his brother, and in his solitary communion with his Maker. Merely blot out light from the earth, and joy will pass away from it; and health will pass away from it; and life will pass away from it; and it will sink back into a confused, turmoiling chaos In no way can the children of light so well prove that this is in deed their parentage, as by becoming the instruments of God in shedding His blessings around them. Light illumines everything, the lowly valley as well as the lofty mountain; it fructifies everything, the humblest herb as well as the lordliest tree; and there is nothing hid from its heat. Nor does Christ the Original, of whom light is the image, make any distinction between the high and the low, between the humble and the lordly. He comes to all, unless they drive Him from their doors. He calls to all, unless they obstinately close their ears against Him. He blesses all, unless they cast away His blessing. Nay, although they cast it away, He still perseveres in blessing them, even unto seven times, even unto seventy times seven. Ye, then, who desire to be children of light, ye who would gladly enjoy the full glory and blessedness of that heavenly name, take heed to yourselves, that ye walk as children of light in this respect more especially. No part of your duty is easier; you may find daily and hourly opportunity of practising it. No part of your duty is more delightful; the joy you kindle in the heart of another cannot fail of shedding back its brightness on your own. No part of your duty is more godlike. They who attempted to become like God in knowledge, fell in the garden of Eden. They who strove to become like God in power, were confounded on the plain of Shinar. They who endeavour to become like God in love, will feel His approv ing smile and His helping arm; every effort they make will bring them nearer to His presence; and they will find His renewed image grow more and more vivid within them, until the time comes, when they too shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

The Scottish Borderers.

SCOTT.

[THE extract which we give from the most popular author of his time is neither from his poetical nor his prose romances. Those works are in the hands of every reader; and we exclude them from the plan of this selection, for the same reason that we exclude scenes from Shakspere. The following account is from the original introduction to the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," and was written in 1802. That work was the first publication of Scott which developed the nature of his tastes and acquirements. It was the germ, at once, of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," and of "Waverley." The life of Scott is not to be told in a brief notice like this. He was born on the 15th of August 1771; and died on 21st of September 1832. His father was a highly respectable writer to the signet in Edinburgh, and was connected by blood with several noble families. Scott was a sickly boy, and lame from his infancy. His delicate health led to the cultivation of his mind according to his own tastes; and the love of fiction gave the chief direction to his studies and amusements. Gradually, however, his constitution was established, though he remained always lame, but wonderfully active. He went through the formalities of a lawyer's education; was called to the Scottish bar in 1792; was appointed sheriff of Selkirkshire in 1799; and one of the principal clerks of session in 1806. During this period he had some independence and much leisure; and from the time when he published a German translation in 1796, to the appearance of the "Lord of the Isles," in 1814, he was cultivating that taste which, during ten years, made him the most popular poet of the day. In 1814 "Waverley " was published anonymously. The success of this remarkable novel, and the rapid appearance of a succession of works by the same master, produced an era in our literature. Never was such triumphant success witnessed during an author's life-time. In 1826, Scott, who was mixed up with commercial undertakings, and who had too freely used the dangerous power of anticipating revenue by unlimited credit, was brought to ruin by the failure of these artificial resources, in connexion with publishers and printers. This is the heroic period of his life. His struggles to do justice to his creditors are beyond praise they are for example, and are sacred. He fell in the contest with circumstances. The last words which he used in a public assembly were significant ones-they were those of the dying gladiator.]

Their morality was of a singular kind. The rapine by which they subsisted, they accounted lawful and honourable. Ever liable to lose their whole substance by an incursion of the English on a sudden breach of truce, they cared little to waste their time in cultivating crops to be reaped by their foes. Their cattle was, there

fore, their chief property; and these were nightly exposed to the southern Borderers, as rapacious and active as themselves. Hence robbery assumed the appearance of fair reprisal. The fatal privilege of pursuing the marauders into their own country, for recovery of stolen goods, led to continual skirmishes. The warden, also, himself frequently the chieftain of a Border horde, when redress was not instantly granted by the opposite officer for depredations sustained by his district, was entitled to retaliate upon England by a warden raid. In such cases, the mosstroopers who crowded to his standard, found themselves pursuing their craft under legal authority, and became the followers and favourites of the military magistrate, whose ordinary duty it was to check and suppress them. Equally unable and unwilling to make nice distinctions, they were not to be convinced that what was to-day fair booty was to-morrow a subject of theft. National animosity usually gave an additional stimulus to their rapacity: although it must be owned that their depredations extended also to the more cultivated parts of their own country.

