so beautiful?" Over them where they lay, bended down the pine-branch roof, as if it would give way beneath the increasing weight; but there it still hung, though the drift came over their feet, and up to their knees, and seemed stealing upwards to be their shroud. "Oh! I am overcome with drowsiness, and fain would be allowed to sleep. Who is disturbing me—and what noise is this in our house?" "Fear not, fear not, Flora,-God is with us." "Mother! am Ilying in your arms? My father surely is not in the storm. Oh, I have had a most dreadful dream !” and with such mutterings as these Flora relapsed again into that perilous sleep, which soon becomes that of death.

Night itself came, but Flora and Ronald knew it not; and both lay motionless in one snow-shroud. Many passions, though earthborn, heavenly all-pity, and grief, and love, and hope, and at last despair, had prostrated the strength they had so long supported; and the brave boy-who had been for some time feeble as a very child after a fever, with a mind confused and wandering, and in its perplexities sore afraid of some nameless ill-had submitted to lay down his head beside his Flora's, and had soon become, like her, insensible to the night and all its storms.

Bright was the peat fire in the hut of Flora's parents in Glenco, and they were among the happiest of the humble happy, blessing this the birthday of their blameless child. They thought of her, singing her sweet songs by the fireside of the hut in Glencreran, and tender thoughts of her cousin Ronald were with them in their prayers. No warning came to their ears in the sugh or the howl; for fear it is that creates its own ghosts, and all its own ghostlike visitings; and they had seen their Flora, in the meekness of the morning, setting forth on her way over the quiet mountains, like a fawn to play. Sometimes too, Love, who starts at shadows as if they were of the grave, is strangely insensible to realities that might well inspire dismay. So was it now with the dwellers in the hut at the head of Glencreran. Their Ronald had left them in the morning,-night had come, and he and Flora were not there, but the day had been almost like a summer day, and in their infatuation they never doubted that the happy creatures had changed their minds, and that Flora had returned with him to Glenco. Ronald had laughingly said, that haply he might

surprise the people in that glen by bringing back to them Flora on her birthday, and-strange though it afterwards seemed to her to be that belief prevented one single fear from touching his mother's heart, and she and her husband that night lay down in untroubled sleep.

And what could have been done for them, had they been told by some good or evil spirit that their children were in the clutches of such a night? As well seek for a single bark in the middle of the misty main! But the inland storm had been seen brewing among the mountains round King's-House, and hut had communicated with hut, though far apart in regions where the traveller sees no symptoms of human life. Down through the long cliffpass of Mealanumy, between Buchael-Etive and the Black Mount towards the lone House of Dalness, that lies in everlasting shadows, went a band of shepherds, trampling their way across a hundred frozen streams. Dalness joined its strength, and then away over the drift-bridged chasms toiled that gathering, with their sheep-dogs scouring the loose snows in the van, Fingal the Red Reaver, with his head aloft on the look-out for deer, grimly eyeing the corrie where last he tasted blood. All " plaided in their tartan array," these shepherds laughed at the storm,—and hark! you hear the bagpipe play-the music the Highlanders love both in war and in peace.

'They think then of the owrie cattle,
And silly sheep;"

and though they ken 'twill be a moonless night,-for the snowstorm will sweep her out of heaven,-up the mountain and down the glen they go, marking where flock and herd have betaken themselves, and now, at midfall, unafraid of that blind hollow, they descend into the depth where once stood the old grove of pines. Following their dogs, who know their duties in their instinct, the band, without seeing it, are now close to that ruined hut. Why bark the sheep-dogs so-and why howls Fingal, as if some spirit passed athwart the night? He scents the dead body of the boy who so often had showed him on in the forest when the antlers went by! Not dead-or dead she who is on his bosom. Yet life in both is frozen,-and will the red blood in their veins

ever again be thawed? Almost pitch dark is the roofless ruin; and the frightened sheep know not what is that terrible shape that is howling there. But a man enters and lifts up one of the bodies, giving it into the arms of those at the doorway, and then lifts up the other; and, by the flash of a rifle, they see that it is Ronald Cameron and Flora Macdonald, seemingly both frozen to death. Some of those reeds that the shepherds burn in their huts are kindled, and in that small light they are assured that such are the corpses. But that noble dog knows that death is not there, and licks the face of Ronald, as if he would restore life to his eyes. Two of the shepherds know well how to fold the dying in their plaids, how gentlest to carry them along; for they had learnt it on the field of victorious battle, when, without stumbling over the dead and wounded, they bore away the shattered body, yet living, of the youthful warrior, who had shown that of such a clan he was worthy to be the chief.

