of their backs was the best and most grateful when my advent into this planet increased the cordial which they could offer him.

From these passages it came to be bruited abroad that I was destined and elected to inherit the untold treasures of Mr. Mungo McMurrich,—and as a necessary consequence it was my lot to be looked upon with an evil eye by the balance of his affectionate and sin-loath, I did as I was directed, and ere long gle-hearted kindred.

And here it becomes proper that I should speak a little more regarding myself. From my earliest years I had been in a manner one of the step bairns of fortune. The youngest of my father's family, I had ever been regarded in the light of an intruder in the world which already possessed more than sufficient specimens of the Ballingall line. Barely sufficient was the paternal estate able to furnish nourish- For once in my life I felt as if I had been a ment to the owner thereof, and consequently personage of importance. Before me walked

matter, my father stood quietly by, counting over his handful of bank-notes, as if everything had been correct, and as it should have been.

the magistrates in full dress, a drummer and fifer played "See the conquering hero comes!" and the officials who supported me on each side, payed me an amount of attention which was flattering in the highest degree. The To make a long story short, the tragedy was only feature in the parade which I did not repeated at each cardinal point of the compass, approve of, was a grim and cruel-looking and the upshot was that for six full months personage who answered to the name of thereafter I could not lean against the softest Wuddy Jock," and was neither more nor less than the hangman of Aberdeen. This "ill favoured one" limped close in my rear, bearing on his shoulder a leather bag of the contents of which I was, at the time, profoundly ignorant.

་

On we moved amidst the shouts of the spectators, many of whom, especially the more juvenile portion, seemed to look upon me with feelings of envy, on account of the prominent part which I was playing in the proceedings. Once or twice, however, it struck me, that some of the seniors regarded me with a pitying expression, but this I attributed to spite and envy, because I had been selected in preference to their own children.

cushioned chair without sensations very far removed from comfort.

[Incredible as it may seem, the incident above narrated is a sober verity. The time has not long gone by since official flagellations analagous to the one inflicted upon our friend Mr. Ballingall, were dispersed in some of the less sophisticated quarters of Scotland. Old men are yet alive who have been eye-witnesses to such exhibitions. Their object and intent was to preserve oral testimony to the act sought to be commemorated. It was shrewdly judged that a person would preserve during life, the recollection of a boundary mark, at which, in his "green and salad days," he had received a sound and emphatic castigation!]

At length the procession halted at a place Being but a weakly and dwining lad, where a stone about three feet in height had especially after the boundry adventure, my been newly fixed in the ground. The Town father determined to put me to some easy and Clerk proceeded to read a long winded docu- genteel trade, and with that view entered into ment, which set forth that this was the negociations with Cornelius Cabbage, the western boundary of the Burgh, and then lamiter tailor. He agreed to pay to the aforecalled upon His Majesty's executioner to do said Cornelius the sum of two hundred pounds his duty. All of a sudden I found myself Scots money, in consideration of which that grasped by one of my conductors and placed gentleman pledged himself to initiate me into upon the back of the other, and befere I could the complex, and multitudinous mysteries of scream out murder, the cold breeze blowing shaping, and sewing, and all the other departwithout hindrance upon my hastily denuded ments of the tailoring craft. The grand and shivering back, revealed the naked truth preliminaries having been settled, Master of the predicament in which I stood or rather | Cabbage's crutches brought him one fine hung! Without a minute's delay the abominable "Wuddy Jock" opened his pack, and drawing therefrom a murderous looking pair of taws, proceeded to rain a plump of stripes upon my exposed and defenceless person. In vain I shrieked, yelled, and I sorely fear blasphemed. In vain I appealed to the authorities, calling upon them to cast the mantle of their protection over one who had committed no offence against the laws, and had been convicted of none either by Judge or Jury, I might as well have made my complaint to the mad elements in a winter's hurricane, the senior Bailie called upon the hangman to lay on and spare not, and what aggravated the

morning to our house, along with Mr. Quirk McQuibble the writer, whose part was to make a minute to keep parties from drawing back, or resiling as he expressed it in the barbarous jargon of law. The paper was accordingly written out, the tailor had put his sign manual in the shape of a cross to the same, and I was about to barter my freedom and manhood by adhibiting my name, when lo and behold the door flew open with a bang, and in walked my grand-uncle Mungo McMurrich!

