ecidedly intellectual) sat at my side. My friend had drawn in his
seat beside his mother, a well-formed, comely brunette, of about
thirty-eight, whom I might almost have mistaken for his elder sister;
and two or three younger members of the family were grouped behind
her. The fire blazed cheerily within the wide and open chimney; and,
throwing its strong light on the faces and limbs of the circle, sent
our shadows flickering across the rafters and the wall behind. The
conversation was animated and rational, and every one contributed his
share. But I was chiefly interested in the remarks of the old man,
for whom I already felt a growing veneration, and in those of his
wonderfully-gifted son.

"Unquestionably, Mr. Burns," said the man in black, addressing the
farmer, "politeness is but a very shadow, as the poet hath it, if the
heart be wanting. I saw, to-night, in a strictly polite family, so
marked a presumption of the lack of that natural affection of which
politeness is but the portraiture and semblance, that truly I have been
grieved in my heart ever since."

"Ah, Mr. Murdoch," said the farmer, "there is ever more hypocrisy in
the world than in the church, and that, too, among the class of fine
gentlemen and fine ladies who deny it most. But the instance"--

"You know the family, my worthy friend," continued Mr. Murdoch--"it is a
very pretty one, as we say vernacularly, being numerous, and the sons
highly genteel young men; the daughters not less so. A neighbour of the
same very polite character, coming on a visit when I was among them,
asked the father, in the course of a conversation to which I was privy,
how he meant to dispose of his sons; when the father replied that he had
not yet determined. The visitor said, that were he in his place, seeing
they were all well-educated young men, he would send them abroad; to
which the father objected the indubitable fact, that many young men lost
their health in foreign countries, and very many their lives. 'True,'
did the visitor rejoin; 'but, as you have a number of sons, it will be
strange if some one of them does not live and make a fortune.' Now,
Mr. Burns, what will you, who know the feelings of paternity, and the
incalculable, and assuredly I may say, invaluable value of human souls,
think when I add, that the father commended the hint, as showing the
wisdom of a shrewd man of the world!"

"Even the chief priests," said the old man, "pronounced it unlawful to
cast