spring to discuss the propriety of building nests, or swallows in autumn to deliberate in conclave on the expediency of emigration. With these and similar thoughts in my mind, I strayed down to the banks of the river, and came upon a favourite scene of our boyish sports. Some of the very bushes I recognised as our old lurking-places of hunt-the-hare; and on the old fantastic beech-tree I discovered the very bough from which we were accustomed to suspend our swings. The fresh green plat by the bank of the stream lay before me. It was there that we played at leap-frog, or gathered dandelions for our tame rabbits; and at its western extremity were still extant the relics of the dealseat, at which we used to assemble on autumn evenings to have our round of stories. Many a witching tale and wondrous tradition has there been told; many a marvel of figures that 'revisited the glimpses of the moon;' many a recital of heroic and chivalrous enterprise, accomplished ere warriors dwindled down to the mere pigmy strength of mortals. Sapped by the wind and rain, the planks lay in a sorely decayed and rotten state, looking in their mossiness like signposts of desolation, mementoes of terrestrial instability. Traces of the knife were still here and there visible upon the trunks of the supporting trees; and with little difficulty I could decipher some well-remembered initials.

'Cold were the hands that carved them there."

We see, in these circumstances of Moir's free and happy boyhood, the very best food on which the poetic spirit within him could be feeding and growing; and the locality in which he grew up, so rich in picturesque old character, beauties of scenery, and historic associations, was full of promptings to genius. The ancient burgh, with its quaint oldworld usages; the Roman Bridge; remnants of hermitages, chapels, and shrines; fabulous wells of virtue; suburbs of seafaring veterans, grey with the awe of "hair-breadth 'scapes ;" houses of antique fame, embowered in the depths of venerable trees; crumbling castles and bloody old battle-fields; the sunny slopes of Inveresk, and the sweep of view from its crowning summit-Craigmillar, and Arthur's Seat, and Edinburgh hanging high in the west; the far-off Ochils, so soft and graceful, melting into sky; Inchkeith and Bass in the waters; villas and towns gleaming away on the bending shore; Esk from its inland woods; the multitudinous sea, with its ever-changing aspects of storm and calm, of terror and beauty-how impressive must all this have been to the thoughtful and enthusiastic boy who had his "home and haunt” in the midst of it.

Moir was now thirteen years old, when Dr Stewart, a medical practitioner in Musselburgh, a man of talent and worth, and very successful in his business, having known the boy for some time, and liked him greatly, got him as an apprentice. The

term was four years; but the indenture bore that, in the last winter of his service, David was to be free to attend college, in the pursuit of his medical studies. Thus was his professional life determined. He entered upon his new duties with his usual cheerful zeal, to the special satisfaction of his kindhearted master, who treated him more as a personal friend than an apprentice. The following anecdote, communicated by Mr Hugh Moir, refers to the first or second year of his apprenticeship :-" Late on a Saturday night, in the depth of winter, an alarm having been given that the body of a poor man, who had accidentally fallen into the mill-stream, had been found at the Sea-mill, I accompanied my brother David to the place to which the body had been conveyed after it was taken out of the water. Two other medical men, besides himself, tried the usual means of resuscitation, and persevered in their humane efforts till every one present saw the case to be utterly hopeless. A cart was then ordered, and the body was sent to the house where it was ascertained the man had lodged. My brother and I returned home. About midnight I was surprised on being awakened by him, with the request that I should accompany him to the house to which the body had been taken. It was at a considerable distance, and in a dirty narrow close at the west end of the town. Off we went accordingly. On entering, my brother desired a candle to be lighted, and I having accompanied him into the little room,

we found the body covered with a sheet, and a plate of salt laid upon the breast. Withdrawing the sheet, David anxiously passed his hand over the body, to ascertain if any warmth still existed. It was evidently on his part a 'hoping against hope.' He was satisfied, however, after having done this; and the sheet having been carefully replaced over the corpse, we went home. That he had even the shadow of a shade of hope in this visit, I do not imagine; I attribute it solely to a nervous anxiety for his own self-satisfaction." A characteristic anecdote, indicating that keen conscientiousness of practical duty which was the primary foundation of Moir's character, and that nervous sensibility which belongs to the poetical temperament.

Business first, literary recreation next and poetry the prime of it: such was the key-note on which Moir pitched his life, and kept it to the end. Business has not been neglected: the recreation now begins. Our author's first poetical attempt bears the date of 1812, when he was in his fifteenth year. The lines are correct and neat, but altogether imitative, being after the manner of Pope's first verses: genius, even the most original, is always imitative at first. Soon after this, he made his way with two short prose essays into The Cheap Magazine, a small Haddington publication. Of the anxieties connected with this, his first public appearance as an author, he sometimes spoke in after years, playfully describing the restless excitement

and eager impatience with which he went out into the street to await the arrival of the stage-coach by which the magazine was sent, and the rapture with which he "saw himself actually in print."

In the last winter of his apprenticeship, young Moir attended Edinburgh College. Every Monday morning he walked up to his classes, and he returned home every Saturday night to spend the Sabbath in the family circle. "During the week," says his brother Hugh, "he lodged in a small room in Shakspeare Square. In the evenings he was in the habit of attending Carfrae's sale-rooms, where the best part of his small weekly allowance of pocket-money was expended on books. I remember the pride with which, every Saturday night, he showed us his weekly purchases. His economy and contentedness were admirable, mental improvement being his great aim. Occasionally he indulged in a visit to the theatre, to see the performances of Mrs Siddons and Miss O'Neill, John Kemble and Edmund Kean, which made a very powerful impression upon his mind." At the conclusion of his apprenticeship he attended college regularly, and got his diploma as a surgeon in the spring of 1816, when he was only eighteen years of age. It was his purpose to enter the medical department of the army; but the battle of Waterloo had now put military matters on a different footing, and so the purpose was given up. He returned home, and spent the summer in literary