THE PASSES OF THE CORDILLERAS. THE space enclosed between the gigantic ridges of the eastern and western Cordillera, or great and frigid mountain-chains of the Andes, is occupied by numerous table-lands, yielding short fine grass, and extensive hilly pasture-ground, very like in general outline to the Highlands of Scotland, though destitute of heath : and over this very uneven surface are interspersed lagoons and rivers, and deep, warm, agricultural valleys, in the bottom of which grow the richest fruits and produce of the coast; while the summits of the hills, that rise from and enclose these fertile dales, are exposed to the violence of the tempest in the elevated regions of cold and barrenness.

From one of these glens, where we once resided for some time, we left a house, at the door of which the lemon-tree was in perpetual fruit and blossom, and, in two or three hours thereafter, arrived at the rugged crags and peaks of the eastern Cordillera. The lines of road from the western coast to the central Andes of Peru wind along narrow glens, sometimes contracting into mere ravines, edged by lofty hills or prodigious rocks that close in abruptly. The traveller thus journeys for days, leaving one hill behind, and meeting another rising before; but never arrives at that ideal spot, whence he may command a view from sea to sea, "Where Andes, giant of the western star,

Looks from his throne of clouds o'er half the world."

The highest mountains in Britain, such as Ben-Nevis or Cruachan, must appear very diminutive, when compared to the Andes, whose very vastness and extent preclude from the inland regions any view of the sun dipping under the waves of the Pacific, and whose magnitude limits the quickest sight to the groups of mountains, with their included dales, that go to form one stupendous pile of varied shape, production, and climate. Many of the mountain roads, as they leave the bottom of the glens, and ascend, in more or less of a caracole, along the face of formidable steeps, seem to bear date of origin from the Quichoa era, when the llama was the only beast of burden in the country. These animals, like their Indian owners, delight most in the cool of the hills; bnt, when laden and on the road, their slow and stately gait must not be hurried or interfered with, nor their burden increased beyond their liking, which seldom exceeds seventy or eighty pounds weight on a long journey: the Indian understands their way, and rules them by gentleness. As the llamas are not for forced marches, and only make short stages of three or four leagues daily, the paths that lead through pasturegrounds are the best suited for them, and may have been considered by the ancient inhabitants of the land as a sufficient reason for striking off from a barren, though less elevated or precipitous path, and climbing to eminences that yield an agreeable temperature and some herbage to the indigenous companions of their toil.

When a person has occasion to traverse these narrow and fatiguing roads, it is necessary for him to keep a good look-out, lest he should clash with some rider or cargo-beast coming in the opposite direction; for there are places where it would be utterly impossible to pass two a-breast; and there would be no small danger, on meeting an impatient animal or careless horseman, that either party would be hurled over the brink, and consigned to the condors and eaglets that nestle on the cliffs and in the dark chasms of the crags.

Such dangerous passes are at some places so contracted that the stirrup of the muleteer is seen to overhang the foaming stream, or project beyond the verge of the boldest precipice; and every now and then they are made more formidable by abrupt angles and insecure breast-work without parapets, hastily constructed when the rush of a sudden torrent from the hollow of a hill, or large stones rolling from the heights, have cleft the way so as to render it for a time impassable.

There are also many cuestas or rapid steeps, with here and there flights of steps, roughly cut in the hard rock. By the wayside, in tedious cuestas of several leagues in extent, recesses are, in numerous instances, worked out on the higher side of the road, which serve for the passengers to draw up while those from an opposite direction are allowed to pass on, or where muleteers stop their cattle to adjust their cargoes, and tighten their lessos. But when a rock or shoulder of a cliff juts out from the road towards the lower or precipice side, leaving more or less room for

* "Cruachan," the loftiest mountain in Argyleshire, well known to tourists in Scotland.

a resting-place, then the little flat space is coarsely walled in with large fragments of rock, and such smaller stones as may be at hand, giving the idea of a rude but commanding fortress.