As this was the first epoch he had ever been seen under a roof but his own, we all started as if we had seen a bogle or apparition ! My father sat gaping at him in an extacy of

bewilderment-Mr. McQuibble stammered out | heathenish things, enough to make a sober Christian's hair stand on end!

something about a res noviter veniens, and as for the man of needles he fairly sprang over the table (a miraculous undertaking for a creature boasting of but one leg and a half) and fortifying himself behind a two-armed-chair, flourished his shears in a sublime agony of terror and desperation! Mr. McMurrich stood looking at the convention with a smile of bitter derision, which gradually softened down to a laugh, at the sight of the breeches engenderer's panic,—and beckoning to my parent he expounded to him the object of his advent, which was neither more nor less than that I should come to dwell with, and take care of him in his declining years.

process,

and the multiform terrors thereof-having My father, who knew something of the law once been in trouble for knocking down the Dean of Guild when under the influence of a stimulating beverage-began to show pregnant tokens of dismay at this marrow-chilling

anathema!

the contrary, looked on with his wonted sarThe magnanimous Mungo, on castic sneer, and when the jurisconsult had ceased for pure lack of breath, he went quietly up to him, and whispered something in his Quibble's visage became radiant as an unear. The effect was like magic! Mr. Mcclouded Italian sun. He made the whisperer

Mr. McQuibble was closetted with his new client for the better part of the evening, and when he came forth with a bundle of papers beneath his elbow he inclined his head to me in a respectful manner, wishing me joy of my fortune, and health and long life to relish the same! I now had not the slightest dubitation

An offer like this, coming, as it did, from a smirking bow almost to the ground, and, the richest man in Peterhead, was not to be turning sharply to Cornelius, told him in cersneezed at. My ancestor, when he had reco-tain learned words that he must look out for vered breath enough, expressed his gratitude another servitor. As the tailor did not comat the proposal, and signified that I should be prehend the aforesaid words, he could not at his devotion and command, so soon as my possibly gainsay them, and that afternoon I bits of duds could be packed up. As for found myself established as an occupant of me, I had no insuperable objection to the my grand-uncle's domicile. arrangement. My affection towards the shop-board was not overly strong, not only on account of the confinement, but because I had heard that all who adopted the sartorial profession lost, by some supernatural and inevitable eight parts and portions of their manhood! Besides, as it may readily be imagined, there were few attractions which bound me to my as to how the land lay. A bow from the great paternal abode. Any change, thought I, must be for the better-as the Irishman said when he traded away a forged note for a light guinea! Accordingly, I gave my trowsers a hitch-snapt my fingers at the agitated snip and felt as if I were a gentleman at large, with the power and privilege of swinging on a gate, and drinking cream from cock-crow till sunset, which to my mind was the very alpha and omega of human bliss and delectation!

But if I was pleased, not so the man of law. He plainly saw that if my apprenticing was broken off, he would lose a nutritious job in the deed or indenture which was to bind me captive, in a manner, for five weary years. Giving, therefore, his passive client a wink and a jog with his elbow in order to secure his concurrence, he began to lecture and expatiate touching breach of contract, claim of damages, and sundry other bloodthirsty and

Quirk McQuibble! I felt as if I could almost hang my cap upon one of the horns of the moon! Yes; the lawyer actually took off his hat to me, Andrew Ballingall! The day before, and a nod from the town drummer would have been esteemed an ultra stock of

condescension!

I will not take up your time by narrating my new mode of life, which was dull and monotonous enough in all conscience. I saw but little of Mr. McMurrich, save at meal times, and even then his conversation seldom ranged beyond the laconic limits of "yes" and "no." From morning till night he sat in a small dark back room, which was more than half filled by a grim-looking ark or cabinet, adorned with puffy angels' heads carved in oak, and garnished with solid brass mouldings. His table was constantly in a perfect litter with wrinkled parchments and mouldy pamphlets; and his sole occupation seemed to be in making ex

cerpts from these relics of the dark ages! I finished. A fit of coughing more savage and used sometimes to examine his productions, outrageous than the first grappled with the but as I could make neither head nor tail of ancient man, his face became black as the the characters, I came to the natural and wing of a crow, his eyes stood in his head, and logical conclusion that they related to the the sound of the cough echoed through the black art. gousty and empty house, like the voice of a spectre in a vaulted tomb. All at once it ceased in the very heat and climax of the paroxysm. It did not die away by degrees, but deep silence instantaneously usurped the place of the din. I looked at my grand-uncle in surprise and terror. I spoke to him, but there was no response. Alone was I in that dark room-the old man was dead!

One day, as I was sitting in meditative mood by the kitchen fire, superintending the progress of the kail-pot, I heard my grand-uncle calling upon me to come ben to him. To tell the truth, I was a fraction startled at the summons, seeing that never before had he invited me into his penetralia, as he was pleased to denominate his den. In I went, however, and found him sitting, as usual, at his inkstained table, powtering and fyking with his antiquated gatherings, which looked ancient enough, in all conscience, to have been the title-deeds of Sodom!

THIS IS LIFE.

Across the mountain path, I saw a stately troop wend by;

The muffled drums rolled slowly forth a solemn symphony;

"Andrew," said he, when I had entered, and taken a seat at his invitation, " Andrew, A soldier lay upon his bier with trophies o'er him my man, I feel that I am getting feebler and

spread;

terred the dead.

frailer every day. It is high time, therefore, I heard the distant booming gun when they inthat I should certiorate you of some important matters, which it behoves you to understand, before I depart to join Anthony a-Wood, Thomas Hearne, and the other illustrious men in whose footsteps I have so unworthily tried to tread."

