e of Stuart.'

Well, as to the house of Stuart, the less said the better; but as to the
Suffolk dames, I agree with the poet, that they are all well worthy of
the toast, and it was at a very early period of my existence that I
became aware of that fact. But the course of true love never does run
smooth, and from none--and they were many--with whom I played on the
beach as a boy, or read poetry to at riper years, was it my fate to take
one as wife for better or worse. In the crowded city men have little
time to fall in love. Besides, they see so many fresh faces that
impressions are easily erased. It is otherwise in the quiet retirement
of a village where there is little to disturb the mind--perhaps too
little. I can well remember a striking illustration of this in the
person of an old farmer, who lived about three miles off, and at whose
house we--that is, the whole family--passed what seemed to me a very
happy day among the haystacks or harvest-fields once or twice a year.
The old man was proud of his farm, and of everything connected with it.
'There, Master James,' he was wont to say to me after dinner, 'you can
see three barns all at once!' and sure enough, looking in the direction
he pointed, there were three barns plainly visible to the naked eye.
Alas! the love of the picturesque had not been developed in my bucolic
friend, and a good barn or two--he was an old bachelor, and, I suppose,
his heart had never been softened by the love of woman--seemed to him
about as beautiful an object as you could expect or desire. One emotion,
that of fear, was, however, I found, strongly planted in the village
breast. The boys of the village, with whom, now and then, I stole away
on a birds'-nesting expedition, would have it that in a little wood about
a mile or two off there were no end of flying serpents and dragons to be
seen; and I can well remember the awe which fell upon the place when
there came a rumour of the doings of those wretches, Burke and Hare, who
were said to have made a living by murdering victims--by placing pitch
plasters on their mouths--and selling them to the doctors to dissect. At
this time a little boy had not come home at the proper time, and the
mother came to our house lamenting. The good woman was in tears, and
refused to be comforted. There had been a stranger in the village that
day; he had seen her boy, he had put a pitch plaster on his mouth, and no
doubt his dead body was then on its way