The famous Cuesta of San Mateo, on the Tarma road from Lima, we passed in the year 1834, and could not but wonder how, without any very serious accident, an army of cavalry, destined to celebrate the "fraternal embrace of Maquenguaio," had been able to pass the same route a few months before, when the path and staircases were yet wet and slippery from occasional showers; and when the lower or proper post-road was unfortunately impassable, from the destruction of one of the ordinary rustic bridges on the river or torrent, that runs at the bottom of the rock-locked ravine through which the regular mule-way has been opened, and by which the waters rush foaming and raging in time of heavy inland rains. This stream, like all such impetuous torrents, during the force of the rainy season on the high mountains and table-lands, carries in its course a vast number of rolling stones, the thundering noise of which rises far above the roar of the white waters as these are thrown back, and resisted incessantly, by large blocks of rocky fragments that half-choke the narrow channel, which at this remarkable place is bordered by immense rocks, looking as if they had been separated by violence, or rent to give descent to the concentrated and united body of rivulets that come from many a snowy peak, mountain lake, and marsh. The hill along which runs the Cuesta road, rising on the face of the steep that overhangs this part of the stream, is of itself a grand object; but that which is seen opposite to it has the greatest elevation of any single mountain in these narrow glens and nothing of the kind can be more strikingly magnificent than to behold it, girdled in verdure and capped in snow, from the summit of the Cuesta, where the traveller, tired with climbing, is invited to draw breath, and look around him from the cross planted here, as in almost every similar situation, by the pious among the natives, who love to decorate this emblem of their faith with wreaths of fresh and fragrant flowers. But from the better route, which winds by the river underneath, nothing of this sort is to be seen; for here the hills on each side shelve in towards their rugged foundations, until they come so close as completely to overshadow the stream. Here, too, the rider may strain his neck in looking overhead; but his eye only meets, besides a strip of the sky, pendulous succulents and tangling plants on the face of the incumbent ledge, with now and then a flower-enamoured "pica-flor" (humming-bird), as he fans, with a gracefully tremulous wing, the expanding blossoms that yield him delicate food and pastime.

These wilds of San Mateo reminded us forcibly of the miniature wilds of Glencoe, remarkable in Scottish history; and we thought, as we passed them, of the bard of Cona (Ossian), who, in honour of the orb which the Peruvians once adored, sung with sublimity and touching pathos

"O thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers, whence are thy beams, O Sun! thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty; the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave; but thou thyself movest alone. Who can be a companion of thy course?"-Peru as it is.

SWIFT'S EARLY LIFE.

AT Moor-park, an eccentric, uncouth, disagreeable young Irishman, who had narrowly escaped plucking at Dublin, attended Sir William Temple, as an amanuensis, for £20 a-year and his board, dined at the second table, wrote bad verses in praise of his employer, and made love to a very pretty, dark-eyed young girl, who waited on Lady Giffard. Little did Temple imagine, that the coarse exterior of his dependant concealed a genius suited to politics and to letters-a genius destined to shake great kingdoms, to stir the laughter and the rage of millions, and to leave to posterity memorials which can only perish with the English language! Little did he think that the flirtation in the servants' hall, which he, perhaps, scarcely deigned to make the subject of a jest, was the beginning of a long prosperous love, which was to be as widely famed as the passion of Petrarch, or of Abelard. Sir William's secretary was Jonathan Swift. Lady Giffard's waiting-maid was poor Stella.-Edinburgh Review.

↑ By this embrace the victorious troops under General Bermudes forsook his cause, and at once terminated hostilities by changing sidos and declaring themselves soldiers of Orbegoso and the republic, which they ratified by embracing the troops that had fled before them on the day of battle.

PROGRESSION OR RETROGRESSION IN MORAL CHARACTER. If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast. The most savage of men are not beasts; they are a great deal worse.-Coleridge.