The Borderers had, in fact, little reason to regard the inland Scots as their fellow-subjects, or to respect the power of the crown. They were frequently resigned, by express compact, to the bloody retaliation of the English, without experiencing any assistance from their prince and his more immediate subjects. If they beheld him, it was more frequently in the character of an avenging judge than of a protecting sovereign. They were, in truth, in the time of peace, a kind of outcasts, against whom the united powers of England and Scotland were often employed. Hence, the men of the Borders had little attachment to their monarchs, whom they termed in derision, the kings of Fife and Lothian; provinces which they were not legally entitled to inhabit, and which, therefore, they pillaged with as little remorse as if they had belonged to a foreign country. This strange, precarious, and adventurous mode of life, led by the Borderers, was not without its pleasures, and seems, in all probability, hardly so disagreeable to us as the monotony of regulated society must have been to those who had been long accustomed to a state of rapine. Well

has it been remarked, by the eloquent Burke, that the shifting tides of fear and hope, the flight and pursuit, the peril and escape, alternate famine and feast, of the savage and the robber, after a time render all course of slow, steady, progressive, unvaried occupation, and the prospect only of a limited mediocrity, at the end of long labour, to the last degree tame, languid, and insipid. The interesting nature of their exploits may be conceived from the account of Camden.

The inroads of the Marchers, when stimulated only by the desire of plunder, were never marked by cruelty, and seldom even with bloodshed unless in the case of opposition. They held, that property was common to all who stood in want of it; but they abhorred and avoided the crime of unnecessary homicide. This was perhaps partly owing to the habits of intimacy betwixt the Borderers of both kingdoms, notwithstanding their mutual hostility and reciprocal depredations. A natural intercourse took place between the English and Scottish Marches, at Border meetings, and during the short intervals of peace. They met frequently at parties of the chase and football; and it required many and strict regulations, on both sides, to prevent them from forming intermarriages and from cultivating too closely a degree of intimacy. The custom also of paying black-mail, or protection rent, introduced a connexion betwixt the countries; for a Scottish Borderer taking black-mail from an English inhabitant, was not only himself bound to abstain from injuring such person, but also to maintain his quarrel, and recover his property if carried off by others. Hence, a union arose betwixt the parties, founded upon mutual interest, which counteracted, in many instances, the effects of national prejudice.

This humanity and moderation was, on certain occasions, entirely laid aside by the Borderers. In the case of deadly feud, either against an Englishman or against any neighbouring tribe, the whole force of the offended clan was bent to avenge the death any of their number. Their vengeance not only vented itself upon the homicide and his family, but upon all his kindred, on

of

his whole tribe, and on every one, in fine, whose death or ruin could affect him with regret.

The immediate rulers of the Borders were the chiefs of the different clans, who exercised over their respective septs a dominion partly patriarchal and partly feudal. The latter bond of adherence was, however, the more slender; for, in the acts regulating the Borders, we find repeated mention of "Clannes having captaines and chieftaines on whom they depend, oft-times against the willes of their landelordes." Of course these laws looked less to the feudal superior, than to the chieftain of the name, for the restraint of the disorderly tribes; and it is repeatedly enacted, that the head of the clan should be first called upon to deliver those of his sept who should commit any trespass, and that, on his failure to do so, he should be liable to the injured party in full redress. By the same statues, the chieftains and landlords presiding over Border clans were obliged to find caution, and to grant hostages, that they would subject themselves to the due course of law. Such clans as had no chieftain of sufficient note to enter bail for their quiet conduct became broken men, outlawed to both nations.

From these enactments the power of the Border chieftains may be conceived, for it had been hard and useless to have punished them for the trespass of their tribes, unless they possessed over them unlimited authority. The abodes of these petty princes by no means corresponded to the extent of their power. We do not find on the Scottish Borders the splendid and extensive baronial castles which graced and defended the opposite frontier. The Gothic grandeur of Alnwick, of Raby, and of Naworth, marks the wealthier and more secure state of the English nobles. The Scottish chieftain, however extensive his domains, derived no pecuniary advantage, save from such parts as he could himself cultivate or occupy. Payment of rent was hardly known on the Borders till after the Union of 1603. All that the landlord could gain from those residing upon his estate was their personal service in battle, their assistance in labouring the land retained in his natural possession, some petty quit-rents of a nature resembling