"But I know what I'll do for the future. he fails to accomplish it. In the old editions a Every button you have may drop off, and I won't case is cited, saying that an obligation to go from so much as put a thread to 'em. And I should St. Paul's in London to St. Peter's at Rome like to know what you 'll do then? Oh, you must get somebody else to sew 'em, must you? That's a pretty threat for a husband to hold out to a wife! And to such a wife as I've been, too: such a negro-slave to your buttons, as I may say! Somebody else to sew 'em, eh? No, Caudle, no: not while I'm alive! When I'm dead-and with what I have to bear there's no knowing how soon that may be when I'm dead, I say-oh! what a brute you must be to snore so!

within three hours, would be bad as the condition of a bond, because it would be obviously impossible; but in these days of railroads in esse and balloons in posse, no judge would venture to lay it down as law, that such a condition would be void on the ground of its being an impossibility. A condition, however, to do a certain act when Waterloo Bridge should return a profit to the original shareholders, would be void at once; for "here," says ALDERSON, B., "the impossibility of the thing is upon the face of it, and stares us in the face, let us look how we may at it."

So,

"You're not snoring? Ha! that's what you always say; but that's nothing to do with it. You must get somebody else to sew 'em, must 36. When many join in one act, the law says it you? Ha! I should n't wonder. Oh no! I should is the act of him who could best do it, and that the be surprised at nothing, now? Nothing at all! thing should be done by those of best skill.-Thus, It's what people have always told me it would if there are six supernumeraries standing on the come to and now, the buttons have opened my stage, and one tragedian, during the act of a eyes! But the whole world shall know of your tragedy, they all join in the act, but it is the act cruelty, Mr. Caudle. After the wife I 've been to of the actor and not of the supernumeraries. you. Somebody else, indeed, to sew your but-if there be nine tailors employed in making a coat, tons ! I'm no longer to be mistress in my own it is the act of one man, "For," says COKE, “if house! Ha, Caudle! I would n't have upon my I am asked who made my coat, I cannot answerconscience what you have, for the world! I SMITH, BROWN, JONES, ROBINSON, DOE, ROE, would n't treat anybody as you treat-no, I'm not THOMPSON, DOBSON, and JOHNSON, though it be mad! It's you, Mr. Caudle, who are mad, or true that they have all had a hand in it. But if bad-and that's worse! I can't even so much Doe is the master, and ROE and the others are as speak of a shirt-button, but that I'm threatened the men, I say that Doɛ made the coat; but otherto be made nobody of in my own house! Caudle, wise, if RoE is the master, and DoE, with his you 've a heart like a hearth-stone, you have! fellows, the men, for then I say, marry, it was To threaten me, and only because a button-a but- ROE that made my coat." By the bye, it has been settled that though property in tail cannot come to a man till he is of full age, a coat in tail may come to a youth of fourteen; and it is not usual to cut off the tail afterwards.

ton

"I was conscious of no more than this," says Caudle, in his MS., " for here nature relieved me with a sweet, deep sleep."

PUNCH'S NOY'S MAXIMS.

33. Dolus et fraus unû in parte sanari debent. "Deceit and fraud shall be remedied on all occasions. It may be very true that deceit and fraud ought to be remedied, but whether they are is quite another question. It is much to be feared that in law, as well as in other matters, ought : sometimes stand for nothing.

34. No man can take benefit of his own wrong.This is true enough, though a man may often benefit by the wrongs of other people. Some also suffer from another's wrong, as where a square-keeper, who had been snow-balled, ran after the wrong boy; the right boy, who was really wrong, escaped, and the wrong boy, who was not wrong at all, paid the penalty.

37. When two titles concur, the elder shall be preferred.-This maxim has given rise to some dispute, and a curious case was once put in the following terms :— "Suppose I have two sorts of wine, and the titles of both concur, both of them being called red wine, though one happens to be port, and the other elder." It then becomes a question whether the elder is to be preferred, a question, which all the best judges during the evening sittings have agreed to answer in the

negative."

38. By an acquittance for the last payment all other arrearages are discharged. Thus, a receipt from your tailor would be, primâ facie, a discharge to all your other debts, because your tailor's bill is the last payment you would think of making.

