have singularly constituted minds: we are the lowliest suppliants at the altar, yet we murdered Archbishop Sharpe; we are fervent in our loyalty, yet Edinburgh is full of Scotstarvets."

The day not only brightened, but became intolerably hot. Neither the Professor in folio nor his companion in duodecimo was the most adroit horseman, and we lingered under the shade of every tree to wipe away from our brows the fruits of our toil. The Professor of Church History found on our arrival at Cults, that I had not awoke him too soon, for "the kirk had gane in" as a servant told us, a full hour ere we arrived.

"You can't proceed," he said, "in so overheated a state. You must either cool yourself in the manse, while your horse rests, or come with me into the church."

"The kirk looks so cool and refreshing amongst these trees, that I shall take my siesta there, whilst you, as Mathews's old Scotch lady says, 'get dry in the pu'pit.'"

To church, accordingly, we went. Dr. Hunter from St. Andrews was holding forth; but if the truth must be told, neither the thunders of the doctor, nor the pleasing persuasives of the Professor, who followed him, could prevent me from fulfilling my promise, and enjoying a calm siesta after all my toils. I did awake, however, when there were symptoms of a third preaching. The minister of the parish ascended the pulpit.

"Come, come," I muttered, "this is rather too much for a Saturday at all events."

But my impatience was quelled in a moment by one of the most beautifully concise, precise, and perspicuous orations I ever heard delivered :

"My friends," said the minister, "if, between this and the next sacramental occasion, ye just remember and practice the one half of what my reverend brethren have told you, I shall be more than satisfied."

I was more than prepared to like Mr. Thomson from the homeliness and brevity of his discourse; and was not hard to persuade, on being introduced to him by the Professor, to go with the party to the manse and partake of "pot-luck" ere I set out. Pot-luck, however, but feebly expresses the appearance of a Fife minister's table at “ sacrament times," especially when all the élite of the see and the county at large were assembled-for not fewer than twenty professors, doctors, and divines of all degrees, sat down to the hospitable board. The good things on the table (rendered doubly palatable by an old-fashioned heartiness on the part of" the minister and his wife" which was then becoming rare, but is now almost extinct), were only equalled by the good things said at it; and, I can only say, of all convivial meetings commend me to one composed of Fife ministers. Whatever rivals they may have in the pulpit, they have no equals at the dinner-table. Even my gaunt and grave friend the Professor was there a new man; and if a symptom of the gravity remained, it was but to give gusto to the sly inuendo, or the quick repartee.

Whilst we were thus pleasantly engaged within, the aspect of matters out of doors changed-the heat ending as usual in a thunderstorm,

and the storm in rain. A message came in from the minister's wife thoughtful body, anent the Professor's friend.

"He cannot proceed to-night-it's no fit. We have na a decent room below stairs, wi' so many folks in the house, to put him in but if he will accept of an attic, it'll be muckle at his service."

The attic I was right glad to accept and to it in due time I was ushered,

"No that fou, but gaily yet."

I was then in the blameable practice of reading in bed. But that night I could not fix my thoughts on the pages before me; they wandered to the scenes I had been visiting. The book gradually slipped from my hands, and a curious candleorama took its place.

First arose to my mental vision (yet my eyes were open and it seemed at the time more than imagination) the chapel of St. Rule with its tower in all their primitive simplicity. An aged and venerable man ascended the tower and from thence seemed to convoke the people from the neighbouring houses. Numbers assembled, whom, on descending, he addressed from a stone seat or pulpit outside the chapel. Around and near him stood the elders of the people, who, after his discourse, retired with him into the little chapel, from whence the sounds of prayer and praise were heard to ascend.

The little chapel seemed to me to expand the narrow orifices became lofty tesselated windows-lights streamed through their variegated ornaments, and prelates in full canonicals were seen officiating at the high altars. These lights were again obscured by the fitful gleams of torches carried along the pavements; faggots flamed; in the midst of them stood the owl with its eyes piteously turned up to the window of the tower, where Beaton, in the person of the Professor of Church History, was gloating his eyes with the spectacle. The flames around the martyr expired-lights were seen in the castle-the Professor rushed past the same fatal window: he is seized, and retributive justice hurls him to the spot on which the owl had suffered.

