I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again;
Mine ear is much enamored of thy note;
So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape;

And thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me,

On the first view, to say, to swear. I love thee.

Bot. Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that, and yet o say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days. the more the pity that some honest neighbors will not make them friends Nay, I can gleek upon occasion.

Tit. Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.

Bot. Not so neither; but if I had wit enough to get out of this wood, 1 have enough to serve mine own turn.

Tit. Out of this wood do not desire to go:

Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.

I am a spirit of no common rate;

The summer still doth tend upon my state,

And I do love thee; therefore go with me;

I'll give thee faries to attend on thee;

And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,

And sing while thou on pressèd flowers dost sleep:
And I will purge thy mortal grossness so,

That thou shalt like an airy spirit go,

Peas-blossom! Cobweb! Moth! and Mustard-seed!

Where shall we go?

Tit. Be kind and courteous to this gentleman;
Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes;
Feed him with apricots and dewberries,
With purple grapes, green figs and mulberries:
The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees,
And for night tapers crop their waxen thighs,
And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes,
To have my love to bed, and to arise:

And pluck the wings from painted butterflies,
To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes;
Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.

1st Fai. Hail, mortal!

2d Fai. Hail!

3d Fai. Hail!

4th Fai. Hail!

Bot. I cry your worship's mercy, heartily. I beseech your wor

ship's name.

Cob. Cobweb.

Bot. I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good Master Cobweb. If I cut my finger, I shall make bold with you. Your name, honest gen

tleman?

Peas. Peas-blossom.

Bot. I pray you commend me to Mistress Squash, your mother, and tr

Master Peascod, your father. Good Master Peas-blossom,

shall desire

you of more acquaintance, too. Your name, I beseech you, sir? Mus. Mustard-seed.

That

Bot. Good Master Mustard-seed, I know your patience well. same cowardly, giant-like ox-beef hath devoured many gentlemen of your house. I promise you your kindred hath made my eyes water ere now. I desire you more acquaintance, good Master Mustard-seed.

OBERON enters unseen.

T. Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed,
While I thy amiable cheeks do coy

And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head,
And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.

Bot. Where's Peas-blossom?

Peas. Ready.

Bot. Scratch my head, Peas-blossom. Where's Monsieur Cobweb?
Cob. Ready.

Bot. Monsieur Cobweb, good Monsieur, get up your weapons in your hands, and kill me a red-hipped humble bee on the top of a thistle; and, good Monsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much with the action, monsieur; and, good monsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not; I would be loth to have you overflown with a honey-bag, signior. -Where's Monsieur Mustard-seed?

Must. Ready.

Bot. Give me your neif, Monsieur Mustard-seed. Pray you, leave your courtesy, good monsieur.

Must. What's your will?

Bot. Nothing, good monsieur, but to help Cavaliero Cobweb to scratch. Tit. What, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love?

Bot. I have a reasonable ear in music: let us have the tongs and the bones.

Tit Or say, sweet love, what thou desirest to eat.

Bot. Truly a peck of provender. I could munch your good dry oats. Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay. Good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow.

Tit. I have a venturous fairy, that shall seek the squirrel's hoard, and fetch thee new nuts.

Bot. I had rather have a handful or two of dried peas:-but, I pray you, let none of your people stir me; I have an exposition of sleep come upor

me.

Tit. Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms.

Fairies, begone, and be always away.

So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle

Gently entwist;--the female ivy so

Enrings the barky fingers of the elm,

O, how I love thee! How I dote on thee!

OBERON advances. Enter PUCK.

[They sleep.

Ober. Welcome, good Robin. See'st thou this sweet sight?

Her dotage now I do begin to pity:

For meeting her of late behind the wood,

Seeking sweet savors for this hateful fool,

I did upbraid her, and fall out with her:
For she his hairy temples then had rounded
With coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers;
And that same dew, which sometimes on the buds
Was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls,
Stood now within the pretty flowret's eyes,
Like tears, that did their own disgrace bewail.
When I had, at my pleasure, taunted her,
And she, in mild tones, begged my patience,
I then did ask of her my changeling child;
Which straight she gave me, and her fairy sent
To bear him to my bower in fairy land.
And now I have the boy, I will undo
This hateful imperfection of her eyes.

And, gentle Puck, take this transformed scalp
From off the head of this Athenian swain;
That she awaking when the other do,
May all to Athens back again repair,
And think no more of this night's accidents,
But as the fierce vexation of a dream.
But first, I will release the fairy queen.
Be as thou wert wont to be;

[Touching her eyes with berk]

See as thou wert wont to see;
Dian's bud o'er Cupid's flower

Hath such force and blessed power.