MISPRINTS.-Misprints often strike what are 35. Lex neminem cogit ad impossibilia. The termed unlucky blows. The omission of a t makes law compels no one to impossibilities.-This is the mortal the moral, and the immortal poet stands extremely considerate on the part of the law; but if praised as the immoral poet. We read a short it does not compel a man to impossibilities, it time ago a lamentation on "the frightful increase sometimes drives him to attempt them. The law, of morality in the metropolis;" and once saw the however, occasionally acts upon the principle of advertisement of a treatise on "the blessed imtwo negatives making an affirmative, thus treating morality of the soul;" we have met with the two impossibilities as if they amounted to a pos- glory of a conqueror turned into gory by the dropsibility. As, when a man cannot pay a debt, law ping of the liquid consonant; our loyalty has been expenses are added, which he cannot pay either; shocked by the announcement of a most reasonbut the latter being added to the former, it is pre-able attempt on the life of a sovereign" but, .sumed perhaps that the two negatives or impossi- worst of all, we lately saw the Duke of Bucking-bilities may constitute one affirmative or possibility, ham described, through the dropping of the dog's and the debtor is accordingly thrown into prison if letter, as the "Farmer's Fiend."-Examiner.

From the Edinburgh Tales.
THE SABBATH NIGHT'S SUPper.

THEY misconceive the character of this northern land who imagine of its people as a cold, sullen, and ungenial race, shut up from the social charities, and incrusted with self-conceit, spiritual pride, and gloomy bigotry; but they do Scotland, and their own understandings, worse wrong, who imagine that this unsocial and austere national temper is derived from that high-hearted reformed faith which has ever allied itself with the spirit of independence, and the sternest assertion of the principles of civil liberty-which has disdained to truckle to expediency, and braved every peril in maintaining the charter wherewith God has made man free.

many other sources, we learn that the Puritans were, in domestic life, accomplished and enjoying, as well as learned persons. Those who insist that our national Sabbath must be gloomy, because, in despite of nature, we do not, like Grimm's German Baron keep jumping over chairs and tables all day "to make ourselves lively," are but shallow philosophers.-One redeeming social feature even they might acknowledge in our Day of Rest-THE SABBATH NIGHT'S SUPPER. And we trust that the venerable custom is not falling into desuetude.

The family re-union, and stated feast, was at first almost a necessary consequence of long journeys to distant kirks, while the population of the country was thin and scattered, and of those preposterous and interminable diets of sermonizing, The sabbatical observances of Scotland, espe- which made Sunday literally a fast-day, until the cially, have been misrepresented and ridiculed by evening. Then, indeed, the kitchen-fires were those who are so inconsistent in their boasted lighted up-then the flesh-pots seethed and difliberality as to contend that the Scotsman, by fused a savory steam, or the broche spun round in constitution a man of staid deportment and serious the rural Manse, and in all the bien ha'-houses in thought, however warm or enthusiastic his inward the parish, or comfortable dwellings "within feelings may be, is a bigot and a fanatic, who burgh." At the close of his hard day's work, would blot the sun from the firmament, and en- the reverend laborer was entitled to his social shroud the face of nature with universal gloom; meal, of better than ordinary fare-"a feast of because he will not demonstrate his high enjoy- fat things"-hospitably shared with the chance ment of the Day of Rest by frisking or carousing-guest, the modest young helper, or the venerable cricketing with the peasant of England, or capering under the green trees with the working-man of France. They will not pause to consider that, to him, the highest enjoyment of leisure, independently of religious feelings altogether, may be, "to commune with his own heart, and be still;" or, the season of public worship past, to live apart in unbroken communion with those to whom his heart is knit by the strongest ties of duty, and the sweetest claims of affection. The gay Sunday of the theatre and the guinguette, and the more boisterous mirth of the tea-garden and the skittleground, would, to many a native of Scotland, prove as joyless and burdensome on any day of the seven, as indecent and profane on the Sabbath, which he consecrates to retirement and meditation, or restricts to family intercourse and religious and intellectual exercises; regarding it as time redeerned to the self-examination and inward thought which his early moral and religious discipline have enabled him to employ aright and enjoy profoundly. Nor is it easy to say why liberal politicians and philosophers should almost force the people on modes of enjoyment, on their one day of leisure, which they would consider quite un-family worship as regularly as the observance of worthy of their own higher mental cultivation and pursuits.