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. Dr. Hunter was preaching in the hall of the Dominicans, the pulpit shook under his mighty fist; it yielded; the roof fell in, and Mr. Thomson, in the guise of Archbishop Sharpe, rushed out, his wife running after him with the drinking glass in her hand. A smell, like that of an expiring candle, assailed my nose; and the last sound I heard as the veil of obliviousness fell over the scene was, "Punds Scots, ye witch!"

When I awoke, the sun shone merrily through the attic window. I rubbed my eyes; could it be still a dream? Traces of the visions still were there! There were still around me the blackened corses of the ruined town-chapel, castle, and halls! Controlling as well as I could the strange and disagreeable feeling which gradually began to creep over me, I arose and boldly advanced to the wall, to dispel the illusion by actual touch. Merciful powers! the traces of my dreams were BURNT INTO THE WALL! A cold perspiration came over me. I hastily threw on my clothes and descended to the ground floor. A servantgirl was brushing out the hall.

66

Pray, my lass, have you ever observed marks on the walls of the room in which I slept?"

"Marks! Lord pity ye, yes. Did ye no ken you was i' Davie Wilkie's room-the great Penter? He did them when he was a laddie, wi' a burnt stick and neither his feyther, the former minister, nor my master would ever allow them to be washed out. The mair's the pity, for they are awfu' lookin' things."

I have not visited that part of the country since; but Sir David Wilkie's" awfu' lookin" earliest works were in that attic in 181—, and there they are I trust until this day.

St. Maughold.
September, 1841.

JACQUES COCAST; THE HUNCHBACK PHILOSOPHER.

BY DOUGLAS JERROLD.

"THANK God for my hunch!" cried Jacques Cocast, then eleven years old, escaped from the pitying hands of Martin Fleau the miller, who casting a compassionate glance at Cocast's unseemly load, exclaimed,

"Well, the saints have burthened thee enough-go, I wouldn't beat a hunchback."

Thank God for my hunch!" were the grateful words of the applestealing Jacques, and he followed his lighter-heeled companions, who, on the first alarm, had scampered safely off from the miller's orchard, leaving their deformed co-mate to the vengeance of the despoiled. The miller, as we have shown was merciful, and Jacques Cocast, the hunchback, went his way unbruised.

Jacques Cocast grew up, the living plaything of the boys of the village. He was their drudge, their jest, their scapegoat. His good humour turned bitterness itself to merriment, and with at times the tears starting to his eyes, he would laugh them down, and without knowing it, play the practical philosopher.

"Out, ye imp of deformity!" cried Cocast's stepmother at least once a-day; whereupon Jacques, to the increasing ire of his father's wife, would meekly cry,

"Thank God for my hunch!"

Left to himself, now spurned, and now at least endured by his growing companions, Jacques Cocast made a friend of his book, and found the exceeding reward of such friendship. He could read, write, and

cypher to the shame of many of his seniors. Jacques Cocast's father took sudden pride in his own misshapen flesh, and Cocast's wife stormed at her stepson with increasing vigour.

The notary wanted a clerk. All eyes were turned upon Jacques as the very lad for the office. The notary himself condescended to canvass the pretensions of Jacques to the dignity. Already Jacques felt himself installed, when a slim, fair-haired, pink-complexioned youth was preferred to Cocast, the notary's wife having pithily informed her obedient husband, that his house should be no dwelling-place for a hunchback.

Jacques Cocast sighed as he turned from the notary's door, and his heart beat heavily as he crawled to his paternal home. In two or three days, however, the hunchback smiled and laughed as before, and the clerkship was forgotten in sweet communings with his book.

Some four years passed on,-when oh, shame to the notary's wifeshame to the fair-haired youth-the faithless woman fled from the bosom of her husband, taking with her in her flight her husband's clerk! Great was the consternation throughout the village-loud and deep the revilings of every honest spouse. Jacques Cocast joined in no abuse; but with a fine charity for the inexperience of youth, with even a tenderness towards the sin of the unfaithful wife, and considering within himself the subtle powers of the tempter, he felt grateful for his escape, and breathed his gratitude in his wonted syllables,

"Thank God for my hunch!"

