my window, there were none took my attention so completely as two young men, who always walked arm-in-arm, and seemed to be brothers. I thought I had seen their strongly-marked Highland faces before, and by degrees learned that they were none other than the old man's two sons, who had been at poor Menie's last funeral, but were now grown up, and studying for the medical profession at the college in Glasgow. Their father evidently kept them on short allowance, judging from their coarse tartan clothes, and continual munching of oaten cakes: but I was told they were hard students, and particularly clever in the anatomy class. One dark, dreary morning, about the Christmas-time, I noted that Lady Catherine and her family had been in my dreams all night—their grand house, and gay goings-on in London, mingling strangely with the old story of Master Arthur and the farmer's daughter. When the newspaper, which I shared with the schoolmaster, came, judge of my astonishment to read that her ladyship had died suddenly in a fit of apoplexy, which came upon her at the whist-table, and her remains had been conveyed to the family vault in Dumbartonshire. There was a lesson on the uncertainty of life! and it is my trust that I found in it a use of warning; but the continual news and strangers at the toll-bar, the exact gathering in of the dues, which was not always an easy task, and your own merry schoolmates, Master Willie, had in a manner shuffled it out of my mind before the second evening.

It had been a dark, foggy day, and I went early to sleep, there being few travellers; but in the dead of night, between twelve and one, I was roused by a thundering summons at the toll-bar. The night was calm and starless, a mass of heavy clouds covered the sky, broken at times by gusts of moaning wind from the west, and broad bursts of moonlight. I threw on my coat, lit my lantern, and hurried out. There stood a large gig with three persons. They must have been tightly packed in it, and I never saw a more impatient horse. There was some delay in getting out the silver, and I had time to see that the two men who sat, one on each side, were the Highland brothers. There was a woman between them, in a dingy cloak and bonnet, with a thick black veil. She neither moved nor spoke, though the toll somehow puzzled the students. I was determined to have it any way, and one of them saying something to his companion in Gaelic, reached a half-crown to me. I knew I had no change, and told him so. 'I'll call in the morning,' said he; but the horse gave a bound, and the silver flew out of his fingers. Both the brothers looked down after it. I had a strange curiosity about their companion, and that instant a gust of wind blew back the veil, and the moonlight shone clear and full upon the face: it was the dead visage of Lady Catherine! I saw but one glance of it; the next moment the heavy veil had fallen. 'Get the silver yourself, and keep it all,' cried the two men, as I opened for them without a word: and from that day to this, no one has ever heard the story from me. I put the half-crown in the poor's-box next Sabbath. But, Master Willie, after that night I never cared for keeping the toll-bar. The sound of wheels coming after dark had always a strange effect on me, and I could never see a gig pass without shivering. So I gave up my situation, and took to the old trade of gardening again. The pleasant plants and flowers bring no dark stories to one's mind. But yonder's the laird: dinner will be ready by this time.

And John was right; for it was ready, with a jovial party to despatch it. But I never saw my old friend after. He emigrated to Canada with his managing master in the following spring; and, having at least kept the real names with enjoined secrecy, it seems at this distance of time no breach of trust to repeat the toll-keeper's story.

CARDINAL MEZZOFANTI.

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Among the lions of Rome during the last twenty years, not the least attractive, especially for literary visitors, was the celebrated Cardinal Mezzofanti. Easy of access to foreigners of every condition, simple, unpretending, cheerful, courteous even to familiarity, he never failed to make a most favourable impression upon his visitors; and marvellous as were the tales in circulation concerning him, the opportunity of witnessing more closely the exercise of his almost preternatural powers of language, served but to deepen the wonder with which he was regarded. The extent, the variety, and the solidity of his attainments, and, still more, his complete and ready command, for the purposes of conversation, of all the motley stores which he had laid up, were so far beyond all example, whether in ancient or modern times, as not only to place him in the very first rank of the celebrities of our generation, but to mark him out as one of the most extraordinary personages recorded in history.

Giuseppe (Joseph) Mezzofanti was born at Bologna in 1774, of an extremely humble family. His father was a poor carpenter; and the eminence to which, by his own unassisted exertions, Mezzofanti, without once leaving his native city, attained in the exercise of the faculty of language—which is ordinarily cultivated only by the arduous and expensive process of visiting and travelling in the different countries in which each separate language is spoken—is not the least remarkable of the many examples of successful 'pursuit of knowledge under difficulties,' which literary history supplies. He was educated in one of the poor schools of his native city, which was under the care of the fathers of the celebrated Congregation of the Oratory; and the evidence of more than ordinary talent which he exhibited, early attracted the notice of one of the members of the order, to whose kind instruction and patronage Mezzofanti was indebted for almost all the advantages which he afterwards enjoyed. This good man—whose name was Respighi, and to whose judicious patronage of struggling genius science is also indebted for the eminent success of the distinguished naturalist Ranzani, the son of a Bolognese barber, and a fellow-pupil of Mezzofanti—procured for his young protégé the instruction of the best masters he could discover among his friends. He himself, it is believed, taught him Latin; Greek fell to the share of Father Emmanuel da Ponte, a Spanish ex-Jesuit—the order had at this time been suppressed; and the boy received his first initiation into the great Eastern family of languages from an old Dominican, Father Ceruti, who, at the instance of his friend Respighi, undertook to teach him Hebrew. Beyond this point, Mezzofanti's knowledge of languages was almost exclusively the result of his own unassisted study.

From a very early age, he was destined for the church, and he received holy orders about the year 1797. During the period of his probationary studies, however, he obtained, through the kindness of his friend F. Respighi, the place of tutor in the family of the Marescalchi, one of the most distinguished among the nobility of Bologna; and the opportunities for his peculiar studies afforded by the curious and valuable library to which he thus enjoyed free access, may probably have exercised a decisive influence upon his whole career.

His attainments gradually attracted the notice of his fellow-citizens. In the year 1797, he was appointed professor of Arabic in the university; a few years later, he was named assistant-librarian of the city library; and in 1803, he succeeded to the important chair of Oriental Languages. This post, which was most congenial to his tastes, he held, with one interruption, for a long series of years. In 1812, he was advanced to a higher place in the staff of the library; and in 1815, on the death of the chief librarian, Pozetti, he