One Sabbath for the rich, and another for the poor-restraint upon the scanty enjoyments of the hard-toiling many, and impunity and bounty to the luxurious pleasures of the wealthy few are at the same time so directly subversive of the plainest precepts and injunctions of that religion which recognizes man's complete equality in civil rights and in moral obligation, that we have not one word to say for prohibitions that must press unequally.

These remarks detain us too long from our story, which we meant to preface by the assertion, that the types of neither the Scottish Presbyterian, nor the English Puritan, were of the austere, sullen, and cynical character which their adversaries have alleged. John Knox himself kept a cellar of good wine, and knew how to use as not abusing it. From the "Memoirs of Colonel Hutchison," and

elder. Nor was there wanting, if such were the taste and temper of the reverend presider at the banquet, the zest of the clerical joke that promoted blameless hilarity and easy digestion. The manse set the custom to the parish. Now, to have insisted that the douce minister, with his family, or the decent farmer, with his lads and lasses, should, to show their holyday feelings, first scamper here and there all day-any way far enough from home-and then go out of doors, to frisk, like so many young maukins, in the moonlight, would be about as intolerant as to compel the champagne-loving Gallican to swallow, for his especial enjoyment, the smoky-flavored Glenlivet toddy with which the Scotsman soberly crowned the banquet of the Sabbath Night.

In the family of Adam Hepburn of the Fernylees, the Sabbath Night's Supper had been a standing family festival for several generations. The little quiet bustle of preparation among the women, the better fare, the more inspirited looks, the expanding social hearts, had become a thing of inviolate custom, following the solemnities of

that domestic ordinance. The venerable head of the house would then tell of the times when Cargill, and Renwick, and Rutherford, and other potent divines of the evil times, fathers and mighty men in Israel, burning and shining lights in a darkened land, had, when fleeing before the bloody and persecuting house of Stuart-from whom the curse would never depart !—by their blessings and their prayers hallowed the hospitalities which they shared in this very dwelling; and that although the then inmates of Fernylees had been proscribed, and often severely mulcted, for harboring the men of God, their substance had rather increased than diminished under this oppression, which they felt, not for themselves, but for the faithful of the land, and the afflicted Church of Scotland, tried in the furnace.

No one had ever listened with more attention to these noble tales, of doing and daring for conscience' sake, than Charles Hepburn, the youngest

son of the family of Fernylees, who was born to admire with enthusiasm, but not yet to emulate, the virtues of those heroic sufferers.

gait, and gold in gowpens?" cried Tibby, who, by the way, was in general much less indulgent to the faults of Charles than was her friend the The elderly female servant who superintended shepherd, who had loved him from the days of Adam Hepburn's household, had been more than fishing with a crooked pin, and shooting with usually provident of the creature-comforts destined bourtree guns, though he knew, what indeed was to cover his board on the particular night on which no longer a secret, that the youth possessed a our story opens. The circumstances of the family fatal facility and unsteadiness of character, already made it a time of more than ordinary tenderness yielded to to an extent that alarmed those who and solemnity. The following morning was to loved him best, for his rectitude as much as for witness the final breach and disruption of all that his worldly prosperity. now remained to be taken away of the young props It is not uncommon to find in a large family one of the roof-tree of the house of Fernylees. The peculiarly gifted child, to endow whom nature elder daughter, who had borne the chills of seems to have robbed the others of genius, beauty, celibacy, ten years after her three sisters were and attractiveness. Charles Hepburn, by seven married, was to leave the home of her youth to years the youngest, was "the flower of the flock sojourn, as her old father in his prayer expressed of Fernylees," loved, indulged, spoiled, as far as it, in the allusion he made to her circumstances as a gracious temper and a generous heart will spoil; a bride, in the tents of strangers. But it was the and that, alas, was in his case far enough! He going forth into the evil, unknown, and dreaded had been the caressed plaything, the petted child, world, of one who from infancy had, by his fas- the pampered school-boy of his brothers, but parcinations and his very errors, excited far more of ticularly of his younger sisters. But at the age fear and of hope-one over whom his father's heart of twenty-four, the overweening affection of his yearned while his spirit travailed-that the old aged father alone remained unimpaired, increased, man dwelt, in his devotions, with a touching and deepened by the very causes which alienated other simple pathos, and poured forth his feelings in hearts. He who had the most suffered, still loved that scriptural language and imagery familiar to the most. Nor to a stranger did this seem wonhis lips, replied to by the low, involuntary sob of derful. Look in the open, genial, and handsome a married sister of the youth who was the object countenance of Charles, and his besetting sins of these fervent petitions, and by the sympathetic could not be imagined of very deep dye; spend chord touched in the staid bosom of Tibby Elliott, with him a quietly social, or brightly convivial the above-mentioned elderly serving-woman. The hour, and all errors or defects of character had contagion even spread to old Robin, the shepherd. | disappeared before the charm of his manner, and When the worshippers rose from their knees, were forgotten or denied to exist. Yet their and turned to the neatly-spread table, on which undeniable existence had crushed and grieved the was already laid the apparatus for the feast, the spirit of his venerable father, and fallen hard on aged father, sinking in his high-backed chair, the shortened means that were to sustain his old shaded his thin temples with his hand; and remain-age in humble independence. Nor was Charles ed silent, as if his spirit were yet within the veil. unaware of any part of this; and the reproaches Charles Hepburn retired to the porch with his of his elder brother, a man of quite opposite married sister-they were silently, hand in hand, temper, or the affectionate remonstrances of his standing, looking out upon the stars-when the married sister, were less severe than his own freancient maid-servant appeared:-and "O Charlie, quent bitter self-upbraidings. Now he stood on my man," was the whisper of the motherly Tibby, the threshold of a new life. Hope was once as drying her eyes with her apron, she passed more dawning upon him, after repeated disapout into the kitchen, which was in a wing of the pointment, not the less afflictive that it was selftenement; "My man, Charlie, if ye be not a good caused; and his sanguine, bold, and happy temper bairn now."-She had gone on before Charles rose to meet the new crisis. could reply, if he had been inclined or able to speak.

