talk of that which he does not understand. Be warned therefore, ye Cockneys. Ever since I was rebuked, I have, for my part, never ventured to give an opinion upon the weather in the country, without in the first place diligently inquiring what sort of weather it really was. This you can ask cursorily, and in any way, of the servant who brings the hot water of a morning; and if it be raining cats and dogs, as is almost sure to be the case, the man generally replies, "Well, it's a fine soft morning."

Nothing could exceed the "softness" of the day on which we reached Stuffington. It was not a marketday; the place was quite clear, except that in the middle was the band of one of the candidates, their shadows glancing to an immeasurable length along the glistering stones. They were playing windy martial tunes, headed by a fellow waving a grand white wand, and keeping time. Around the band were a few blackguard boys-a very few, and very dirty. Beyond this, not a soul in the street. Opposite, at the Fleece Inn, was a pink balcony, with

MR. BOUNCER'S COMMITTEE-ROOM written in pink letters overhead. You looked to the right, and saw Lord George Crawley's committeeroom, with a green and yellow balcony. Lord George is the second son of the Earl of Stuffington, whose noble ancestral palace, Guttlebury Castle, stands amidst thousands of acres of park, not far from Stuffing

ton town.

Being myself engaged to visit Mr. Britton (whose mansion, Britton Park, is about fifteen miles from Stuffington), modesty forbids me to say more than that he was the green

Upon which Mr. Smith replied, “Sir, I am green- I am green and white to the back-bone." I did not know it then; but this was the third silly remark on which I had ventured in the course of a couple of hours; an ignoramus, to ask whether Mr. Smith was a Whig or Tory; whether he believed in the opinions of Lord John Russell, or acquiesced in the doctrines of Sir Robert Peel? Smith was green and white, as other men in the county were pink; and I do believe the candidates might have changed their opinions, and a vast body of the electors would have been pink and green and white still.

In the course, then, of the observations regarding this election that I shall have the honour to make, we will not say a word about Liberal or Conservative, but confine ourselves to the simple consideration of green and white, and pink.

Mr. Smith having brought in person my purchases to the inn, was good enough to sit down with me full a couple of hours, and gave me a pretty notion of the doings of the pink party indeed. Such doings! such a pack of rogues! such bribery and intimidators as never was heard of! And the most audacious part of these Pinks is, that they declare the Greens to be guilty of the grossest corruption and the most barefaced oppression. I had the charges from a pink in a subsequent conversation, when fruitlessly employed in endeavouring to extract from him a promise of half his vote for the Green and White.

We occupied the time in this conversation, and in the drinking of sherry and water, for a couple of hours, at least, during which I vainly hoped that there would be a cessation of the "soft" weather; but in vain. We could get no hard weather at all; and, finally, I was compelled to

take leave of Smith. We shook each other cordially by the hand, and I was made to ascend a gig, in which I was driven to Britton Park.

Even between the flaps of a macintosh collar, with an umbrella over head, a pouring shower over that again, and a mist all around, it was easy to see the country was beautiful. Ah! blessed are ye Cockneys who live pent up in brick,-for the glimpses of rural nature that ye get in your rare holydays are a hundred times brighter to you than to those who are staring the green fields in the face from year's end to year's end. How often have we read Thomas Moore's poem of Paradise and the Peri!

"One morn a peri at the gate

Of Eden sate disconsolate," &c. &c. Well, I have often fancied that to that poor peri, sitting wistfully at the porter's lodge, and occasionally through the bars, getting glimpses of the scene within, the garden must have appeared a great deal more tempting and beautiful than it was to the old habitués within. I can fancy, then, I say, somewhat blasés for all the brilliancy of the fountains and grass-plats, the fruittrees, and the flowers; at least, for my part, whenever I have left New York for a month's ramble, I have found myself somewhat weary at the end of the thirty days,-the fields not quite so green as they were for the first week, the forests so deliciously solemn, the distance so celestially blue. And I have not been sorry to see Old Broadway again, and eat an oyster at Niblo's, and have a look at Celeste at the Park.

No more of this, however. Suppose yourself at the old gates of Britton Park; a prim old lady swings them open, makes you a low courtesy, as you pass on through long roads and avenues that lead up to the hall. My next letter shall inform of what we have seen described you in the fashionable novels,-how a gentleman of the old country lives in his hall. Ah, dear Arabella! how little did I think I should ever be able to speak of this from experience, when you and I wandered last year by the heathery banks of the Winipeg.