LEECHES UNHURT BY FROST.

Among the cold-blooded animals which resist the effects of a low temperature, we may reckon the common leech, which is otherwise interesting to the meteorologist, on account of its peculiar habits and movements under different states of the atmosphere. A group of these animals left accidentally in a closet without a fire, during the frost of 1816, not only survived, but appeared to suffer no injury from being locked up in a mass of ice for many days.-Howard on Climate.

A GAMMON OF BACON.

The custom of eating a gammon of bacon at Easter, still maintained in some parts of England, is founded on the abhorrence our forefathers thought proper to express, in that way, towards the Jews at the season of commemorating the resurrection.-Drake's Shakspeare and his Times.

HOME.

Cling to thy home! If there the meanest shed
Yield thee a hearth and shelter for thine head,
And some poor plot, with vegetables stored,
Be all that pride allots thee for thy board,
Unsavoury bread, and herbs that scatter'd grow
Wild on the river's brink or mountain's brow,
Yet e'en the cheerless mansion shall provide
More heart's repose than all the world beside.
Leonidas of Tarentum.

THE SAP IN TREES. The sap in trees always rises as soon as the frost is abated, that when the stimulus of the warm weather in the early spring acts upon the bud, there should be at hand a supply of food for its nourishment; and if by any means the sap is prevented from ascending at the proper time, the tree infallibly perishes. Of this a remarkable instance occurred in London, during the spring succeeding the hard winter of the year 1794. The snow and ice collecting in the streets so as to become very inconvenient, they were cleared, and many cart-loads were placed in the vacant quarters of Moorfields; several of these heaps of snow and frozen rubbish were piled round some of the elm-trees that grew there. At the return of spring, those of the trees that were not surrounded with the snow expanded their leaves as usual, while the others, being still girt with a large frozen mass, continued quite bare; for the fact was, the absorbents in the lower part of the stem, and the carth in which the trees stood, were still exposed to a freezing cold. In some weeks, however, the snow was thawed, but the greater number of the trees were dead, and those few that did produce any leaves were very sickly, and continued in a languishing state all summer, and then died.Aikin's Natural History of the Year.

COLESHILL CUSTOM.

They have an ancient custom at Coleshill, in the county of Warwick, that if the young men of the town can catch a hare, and bring it to the parson of the parish before ten o'clock on Easter Monday, the parson is bound to give them a calf's head, and a hundred eggs for their breakfast, and a grant in money.-Blount.

MEMORY OF THE BULLFINCH.

Tame bullfinches have been known (says Buffon) to escape from the aviary, and live at liberty in the woods for a whole year, then to recollect the voice of the person who had reared them, and return to her, never more to leave her. Others have been known, which, when forced to leave their first master, have died of grief. One of them having been thrown down with its cage, by some of the lowest order of people, did not seem at first much disturbed by it, but afterwards it would fall into convulsions as soon as it saw any shabbily-dressed person, and it died in one of these fits eight months after its first accident.-Bechstein's Cage Birds.

LONGEVITY.

In 1752 was living at Clee-hall, near Ludlow, in Salop, Lady Wadely, at the great age of 105. She had been blind for several years, but at that time could see remarkably well. She was then walking about in perfect health, and cutting a new set of teeth.-Gentleman's Magazine.

EFFECT OF THE ATMOSPHERE ON HAIR.

My own beard, which in Europe was soft, silky, and almost straight, began immediately after my arrival at Alexandria to curl, to grow crisp, strong, and coarse; and before I reached Es-Souan resembled hare's hair to the touch, and was all disposed in ringlets about the chin. This is, no doubt, to be accounted for by the extreme dryness of the air, which, operating through several thousand years, has, in the interior, changed the hair of the negro into a kind of coarse wool.-St. John's Travels.

ALL SOULS' COLLEGE.