Here the old gentleman was seized with an ultra severe kind of a cough, which had been hanging about him for some time, and it was the better part of ten minutes, before he could begin to unwind the thread of his discourse. At length he was enabled thus to continue:

"You are doubtless expecting, Andrew, that I should leave you something after I have departed. Nay, you need not shake your head my boy; well do I know that youth does not link itself to crabbed age for nothing, it would be absurd and unreasonable to expect such a thing. Andrew Ballingall, you will not be disappointed. Here is a paper constituting you heir of all that I possess; and in that cabinet which contains the gatherings of a long protracted life, you will find treasures such as Dukes might tyne their coronets to compass;-treasures which that conceited, shallow-pated empiric Thomas Frognell Dibden, never so much as dreamt of. These you will find—”

Across the mountain path, full soon the glittering band returned;

Whilst clashing music gaily rang with pennons all unfurled;

Free speech and roving eyes had they, and there seemed nought to tell

The mould had just been thrown on one they all

An old lady once said her idea of a great man was, a man who is keerful of his clothes, don't drink spirits, kin read without spelling the words, and kin eat a cold dinner on a wash-day, to save The sentence was never destined to be the wimmen folks the trouble of cooking."

THE EASTERN BRITISH PROVINCES.

III.

I CONCLUDED my last letter with an allusion to the Acadian French, and with describing some of them as having settled on the upper St. John where they established the Madawaska settlement, extending along both banks of that river, some distance above the Grand Falls, whose inhabitants were harshly and unjustly treated by the British minister, when forming the Ashburton treaty.

To understand the subject fully, it will be necessary to state, that the commissioners appointed under the treaty of 1794, to determine the true Ste. Croix, whence to run the boundary line, instead of adopting the Kennebec or Penobscot rivers, the first of which originally formed the boundary of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, (to the charter of which Mr. Adams, one of the

American Commissioners, admitted on oath, those

of both nations agreed to adhere,) selected the Scoodiac River, which had never been regarded as the Ste. Croix, by the English and French crowns. The head quarters of the governors of the respective nations, being alternately at the Penobscot; and when the French held possession of Acadia, those of the other were at Dartmouth on the Sheepscut River between Ste. Croix and Pomaquid; the Scoodiac having "never been of importance," says a well-informed writer on the subject, "until it was in 1755, imposed upon the Lords of the Plantations as the true Ste. Croix, on the map, called Mitchell's map." The object of this ruse, on the part of the people of Massachusetts Bay, who had been encroaching upon their neighbours, from the period of its settlement, being to obtain a large portion of the Province of Nova Scotia, then embracing New Brunswick; and which they ultimately succeeded in effecting, by the Ashburton treaty.

could by no possibility be intersected, when starting from a point so far to the eastward.

In attempting to run out this line, however, the Commissioners fortunately struck the eastern edge of " Mars' Hill," having previously improperly crossed river which empties into the St. John at Woodstock, when the British Commissioners refused to proceed any further; leaving the diffi culty in which they had become involved, to be settled by others; and which remained in abeyance till 1842, when Lord Ashburton concluded the treaty referred to, and it was prolonged from Mars' Mill, to where it should strike the St. John, near the Grand Falls.

It would require one or two papers, exclusively devoted to the investigation, to show the nature of the claim of the British Crown, to all the territory east of the Kennebec-or at all events to the Penobscot, both rivers heading in the vicinity of each other, and to expose the fraud

by which what was at first a mere district, has become one of the largest States in the Union,

by which Great Britain has lost a most valuable

part of New Brunswick-formerly as I before remarked, included Nova Scotia. Nor should I have alluded to the transaction at present, were it not that the Americans still contend that they have been wronged; and in a speech recently delivered in Congress, by Mr. Washburn of Maine, it is gravely stated, that "the title of that state to the territory she claimed, was clear and unquestion able," and that in agreeing to the treaty of 1842, she gave up between two and three millions acres of land for £150,000, constituting a territory worth, in the produce of the forest alone, much more than that amount.

After the line from Mars' Hill, strikes the St. John, it proceeds through the middle of that river to the St. Francis, on the Canada side; thus separating the Madawaska settlement, whose inhabitants (the Acadian French) residing on the right bank of the former river, became American citizens without their consent, while their relatives and friends on the left bank, remained British subjects. And such was the attachment of these unfortunate people to the British Government and institutions, that subsequent to the cession, they would cross to the opposite side, to attend the annual militia musters and trainings.

This Scoodiac River discharges itself into St. Andrew's Bay, near the mouth of the Bay of Fundy, and is not navigable above Calais, at its entrance. Not only did the Commissioners select the wrong river for the Ste. Croix; but, instead of taking the most remote rill or stream, entering into it from westward, as directed in the grant of Nova Scotia to Sir William Alexander, they These people, it will thus be seen, were sincerely followed the Cheputneticook, or small river known attached to the government of a country, under only by that time to its source, and running in a which, since their return, they had lived happily and north-east direction, and there placed the "monu- contented; and it was an unpardonable breach of ment" as a starting point, whence to run a line faith, thus needlessly to turn them over to another due north, until it should strike the range of nation. There was the less excuse for this act, mountains contemplated by the treaty; but which as the line on reaching the River St. Francis