a man."—Henry Mackenzie.

In summer there is a beauty in the wildest moors of Scotland, and the wayfaring man who sits down for an hour's rest beside some little spring that flows unheard through the brightened moss and water-cresses, feels his weary heart revived by the silent, serene, and solitary prospect. On every side sweet sunny spots of verdure smile towards him from among the melancholy heather—unexpectedly in the solitude a stray sheep, it may be with its lambs, starts half alarmed at his motionless figure—insects large, bright, and beautiful come careering by him through the desert air—nor does the Wild want its own songsters, the grey linnet, fond of the blooming furze, and now and then the lark mounting up to heaven above the summits of the green pastoral hills.—During such a sunshiny hour, the lonely cottage on the waste seems to stand a paradise; and as he rises to pursue his journey, the traveller looks back and blesses it with a mingled emotion of delight and envy. There, thinks he, abide the children of innocence and contentment, the two most benign spirits that watch over human life.

But other thoughts arise in the mind of him who may chance to journey through the same scene in the desolation of Winter. The cold bleak sky girdles the moor as with a belt of ice—life is frozen in air and on earth. The silent is not of repose but extinction—and should a solitary human dwelling catch his eye half buried in the snow, he is sad for the sake of them whose destiny it is to abide far from the cheerful haunts of men, shrouded up in melancholy, by poverty held in thrall, or pining away in unvisited or untended sickness.

But, in truth, the heart of human life is but imperfectly discovered from its countenance; and before we can know what the summer, or what the winter yields for enjoyment or trial to our country's peasantry, we must have conversed with them in their fields and by their fire-sides; and make ourselves acquainted with the powerful ministry of the seasons, not over those objects alone that feed the eye and the imagination, but over all the incidents, occupations, and events that modify or constitute the existence of the poor.

I have a short and simple story to tell of the winter life of the moorland cottager—a story but of one evening—with a few events and no signal catastrophe—but which may haply please those hearts whose delight it is to think on the humble under-plots that are carrying on in the great Drama of life.

Two cottagers, husband and wife, were sitting by their cheerful peat-fire one winter evening, in a small lonely hut, on the edge of a wide moor, at some miles distance from any other habitation. There had been, at one time, several huts of the same kind erected close together, and inhabited by families of the poorest class of day-labourers who found work among the distant farms, and at night returned to dwellings which were rent free, with their little gardens, won from the waste.—But one family after another had dwindled away, and the turf-built huts had all fallen into ruins, except one that had always stood in the centre of this little solitary village, with its summer walls covered with the richest honeysuckles and in the midst of the brightest of all the gardens. It alone now sent up its smoke into the clear winter sky—and its little end window, now lighted up, was the only ground star that shone towards the belated traveller, if any such ventured to cross, on a winter night, a scene so dreary and desolate. The affairs of the small household were all arranged for the night. The little rough pony that had drawn in a sledge, from the heart of the Black-Moss, the fuel by whose blaze the cottiers were now sitting cheerily and the little Highland cow, whose milk enabled them to live, were standing amicably together, under cover of a rude shed, of which one side was formed by the peat stack, and which was at once byre, and stable, and hen-roost. Within, the clock ticked cheerfully as the fire-light readied its old oak-wood case across the yellow sanded floor—and a small round table stood between, covered with a snow-white cloth, on which were milk and oat cakes, the morning, mid-day, and evening meal of these frugal and contented cottiers. The spades and the mattocks of the labourer were collected into one corner, and showed that the succeeding day was the blessed Sabbath—while on the wooden chimney-piece were seen lying an open Bible ready for family worship.

The father and mother were sitting together without opening their lips, but with their hearts overflowing with happiness, for on this Saturday-night they were, every minute, expecting to hear at the latch the hand of their only daughter, a maiden of about fifteen years, who was at service with a farmer over the hills. This dutiful child was, as they knew, to bring home to them "her sair-worn penny fee," a pittance which, in the beauty of her girl-hood, she earned singing at her work, and which, in the benignity of that sinless time, she would pour with tears into the bosoms she so dearly loved. Forty shillings a year were all the wages of sweet Hannah Lee—but though she wore at her labour a tortoise-shell comb in her auburn hair, and though in the kirk none were more becomingly arrayed than she, one half, at least, of her earnings were to be reserved for the holiest of all purposes, and her kind innocent heart was gladdened when she looked on the little purse that was, on the long expected Saturday-night, to be taken from her bosom, and put, with a blessing, into the hand of her father, now growing old at his daily toils.

Of such a child the happy cottiers were thinking in their silence. And well might they be called happy. It is at that sweet season that filial piety is most beautiful.—Their own Hannah, had just outgrown the mere unthinking gladness of childhood, but had not yet reached that time, when inevitable selfishness mixes with the pure current of love. She had begun to think on what her affectionate heart had felt so long; and when she looked on the pale face and bending frame of her mother, on the deepening wrinkles, and whitening hairs of her father, often would she lie weeping for their sakes on her midnight bed—and wish that she was beside them as they slept, that she might kneel down and kiss them, and mention their names over and over again in her prayer. The parents whom before she had only loved, her expanding heart now also venerated. With gushing tenderness was now mingled a holy fear and an awful reverence. She had discerned the relation in which she, an only child, stood to her poor parents now that they were getting old, and there was not a passage in Scripture that spake of parents or of children, from Joseph sold into slavery, to Mary weeping below the Cross, that was not written, never to be obliterated, on her uncorrupted heart.

The father rose from his seat, and went to the door to look out into the night.—The stars were in thousands—and the full moon was risen.—It was almost light as day, and the snow, that seemed incrusted with diamonds, was so hardened by the frost, that his daughter's homeward feet would leave no mark on its surface. He had been toiling all day among the distant Castle-woods, and, stiff and wearied as he now was, he was almost tempted to go to meet his child, but his wife's kind voice dissuaded him, and returning to the fire-side, they began to talk of her whose image had been so long passing before them in their silence.

"She is growing up to be a bony lassie," said the mother, "her long and weary attendance on me during my fever last spring kept her down awhile—but now she is sprouting fast and fair as a lily, and may the blessing of God be as dew and as sunshine to our sweet flower all the days she bloometh upon this earth." "Aye Agnes," replied the father, "we are not very old yet—though we are getting older—and a few