to them the words of St. Paul to the Galatians: '_Oh, foolish
Fladibisterians, who hath bewitched you?_' There is an atmosphere of
tranquillity and Arcadian peace swimming over Fladibister such as is
nowhere else to be found in Shetland. The young men of the place roam
far over the sea, as mariners and fishers; but like the exiled
Jacobite--

'Who sighed at Arno for his lovelier Tees,'

they never feel happy till they are back home here under the roofs of
thatch. And what a work their women folks make with them when they
return! What feasting and merrymaking! What screwing of fiddle-pegs,
nimble motion of elbows and long-sustained dancing and skipping. I don't
deny that there is clink of glasses, too, at times, to aid the passage
of the hours far past the noon of night."

CUNNINGSBURGH.

Cunningsburgh, the journey to which was shortened by these tales, is one
of those places you might pass through without being aware of it; that
is to say, there is no feature about it so startling or abrupt as to
impress itself at once on the attention. The district all round is well
tilled, and the houses bien and comfortable.

The minister of the place arrests the attention instantly. His genial
face and hearty handshake have a more Christianising effect on the soul
than a ton of sermons. I have never heard a more kindly voice or seen a
face in which tenderness, merriment, and intellectual keenness, were all
so harmoniously blended. He does not smoke himself, but has that wise
and wide perception of things which leads him to press those who are
anxious to smoke, but say they are not, to take out their pipes in his
drawing-room. It was easy to see the man he was, by a hasty look at his
book-shelves. All the philosophers were represented there, from Plato
to the present-day mystical Germans. Lang's _Odyssey_ was side by side
with the Icelandic sagas and the Song of the Niebelungs. I did not see
many books of Systematic Theology; but the Greek tragedians, the Sacred
Books of the East, German and French novels, had all a place in the
bookcase of this cosmopolitan clergyman of a remote Shetlandic parish.

"KEEPING OFF."

In secluded townships like Cunningsburgh where life's round has much of
the monotony of fashionable society, and involves a still recurring
succession of similar duties, the minister is indeed a power. If he is a
man of broad and enlightened mind, his influence for good is
incalculable. The Kirk-Session is