Jacques Cocast was now a painstaking, philosophic tailor; and from no higher elevation than his shop-board, could look down on many of the vanities of human life. He was now twenty, and increasing years had only served to mellow his rich heart, and make him feel a lessening load upon his shoulders. Jacques would make one at all village holidays, led thereto by his own light-heartedness, and of late, furthermore urged to each festival by the blue eyes of Félicité, the baker's daughter.

Luckless Jacques Cocast! Fly the sweet perdition! You know not the falsehood of those azure lights-the venom of that pouting, pulpy lip; Félicité laughs with a witch's laugh at the love of the hunchback

whilst he, poor innocent-exalted, sublimated by his passion, lives in an atmosphere of baim and sun-vaults like a grasshopper about the earth, and gives his heart and soul to the tyranny that rejoices him. Jacques Cocast knew not vanity. He would clothe himself in the humblest weed, and then think that the best wardrobe which drew to itself the least notice. Now was it otherwise. The eyes of Félicité had smiled upon the tailor, and Jacques Cocast should henceforth be the best and the most critical customer to Jacques Cocast. If Félicité had looked with favour on his body, he would take the hitherto despised article under his future care, and habit it worthy of her who had elected it as her own. As for his hump, that was gone, yea, vanished, melted in the sunlight of Félicité's eyes. With these rejoicing thoughts Jacques Cocast would array himself finely as the finest caterpillar; his vestments now barred, and spotted, and burnished with a hundred hues. And as he basked in the smiles of Félicité, the baker's wicked daughter would laugh in her hollow heart, and the folks of the village

would confidentially clap their fingers to their noses, and wink towards the tailor.

For a month or more was Jacques Cocast the blissful Adam of this fool's paradise. For a full month did he breathe Elysium. At length the eyes of Jacques Cocast were opened and he saw his forlornness. It was the day of a ducasse. In the pride of his heart, and in all the glory of his trade, did the hunchback array himself to dance with Félicité, the baker's daughter. She had of late been so loving, so complying, so tender! The next dance might be at their own wedding. At all events, how they would dance on the coming Sunday! He, the hunchback, buoyed by his loving heart, would foot it so lightly, that not a blade of grass should bend beneath him—not a dew-drop be scat. tered by his mercurial toe.

The dancers are assembled. The fiddles sound. Jacques Cocast, in all the glory of a new suit, burning like a peacock in a conflict of colours, and in the triumph of a gladdened soul, advances to lead out Félicité, the baker's daughter. Already he has his hand upon her hand, when a gigantic thumb and finger with vice-like power gripes the nose of Jacques Cocast, and whirls him from his partner. A laugh that drowns the fiddles bursts from the merry-makers. Jacques Cocast with lightning in his eyes, and all the blood in his body rushing to his nose, looks for his assailant.

Hercule Grossetête, a rival of six feet, French measure, with fierce eyes, and parrot nose, glaring and protruding from between raven whiskers, with arms a-kimbo, stands before the tailor. Nevertheless, the soul of Jacques Cocast is mighty, and he is meditating how he may best spring upon the giant, and tear his iron heart from his body, when -oh, ye daughters of Eve! oh, ye rosy wickednesses, ye honied poisons!-Félicité, the baker's daughter, advanced to Hercule, and curtseying, and putting her hand in his-in his hand, yet warm from the outraged nose of her doating lover, signified that she was ready to dance, that she had looked with eyes of favour on the punishment of the tailor. Then sank the heart of Jacques Cocast. He quitted the scene of his past happiness, and in an agony of despair wandered, a very lunatic.

Foolish Jacques Cocast! Who would pity the despair of a hunchback? Who compassionate a love-broken heart, if accompanied by overladen shoulders? What is a beautiful sentiment with a straight-backed, comely man, is a thing for a jest, an excellent joke with a hunchback. And so, Jacques Cocast, go home. Sleep not in the fields at nights. Lie not under the window of the baker's daughter, and waste not away until, as you complain, your head has grown too little for your hat,-but up man, and to your comfortable abode. Shave yourself, change your linen, leap upon your shop-board, thread your needle, heat your goose, and defy love! A friendly Genius whispered some such advice to Jacques Cocast, for ere a month had passed, the tailor had once more taken to his sober attire, was seated smiling at his work, and if a thought of the cruel baker's daughter would sometimes intrude, he would banish the unwelcome guest by the very vehemence of stitching.

Months passed away, and the time of drawing for the conscription