Archbishop Chichly, having persuaded King Henry the V. to a warre with France built a colledg in Oxon, to pray for the soules of those who were killed in the warres of France. He called it Allsoules, as intended to pray for all, but more especially for those killed in the warres of France.-Ward's Diary.

CHILDREN.

Children in all countries are, as Mrs. Grant, of Laggan, says, first vegetables, and then they are animals, and then they come to be people; but their way of growing out of one stage into another is as different in different societies, as their states of mind when they are grown up. They all have limbs, senses, intellects; but their growth of heart and mind depends incalculably upon the spirit of the society amidst which they are reared. The traveller must study them wherever he meets them.-How to Observe, by Harriet Martineau.

RARE TIMES FOR SUITORS IN EQUITY.

Then was the chancery so empty of causes, that Sir Thomas More could live in Chelsea, and yet very sufficiently discharge that office; and coming one day home by ten of the clock, whereas he was wont to stay until eleven or twelve, his lady came down to see whether he was sick or not; to whom Sir Thomas More said, "Let your gentlewoman fetch me a cup of wine, and then I will tell you the occasion of my coming;" and when the wine came, he drank to his lady, and told her that he thanked God for it he had not one cause in chancery, and therefore came home for want of business and employment there. The gentlewoman who fetched the wine told this to a bishop, who did inform me.-Bishop Goodman's Diary.

SIR MATTHEW HALE'S CARE OF HIS WORKS.

The great Sir Matthew Hale ordered that none of his works should be printed after his death; as he apprehended, that, in the licensing of them, some things might be struck out or altered, which he had observed, not without some indignation, had been done to those of a learned friend; and he preferred bequeathing his uncorrupted MSS. to the Society of Lincoln's Inn, as their only guardians, hoping they were a treasure worth keeping.Burnet's Life of Sir Matthew Hale.

INWARD BLINDNESS.

Talk to a blind man-he knows he wants the sense of sight, and willingly makes the proper allowances. But there are certain internal senses, which a man may want, and yet be wholly ignorant that he wants them. It is most unpleasant to converse with such persons on subjects of taste, philosophy, or religion. Of course, there is no reasoning with them: for they do not possess the facts on which the reasoning must be grounded. Nothing is possible, but a naked dissent, which implies a sort of unsocial contempt; or what a man of kind disposition is very likely to fall into, a heartless tacit acquiescence, which borders nearly on duplicity.-Coleridge.

AN OLD SNATCH OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.

To tax any trade so that it cannot subsist under the payment, is not a means to raise the money, but to destroy the trade. That the dearness of a thing lessens the consumption, is a maxim which no man can deny ; but there are some things of so diminutive a nature, that their spreading arises merely from the consideration of their being trifles. Such are the innumerable little printed tracts, from the ballad and primer at the price of one half-penny to the pamphlets of six-pence. When these come to be taxed, will they be sold? Let any man judge by the tax upon almanacs laid on last year, when a printer in Scotland returned 495 out of 500 stamps. It is stated that the number of almanacs printed was three-fourths less than usual, and that 60,000 stamps were returned to the government unsold.→De Foc.

TEA IN RUSSIA.

The Russians are the most inveterate tea-drinkers out of China; and with such excellent tea as they have, the passion is quite excusable. Tea in Russia and tea in England are as different as peppermint water and senna. With us it is a dull, flavourless dose; in Russia it is a fresh invigorating draught. They account for the difference by stating that, as the sea air injures tea, we get only the leaves, but none of the aroma of the plant which left Canton; while they, on the other hand, receiving all their tea over-land, have it just as good as when it left the celestial empire. Be the cause what it may, there can be no doubt of the fact, that tea in Russia is infinitely superior to any ever found in other parts of Europe. Englishmen are taken by surprise on tasting it; even those who never cared for tea before, drink on during the whole of their stay in Russia.-Bremner's Excursions in Russia.

THE HONEST MONK.

