intelligence and
their years. To the heads of it, the promised improvement in their
condition afforded the calm, yet exquisite satisfaction which the
prospect of a competence for their little ones, and the means of
educating and preparing them to act their part in life, naturally
awakens; and in the younger members of it, the reported beauties of the
new parish, and the approach of a new journey, excited that joyousness
and vivacity of hope which even invests what is unknown with the
attribute of magnificence.

After a little while devoted to necessary arrangements--after many
visits paid to all the dwellings of the humble flock of Muirden--after
the interchange of kindly hospitalities among the superior classes of
his neighbours--and after a public and affectionate farewell to all--Mr.
Douglas once more set out with his family on this, his last migration;
and, with the aid of caravan and cart, the family party went on their
way from Muirden to Edinburgh, retracing thus far their steps, on their
journey to Eccleshall; and, in a few days, they were set down in the
court before the manse of Eccleshall, over which two stately lime trees
formed a cooling shade from the fervours of a summer sun.

Whether the reality corresponded with the several anticipations of the
new comers or not, I will not pretend to affirm; but the arrival had
scarcely been accomplished, ere every room and recess of the manse was
explored, and the neat and beautiful gardens were traversed, and the
glebe surveyed, and the "bonny burnside" visited, and the water
laved from its channel. It was, in truth, a new world to its young
visitants--and appeared, in the superior house accommodation and
rural amenity around, a terrestrial paradise, contrasted with the
circumscribed dwelling on the rocky shore of the German Ocean in the
north, or in the hamlet of Muirden amid the wilderness on the southern
border of Scotland. The sensations and sympathies of that day, and of
seven years which followed it, are yet fresh in my recollection, and
still swell in my heart, as marking the brightest and the happiest
period of my existence. Everything connected with that season of my
life, is still invested in my memory with charms which I have never
since tasted; and my young imagination clothed the vale of Eccleshall
with a brighter verdure and gayer flowers than ever to me bloomed
elsewhere on earth; and the heaven glowed in more resplendent sunshine
than has ever sinc