Now, my Titania; wake you, my sweet queen.
Tit. My Oberon! what visions have I seen!

Methought I was enamored of an ass.

Ober. There lies your love.

Tit.

How came these things to pass?

O, how mine eyes do loath his visage now!

Ober. Silence awhile. Robin, take off this head.

Titania, music call; and strike more dead

Than common sleep, of all these five the sense.

Tit. Music! ho! music! such as charmeth sleep.

Puck. Now, when thou wakest, with thine own fool's eyes perp Ober. Sound music! [still music.] Come, my queen, take hand

with me,

And rock the ground whereon these sleepers he.

Now thou and I are new in amity,

And will to-morrow midnight, solemnly

Dance in Duke Theseus' house triumphantly,

And bless it to all fair posterity;

There shall the pair of faithful lovers be
Wedded, with Theseus, all in jollity.

Puck. Fairy king, attend and mark;

I do hear the morning lark.

Ober. Then, my queen, in silence sad,
Trip we after the night's shade.
We the globe can compass soon,

Swifter than the wandering moon.

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF SCOTTISH LIFE-THE AINSLIE FAMILY.

PROFESSOR WILSON.

GILBERT AINSLIE was a poor man, and he had been a poor man all the days of his life, which were not few, for his thin hair was now waxing gray. He had been born and bred on the small moorland farm which he now occupied; and he hoped to die there, as his father and grandfather had done before him, leaving a family just above the more bitter wants of this world. Labor, hard and unremitting, had been his lot in life; but although sometimes severely tried, he had never repined; and through all the mist and gloom, and even the storms that had assailed him, he had lived on from year to year in that calm and resigned contentment, which unconsciously cheers the hearth-stone of the blameless poor.

With his own hands he had ploughed, sowed, and reaped his often scanty harvest, assisted, as they grew up by three sons, who even in boyhood were happy to work along with their father in the fields. Out of doors or in, Gilbert Ainslie was never idle. The spade, the shears, the plough-shaft, the sickle, and the flail, all came readily to hands that grasped them well; and not a morsel of food was eaten under his roof, or a garment worn there that was not honestly, severely, nobly earned. Gilbert Ainslie was a slave, but it was for them he loved with a sober and deep affection. The thraldom under which he lived God had imposed, and it only served to give his character a shade of silent gravity, but not austere; to make his smiles fewer, but more heartfelt; to calm his soul at grace before and after meals; and to kindle it in morning and evening prayer.

There is no need to tell the character of the wife of such a man. Meek and thoughtful, yet gladsome and gay withal, her heaven was in her house; and her gentler and weaker hands helped to bar the door against want. Of ten children that had

been born to them, they had lost three, and as the had fed, clothed, and educated them respectably, so did they give them who died a respectable funeral. The living did not grudge to give up for awhile some of their daily comforts for the sake of the dead, and bought with the little sums which their industry had saved, decent mournings, worn on Sabbath, and then carefully laid by. Of the seven that survived, two sons were farmservants in the neighborhood, while three daughters and two sons remained at home, growing or grown up, a small, happy, hard-working household.

The boys and girls had made some plots of flowers among the vegetables that the little garden supplied for their homely meals; pinks and carnations brought from walled gardens of rich men farther down in the cultivated valleys, grew here with somewhat diminished lustre; a bright show of tulips had a strange beauty in the midst of that moorland; and the smell of roses mixed well with that of the clover, the beautiful fair clover that loves the soil and the air of Scotland, and gives the rich and balmy milk to the poor man's lips.

In this cottage Gilbert's youngest child, a girl about nine years of age, had been lying for a week in a fever. It was now Saturday evening, and the ninth day of the disease. Was she to live or die? It seemed as if a very few hours were between the innocent creature and heaven. All the symptoms were those of approaching death. The parents knew well the change that comes over the human face, whether it be in infancy, youth or prime, just before the departure of the spirit; and as they stood together by Margaret's bed, it seemed to them that the fatal shadow had fallen upon her features.

The surgeon of the parish lived some miles distant, but they expected him now every moment, and many a wistful look was directed by tearful eyes along the moor. The daughter, who was out at service came anxiously home on this night, the only one that could be allowed her, for the poor must work in their grief, and hired servants must do their duty to those whose bread they eat, even when nature is sick-sick at heart. Another of the daughters came in from the potato field beyond the brae with what was to be their frugal supper. The calm, noiseless spirit of life was in and around the house, while death seemed dealing with one who, a few days ago, was like light upon the floor, and the sound of music that always breathed up when most wanted; glad and joyous in common talk-sweet, silvery and mournful when it joined in hymn or psalm