William Rufus having an abbey to bestow, several of the clergy, knowing the king to be covetous, bid large sums for the place. The king seeing a monk stand by who offered nothing, asked him, "And what wilt thou give for this abbey?" "Indeed not one penny," says the monk, "for it is against my conscience." "Then," says the king, "thou art the fittest man to be abbot ;" and so gave him the abbey immediately.-De Foe.

NUISANCES.

The idle levy a very heavy tax upon the industrious, when, by frivolous visitations, they rob them of their time. Such persons beg their daily happiness from door to door, as beggars their daily bread; and, like them, sometimes meet with a rebuff. A mere gossip ought not to wonder if we evince signs that we are tired of him, seeing that we are indebted for the honour of his visit solely to the circumstance of his being tired of himself. He sits at home until he has accumulated an intolerable load of ennui, and he sallies forth to distribute it amongst all his acquaintance.—Colton's Lacon.

London: WILLIAM SMITH, 113, Fleet Street. Edinburgh: FRASER & Co. Dublin: CURRY & Co.-Printed by Bradbury & Evans, Whitefriars.

No. XXII.

UPS AND DOWNS; A TALE OF THE ROAD. "Cast thy bread upon the waters; for thou shalt find it after many days." We are no enemies to improvement; yet improvement sometimes effects changes which we cannot help regretting. In its march, it occasionally sweeps away old land-marks, to which a long acquaintance had attached us. It now and then disturbs old associations, and removes objects and customs on which some of our pleasantest recollections were wont to dwell.

It is in a spirit of this kind that we contemplate the departing glories of stage-coach travelling, and all the joys of the road. The flashing, rattling, dashing carriage-and-four,—the good-humoured, civil, intelligent, and story-telling guard, full of anecdote and fun; -the village inn (the stage), the changing of horses, with all its exciting and amusing accompaniments ;-the fresh start, and the general hilarity which the sense of rapid motion, seconded by a bright shiny day, never fails to inspire. All this is about passing away. The little that has been left by the steam-boat will soon be extinguished by the dull, monotonous railway.

One of the first, if not the very first, lines of road in Great Britain, whose prosperity was invaded by the steam-boat, was that between Glasgow and Greenock.* The steam-ships of the Clyde quickly laid up the Glasgow coaches in the coach-yard, turned adrift their guards and drivers, arrested the life and bustle that pervaded its whole length, and reduced it to what it now is merely the ghost of a road.

But it was once otherwise with the Greenock road, and well do we recollect the long coaches, like so many Noah's arks mounted on wheels, that used to ply in dozens on that now despised and neglected highway, and the many pleasant and merry excursions on which they joyously bore us. It was on one of these occasions that we picked up the following incident.

On the occasion alluded to, we were proceeding to Greenock by the——we forget the name of the coach, but it was one whose panels were adorned by a series of pictorial representations of oak-leaves, green oaks ; referring to the commonly believed but false etymology of the name of the town above mentioned. We were seated beside the driver, a fine intelligent old fellow, who had been upon the road for upwards of twenty years. It was a delightful day, and we were rolling cheerily along, when we came suddenly, at a turn of the road, upon a boy, of ten or twelve years of age, who was trudging the footpath towards Greenock. He seemed sorely fatigued, and so exhausted that he could hardly prosecute his journey. Compassionating the poor boy's situation, (for he was very indifferently clothed,) we called the driver's attention to him, and hinted that he might do a worse thing than give the poor lad a seat on his coach. Our friend demurred, alleging that he might be found fault with; and adding something about the boy's being, he had no doubt, some run-away apprentice from Glasgow, going to Greenock to enter on board ship as a sailor; such occurrences being frequent in these days.

"We will give you a reasonable fare for the boy," said we. *Some of our London readers may not be aware that Greenock stands in somewhat the same relation to Glasgow that Gravesend does to London. VOL. I.

[PRICE TWOPENCE.