Tibby Elliott was on this night a woman cumbered with many cares. "Gie ye the broche a twirl, Robin," was her first cry." I would no like, nor you either, but to see things right and mensfu' in the Ha' louse o' the Fernylees, and a son and a daughter going in the same day frae under its roof-tree.-Fetch down that bowen o' eggs, Robin; we'se have a drappit egg with the stoved eerocks, the breed o' Charlie's sprangled game hens he was so proud of langsyne, poor callant. But, oh, man! heard ye ever the auld Master sae powerfu' in intercession as this night? It's weel to be seen who lies next his heart's kernel-his motherless son!-And no other wonder; for, with all his faults-and they are neither few nor far to seek a better-hearted youth, of the name, never crossed the door-step of the Fernylees in all its generations."

"If ye gie him a' his ain way, and keep his pouches routh o' siller," replied the shepherd, who was of the species of dry humorists not rare in Scotland in his condition.

"And what for should he no' have his ain

Charles had received what is usually termed a good education. But it could not have been the wisest, for its early fruits were not soul-nurture, nor wisdom and peace. He had been highly distinguished at the University of Glasgow; and his father, who had in his own heart early devoted him to the service of the altar, secretly rejoiced in the hope of seeing him an ornament of the church. But his natural abilities and advantages of education had not yet been improved even to any worldly purpose.

"To throw all his lear to the cocks, and leave us!" said the old shepherd, while Tibby and himself discussed the circumstances of the family and the prospects of the cadet, with the freedom assumed by all menials, and justifiable in old attached domestics :-"It is grieving."

"And would ye have had him play the hypocrite-pretend to a gift and a call to preach the gospel-when it's ower weel kent Rob Burns' light-headed ballads aye came far readier to Charlie than the Psalms of David in Metre," cried Tibby Elliott, honest indignation giving energy to her tones, as on her knees she ladled or fished up the salted goose and greens, that

were to act vis-a-vis, to her stewed eerocks, Ang- | hands, she halted to remark, that "The deadening lice, chickens. o' natural affection, the sure sign o' the rampant growth of pride, prodigality, and the love o' filthy lucre, was among the sorest of the defections of these sinfu' times; when gear sindered the hearts nature had made the sibbest."

Houts, tuts, woman; yer are owerly straitlaced for this day o' the warld; what would have ailed Charlie to have graned away among the auld leddies till he had gotten the CALL, and the patron's presentation too, and a good sappy downsitten, when, I daursay, he could have seen the wisdom o' being a wee bit twa-faced, like his neighbor ministers, and on his peremptors before folk ony way. With eighteen or twenty chalder victual stipend, a new Manse, and a piece gude glebe-land, it's no sae dooms difficult to be a douce parish minister as ye trow, Tibby. I would undertake the job myself for half the pay. Gi'e our young chevalier a black gown and Geneva ban's, and let him alane for a year or twa to settle down, and I'll wad he's turn out a great gun o'newly-donned clean apron, Robin Steele following, the gospel."