The storm was with them all the way down the glen; nor could they have heard each others' voices had they spoke; but mutely they shifted the burden from strong hand to hand, thinking of the hut in Glenco, and of what would be felt there on their arrival with the dying or the dead. Blind people walk through what to them is the night of crowded day-streets, unpausing turn round corners, unhesitating plunge down steep stairs, wind their way fearlessly through whirlwinds of life, and reach in their serenity, each one unharmed, his own obscure house. For God is with the blind. So is He with all who walk on walks of mercy. This saving band had no fear, therefore there was no danger, on the edge of the pitfall or the cliff. They knew the countenances of the mountains, shown momentarily by ghastly gleamings through the fitful night, and the hollow sound of each particular stream beneath the snow, at places where in other weather there was a pool or a waterfall. The dip of the hills, in spite of the drifts, familiar to their feet, did not deceive them now; and then the dogs, in their instinct, were guides that erred not; and as well as the shepherds knew it themselves, did Fingal know that they were anxious to reach Glenco. He led the way as if he were in moonlight; and often stood still when they were shifting their burden, and whined as if in grief. He knew where the bridges were

-stones or logs; and he rounded the marshes where at springs the wild fowl feed. And thus instinct, and reason, and faith, conducted the saving band along,—and now they are at Glenco, and at the door of the hut.

To life were brought the dead; and there, at midnight, sat they up like ghosts. Strange seemed they for a while to each other's eyes,--and at each other they looked as if they had forgotten how dearly once they loved. Then, as if in holy fear, they gazed in each other's faces, thinking that they had awoke together in heaven. Flora!" said Ronald,--and that sweet word, the first he had been able to speak, reminded him of all that had passed, and he knew that the God in whom they had put their trust had sent them deliverance. Flora, too, knew her parents, who were on their knees; and she strove to rise up and kneel down beside them, but she was powerless as a broken reed: and when she thought to join with them in thanksgiving, her voice was gone. Still as death sat all the people in the hut, and one or two who were fathers were not ashamed to weep.

110.-CRABBE AND BURKE.

[IN a notice of George Crabbe, (vol. i. p. 110,) we have said that he was rescued from poverty by the kindness of Edmund Burke. The circumstances of this kindness are thus detailed in the interesting life of the Poet, by his son, the Rev. George Crabbe.]

Ir is to be regretted that Mr. Crabbe's Journal does not extend over more than three months of the miserable year that he spent in the city (1781). During the whole of that time he experienced nothing but disappointments and repulses. His circumstances were now, indeed, fearfully critical: absolute want stared him in the face a jail seemed the only immediate refuge for his head; and the best he could hope for was dismissing all his dreams of literary distinction, to find the means of daily bread in the capacity of a druggist's assistant. To borrow, without any prospect of repay

ing, was what his honesty shrunk from; to beg was misery, and promised, moreover, to be fruitless. A spirit less manly and less religious must have sunk altogether under such an accumulation of sorrows.

Mr. Crabbe made one effort more. In his "sketch" he says: "He did not so far mistake as to believe that any name can give lasting reputation to an undeserving work; but he was fully persuaded that it must be some very meritorious and extraordinary performance, such as he had not the vanity to suppose himself capable of producing, that would become popular, without the introductory probat of some well-known and distinguished character. Thus thinking, and having now his first serious attempt completed, afraid of venturing without a guide, doubtful whom to select, knowing many by reputation, none personally-he fixed, impelled by some propitious influence, in some happy moment, upon Edmund Burke-one of the first of Englishmen, and, in the capacity and energy of his mind, one of the greatest of human beings."

The letter which the young poet addressed to Burke must have been seen by Mr. Prior, when he composed his life of the great 'statesman; but that work had been published for nine years before any of Mr. Crabbe's family were aware that a copy of it had been preserved; nor had they any exact knowledge of the extremity of distress which this remarkable letter describes, until the hand that penned it was in the grave. It is as follows:

TO EDMUND BURKE, ESQ.

"Sir-I am sensible that I need even your talents to apologize for the freedom I now take: but I have a plea which, however simply urged, will, with a mind like yours, sir, procure me a pardon; I am one of those outcasts on the world, who are without a friend, without employment, without bread.

Pardon me a short preface. I had a partial father, who gave me a better education than his broken fortune would have allowed; and a better than was necessary, as he could give me that only. I was designed for the profession of physic; but not having wherewithal to complete the requisite studies, the design but served to convince me of a parent's affection, and the error it had occa