"That alters the case," replied the driver, and, without saying another word, he pulled up, and called on the boy to mount. The boy hesitated, and stared the surprise which he felt; he could not believe that the invitation was in earnest.

"Come up, you young rogue, you," repeated the driver ;"here's a gentleman going to pay your fare to Greenock, although I dare say you don't deserve it ; for I'm sure you've run away from the loom, or some other honest calling, and left your mother with a heavy heart."

The boy now no longer hesitated, but, catching the projecting iron footstep of the coach, was in a twinkling seated on the top, apparently to his very great satisfaction.

"This affair, sir, of picking up the boy," said the driver, after we had again started, "puts me in mind of a rather curious incident that happened some years ago on this road." "Ay," said we; "what was it?"

"I'll tell you what it was," said our friend the driver; and he immediately gave us the following story:

"About fifteen years ago," he began, "there was amongst my passengers, one day, a lively, kind-hearted, buxom elderly lady, seemingly well to do in the world; for she was clad in silks, and sported a purse a yard long and well filled.

"Well, just as we were getting along, as we are just now, and not above a mile from this very spot, we overtook a boy in precisely the same situation as this one here; he was barefooted, too, and was sadly knocked up with walking; he could hardly crawl along, and his face was all begrimed with weeping. The poor boy appeared to be in sad case, to be sure. Well, the good soul, my lady passenger, seeing him, her honest, motherly heart bled for the poor boy. She thrust her head out of the window, and called on me to stop. I did so. She then pulled out her purse, and putting some silver into my hand (double the amount required), desired me to hand the boy into the coach, she having previously obtained the leave of the other passengers to do so. immediately did as she desired me,-thrust the boy into the coach, slapped close the door, mounted to my seat, and drove off.

I

"I, of course, knew no more of what passed at this time. I laid down my passengers, boy and all, at the White Hart inn, Greenock; and there my knowledge of them ended.

"Two or three days after this, however, I happened to have one of the gentlemen up with me again who was passenger when the lady brought the boy into the coach, and he told me that she was extremely kind to him, as kind as a mother could have been. On their arriving at the White Hart, she took him into the house, and gave him a plentiful supper, paid for his bed there, and breakfast next morning, and at parting put a guinea into his hand. The boy stated that he had been bred a weaver, frankly owned that he had run away, but gave as a reason the harsh treatment of a stepmother, and an unconquerable aversion to the loom. He also added, that it was his intention to go to sea, and that he had a maternal uncle in Greenock, a carpenter, who, he had no doubt, would assist in getting him a ship, although he did not well know where to find this relative.

"Well, you see, sir," continued the narrator, "time, after this, wore away as it had done before, year after year, and here was I still handling the whip, as I am doing now. Ten years, I think, or thereabouts, had passed away, and I had long since forgotten all about the boy and his kind patroness, when a swashing, finelooking, gentlemanly young fellow, with the cut of a sailor about him, although wearing a long coat, and sporting rings on his fingers and a bunch of gold seals at his watch, mounted one day on the coach-box beside me. He had engaged and paid for an inside seat, but took the out from choice.

"Well, old fellow,' said he, (for, like all his class, he was frank and cheerful;) 'Well, old fellow,' he said, sitting down beside me, 'up with your anchor, and get under weigh. Come, that's it,' as he saw me lay the whip to the horses, 'give her way there,-send her through it, my hearty. It's a long while since I was on a coach before, though I've been in a gig often enough.'

"Well, then,' says I, sir, them 's more dangerous than coaches.'

"Avast there,' says he, 'what sort of gigs do you mean?' "Why, two-wheeled ones, in course,' says I.

"To Glasgow, sir,' she replied. I live there, and have been down at Greenock, seeing some friends there, who, I hoped, might have done something for me. But they all had some excuse or apology for not assisting me, and have sent me away nearly as poor as I went; and that, God knows, was poor enough.' "Never mind, mother, pop in there in the meantime,' said the sailor, holding the door of the coach in one hand, and taking the arm of the old woman with the other, to help her in. Pop in, and we'll carry you comfortably through to Glasgow, and give you a bit and a sup by the way, to keep your old heart up.' "Having seen the old woman seated, the captain secured the door, and resuming his seat by me, we drove on.

