sort of English possible to be acquired by a Scotch day-labourer,
self-educated, all but the rudiments of reading and writing, and a
few lectures on popular poetry from "a young student of Aberdeen,"
now the Rev. Mr. Adamson, who must look back on the friendship which
he bore these two young men as one of the noblest pages in his life.

Talk to the many of religion, and they will put on a long face,
confess that it is a thing of the greatest importance to all--and go
away and forget the whole. Talk to them of education; they will
readily acknowledge that it's "a braw thing to be weel learned," and
begin a lamentation, which is only shorter than the lamentations of
Jeremiah because they cannot make it as long, on the ignorance of the
age in which they live; but they neither stir hand nor foot in the
matter. But speak to them of politics, and their excited
countenances and kindling eye show in a moment how deeply they are
interested. Politics are therefore an important feature, and an
almost indispensable element in such a work as mine. Had it
consisted solely of exhortations to industry and rules of economy, it
would have been dismissed with an "Ou ay, it's braw for him to crack
that way: but if he were whaur we are, 'deed he wad just hae to do
as we do." But by mixing up the science with politics, and giving it
an occasional political impetus, a different result may be reasonably
expected. In these days no man can be considered a patriot or friend
of the poor, who is not also a politician.

It is amusing, by-the-bye, to see how the world changes its codes of
respectability, and how, what is anathema in one generation, becomes
trite orthodoxy in the next. The political sins in the work were,
that "my brother had attacked the corn-laws with some severity; and I
have attempted to level a battery against that sort of servile homage
which the poor pay to the rich!"

There is no use pursuing the story much farther. They again save a
little money, and need it; for the estate on which they have lived
from childhood changing hands, they are, with their aged father,
expelled from the dear old dog-kennel to find house-room where they
can. Why not?--"it was not in the bond." The house did not belong
to them; nothing of it, at least, which could be specified in any
known lease. True, there may have been associations: but what
associations can men be expected to cultivate on fourteenpence a-day?
So they must fort