barrels to supply their customers. A raspberry pie, and a splendid dish of strawberries and cream, with tea (the inseparable beverage of every meal in New Brunswick), forms our repast; and such would it be in ninety-nine houses out of a hundred of the class I am describing. Many of the luxuries, and all the necessaries of life, can be raised at home, by those who are industrious and spirited enough to take advantage of their resources. Melancthon this year expects to bread himself, as well as grow enough of hay to winter his stock. Since he commenced farming he purchased what was not raised on the land by the sale of what was cut off it—that is, by selling ash timber and cord-wood he procured what he required. This, however, can only be done where there is water conveyance to market. The indefatigable Melancthon had four miles to "haul" his marketable wood; but, when the roads were bad, he was chopping and clearing at the same time, and when the snow was well beaten down, with his little French horse and light sled he soon drew it to the place from whence the boats are loaded in the spring. Dinner being now finished, and after some conversation, which must of course be of a very local description, although it is brightened with many a quiet touch of wit, of which the natives possess a great original fund, and Melancthon, having finished in the forenoon harrowing in his buck-wheat, has now gone with his axe to hew at a house-frame which he has in preparation, and Sybèl and I having settled our affair of warp and woof, it is now time for me to proceed. She with her large Swiss-looking sun-hat, placed lightly on her brow, accompanies me to the "bars," and there, having parted with her, we will now resume our walk. The next lot presents one of those scenes of desolation and decay which will sometimes appear even in this land of improvement. What had once been a large clearing is now grown wild with bushes, the stumps have all sprouted afresh, and the fences fallen to the ground. The house presents that least-respectable of all ruins, a deserted log-building. There is no solidity of material nor remains of architectural beauty to make us respect its fate. 'Tis decay in its plainest and most uninteresting aspect. A few flowers have been planted near the house, and even now, where the weeds grow dark and rank, a fair young rose is waving her lovely head. The person who had gone thus far on in the toils of settling was from England, but the love of his native land burned all too bright within his heart. In vain he toiled on those rude fields, and though his own, they seemed not his home. The spirit voices of the land of his childhood called him back—he obeyed their spell, and just at the time his labours would have been repaid, he left, and, with all the money he could procure, paid his passage to England, where he soon after died in the workhouse of his parish. Yet even there the thought, perhaps, might soothe him, that though he filled a pauper's grave, it was in the soil where his fathers slept. The forsaken lot is still unclaimed, for people prefer the woodlands to those neglected clearings, from which to procure a crop infinitely more trouble and expense would be required than in taking it at once from the forest. Our way is not now so lonely as it was in the morning. Parties of the male population are frequently passing. One of the settlers has to-day a "barn-raising frolic," and thither they are bound. They present a fair specimen of their class in the forest settlements. The bushwhacker has nothing of the "bog-trotter" in his appearance, and his step is firm and free, as though he trod on marble floor. The attire of the younger parties which, although coarse, is perfectly clean and whole, has nothing rustic in its arrangement. His kersey trowsers are tightly strapped, and the little low-crowned hat, with a streaming ribbon, is placed most jauntily on his head. His axe is carried over one shoulder and his jacket over the other, which in summer is the common mode of carrying this part of the apparel. Those who have been lumbering may easily be known among the others, by sporting a flashy stock or waistcoat, and by being arrayed in "boughten" clothes, procured in town at a most expensive rate in lieu of their lumber. Little respect is, however, paid here to the cloth, (that is, broadcloth), for it is a sure sign of bad management, and most likely of debt, for the back settlers to be arrayed in any thing but their own home-made clothing. The grave and serious demeanour of these people is as different from the savage scowl of the discontented peasant, murmuring beneath the burthen of taxation and ill-remunerated toil, as from the free, light-hearted, and careless laughter, both of which characterise the rural groups in the fertile fields of England. New Brunswick is the land of strangers; even the first settlers, the "sons of the soil," as they claim to be, have hardly yet forgot their exile, a trace of which character, be he prosperous as he may, still hovers over the emigrant. Their early home, with its thousand ties of love, cannot be all forgotten. This feeling descends to their children, losing its tone of sadness, but throwing a serious shade over the national character, which, otherwise has nothing gloomy or melancholy in its composition. There is also a kind of "looking a-head" expression of countenance natural to the country, which is observed even in the children, who are not the careless frolicsome beings they are in other countries, but are here more truly miniature men and women, looking, as the Yankees express it, as if they had all cut their "eye-teeth."

But here we are, for the present, arrived at the bourne of our journey. High on a lofty hill before us stands a large frame building, the place of worship as well as the principal school-house of the settlement. This double purpose it is not, however, destined long to be devoted to, for the building of a church is already in contemplation, and will, no doubt, soon be proceeded with. The beaming sun is shining with dazzling radiance on its white walls, telling, in fervent whispers, that a shelter from the heat will be desirable; so here we will enter, where the shadowy trees, and bright stream glancing through the garden flowers, speak of inhabitants from the olden world. A frame building has been joined to the original log-house, and the dwelling thus made large enough to accommodate the household. Mrs. Gordon, the lady of the mansion, and the friend I have come thus far to see, is one of those persons the brilliance of whose gem-like character has been increased by the hard rubs of the world. She has experienced much of Time's chance and change—experiences and trials which deserve relating at large, and which I shall hereafter give, as they were told me by herself. Traces of the beauty she once possessed are yet pourtrayed on her faded but placid brow, and appear in brighter lines on the fair faces of her daughters. Her husband is from home, and the boys are gone to the frolic, so we will have a quiet evening to ourselves. The arrangement of this dwelling, although similar in feature to Sybèl Gray's, is yet, as it were, different in expression; for instance, there is not such a display made of the home-manufactured garments, which it is the pride of her heart to look upon. These, of course, are here in existence, but are placed in another receptacle; and the place they hold along the walls of Sybèl's dwelling is here occupied by a book-case, in which rests a store of treasured volumes; our conversation, too, is of a different cast from the original, yet often commonplace, remarks of Melancthon. 'Tis most likely a discussion of the speculative fancies contained in those sweet brighteners of our solitude, the books; or in tracing the same lights and shadows of character described in them, as were occurring in the passages of life around us; or, perhaps, something leads us to talk of him whose portrait hangs on the wall, the peasant bard of Scotland, whose heart-strung harp