the mist cleared
away, and the subject made tangible. Well, listen!

The three brethren were three trees, or rather divisions of one tree--as
like each other as one pea is to another--which once stood in the middle
of the high road from Glasgow to Dumfries, upon the banks of the Nith.
People had it that their similarity was so great that it reached the
details of their branches, and even leaves, and that they were in
every--even in the minutest--respect copies or fac-similes of each
other. Nobody living--and far less any one dead--can tell their age.
They saw Oliver Cromwell and his saintly crew march into Scotland; and
beheld, in later times, the Highland host, in the year '45, pass along.
They might have given an old chronicle of ancient times and manners, had
it not been that they probably did not outlive the age of Methuselah.
But

"Improvisa vis lethi rapuit
Rapietque gentes."

Destruction came in the shape of a nor'wester, and they are now in the
act of being converted into snuff-boxes, writing-desks, and
dressing-cases, for their old and attached acquaintances and friends;
every one seems more anxious than another to obtain a relic of the
immortal triumvirate--and they are more likely to be remembered with
pleasurable feelings than even were the Triumvirates of ancient Rome.
But now that they have bowed their heads, and given up their roots, it
is proper that some effort should be made to perpetuate their memory;
and who so fit as an old Closeburn man to execute this bold but
praiseworthy task?

The explanation, however, requires a glance at the race of gipsies, one
of whom thus characterises the race:--

"My bonny lass, I work in brass--
A tinkler is my station--
I've travell'd round all Christian ground
In this my occupation.

I've ta'en the gold--I've been enroll'd
In many a noble squadron--
In vain they search'd, when off I march'd,
To go and clout the caldron."

The gipsies have now disappeared entirely from the north of Scotland;
even in Fife, the former residence of the gipsy clan Jamphrey, no such
variety of the species is to be found. Their chief residence, as we have
had occasion to say before, is now on the Borders, where, in the village
of Yetholm, and in Langtown, they still maintain a separate clanship.
They still are, and have always been, extremely jealous of the marriage
of any of their daughters, in particular, out of the tribe. Hence the
fact, that a