"On reaching Bishopton inn, where we change horses and rest a bit, the captain, the moment the coach stopped, leapt down, opened the coach-door, and handing out the old woman, led her into the inn, and asked for a private room for himself and her. They were shown into one, when the captain ordered some refreshment to be brought,-some cold fowl, and some wine and brandy.

"He now placed the old woman at the table, and began helping her to the various good things that were on it. While this was going on, he sent for me. When I entered- Come away, skip

"Queer codgers they'll be,' says I.

"Not a bit,' says he. 'Aren't ye up, old fellow Don't ye know that a certain kind of small boat belonging to a ship is called a gig?'

Didn't know it, sir,' said Ì.

helping old mother,' as he called her, to the nicest morsels he could pick out,' Come away, skipper,' said he, and let us see how you can splice the main brace.' Saying which, he filled me up half a tumbler of brandy and water.

"In the meantime, the old lady had finished her repast, and, under the influence of the comfortable feelings which the refresh

"Well, you see, sir," continued the narrator, "all this is not much to the purpose of my story; but I just wished to give you some notion of the pleasant off-hand way of my passenger.

"Having cleared Cartsdyke, we were getting along cheerily, when the captain, for I had by this time found out that my passenger was captain of a large West-India ship that had just arrived at Greenock, and that he was now on his way to Glasgow to see his owners, who resided there I say, we were getting along heerily, and were within about three miles of Bishopton, when the captain spied a decent-looking but poorly dressed old woman, trudging along the footpath.

"I say, skipper,' says he to me, 'what do you think of our shipping that poor old girl, and giving her a lift on her voyage? She seems hardly able to make any way to win'ard.'

"Not being very fond of picking up stragglers in that sort of way, I at first objected. When I did so, he exclaimed, with a sailor's oath, 'I shall have the old girl on board. I'll never forget that I was in a similar situation once myself; nor will I ever forget the kind old soul of a woman that lent me such a hand as I am now about to lend to her. I'll never pass any poor devil in these circumstances again,-man or woman, old or young,-without offering them a berth in the craft in which I'm sailing, so long as there's room to stow them.' Saying this, and at the same time adding, that he would pay me all charges, he sprang off the coach, and had the old woman by the hand in a twinkling, leading her towards the coach, which I had now stopped.

I am

'Well,' said she, after again thanking her entertainer for his kindness, 'it is curious how things do sometimes come about; for I cannot but look, sir,' (addressing the captain,) on your kindness to me this day as a return from the hand of Providence for a similar act of charity that I once bestowed on a needy person, and that not very far from where we are at this moment sitting. It's now, I think, about ten years since,' continued the old lady, that, as I was going down by coach to Greenock-I was then in easy circumstances-had plenty of the world, for my husband was then living, and carrying on a thriving business-I saw a poor boy limping along the footpath, and seemingly exhausted with both hunger and fatigue.

"Well, sir, pitying the poor young thing, I had him taken into the coach, treated him as kindly as I could, and provided him with a night's quarters in the White Hart inn, and put a trifle of money into his hand besides.'

"I wish, sir," here interposed my informant, speaking in his own person, you had but seen the captain's face while his guest was relating this incident. It grew pale, then flushed, while his eyes sparkled with an expression of intense feeling; he was, in short, greatly excited. At length, jumping from his seat, he rushed towards the old lady, and seizing both her hands in his, exclaimed in a rapture of joy

"God bless you, sir,' said the old woman, as she tottered along with him. It will, indeed, be a great relief to me. not so able to walk as I once was, and far from being so well able to pay for any other conveyance; and I have a long road before me.'