"Ye profane knave!" cried Tibby, shaking her fist in the face of her old friend, between jest and earnest: "Have ye been reading Tam Pen, [Paine] that ye speak sae lightly o' ministers! Mr. Charles, with all his backslidings, is no sae far left to himself as to lay a rash, uncalled hand on the ark-and the Lord will bless him for it. He is the bairn, as I can testify, o' many a secret prayer. I do not misdoubt to see him the grandest merchant in a' Liverpool yet. Sore trial as it has been to the kind, gude, auld Maister, crossed in his pride, and spulyied in his purse, to see Charles stick in the wark o' the ministry.- -But redde the gait there, till I carry ben the supper."

"Ye like a' to make a sicker bargain you uncogude folks, Tibby. A sappy foretaste here, and

"Now Robin, ye radical, hold the scorning tongue o' ye;-would ye see the Maister scrimpit o' his Sabbath night's supper, wi' a' his brains happy about him?"

"That would I not, lass; though I might just as weel like the auld time when rent was light, though woo' less by the stone, and when the man and the woman sat at the master's board-end.

The time was gone by, when the man and the woman sat at the board-end of the house o' the Fernylees; but on this night of peculiar solemnity, the old respectable pair who occupied the kitchen, were invited into the parlor to drink prosperity to the departing inmates; the other servants were on the new system, lodged in bothies, save one young girl, Tibby's aide-de-camp. This invitation was made on the motion of Charles, who was himself the bearer of it, and who returned with Tibby under his arm, smirking and smoothing down her

with his queerest, funniest face, and his broad blue bonnet, en chapeau bras. Cold, and halfoffended, though the bride-elect might look from under her dropt eyelids, the countenance of the auld Maister, and even those of the married daughters of the family, brightened in welcome of this addition to the party. Robin's Young Chevalier diligently filled the glass of Charles' Greysteel,*-such were their old caressing names for each other-caressing after the humorous fashion of Scottish wooing, of "nipping and scratching.'

The heart of the patriarchal farmer, at the head of the board, appeared to become lighter, for the whispered, half-heard, kindly jibes, passing below the salt.

"What can I do for you, Robin, and for you too, Tibby," whispered Charles, "in yonder faraway big town?" The considerate maiden paused.

what we cannot

"Send her a sure account o' the state o' the gospel in Whirlpool," whispered Robin, smiling, and winking. "And him," retorted Tibby, snelly, "be sure ye send him a sound prent," (Robin's name for a radical newspaper,)" showing how the nation is going to wrack, and the woo' rising." "E'en let it be sae," rejoined the shepherd I wish the auld Maister no scant measure o' a'laughing. "That is, if it cost ye no expense. good things. May blessings be multiplied on I'm not particular about the age, if the doctrine 's him and his. May the upper and the nether sound when it comes; the whig prents are grown springs be his portion! and his also, the thought as wersh and fuzionless as of whom lies heavy on his spirit, this night!"-tell, for the conversation swelled into a higher The old man reverently lifted the bonnet off his key, and became more general and lively. Charles silvered head as he uttered these good wishes for was allowed to replenish the punch-bowl once; his master, to which the friendship and daily but the motion for another was promptly opposed intercourse of threescore years gave the fervor of by Tibby, and quietly overruled by the Master. a prayer. And the youth, just beginning to taste "the sweet o' the night," wished Sunday had been Monday. It was, as Robin Steele afterwards sorrowfully remarked, the foundation of all his faults, that "He ne'er kenned when to stop." Long before the conviviality had reached the pitch to which Charles was attuned, the table had been cleared, and the "Big Ha' Bible" again placed upon it. Mr. Hepburn requested, on this night, that his friends should sing with him and his children, the scriptural paraphrase of the chapter which he called on his son, Charles, to read, the vision of the Patriarch, as he journeyed to Padanaramthe covenant pillar of Bethel.

In a lighter tone, Robin added, nearly as much ashamed of strong, or deep emotion, as if he had been a man of the world instead of a shepherd of the Border hills,-"We can a' take precious good care o' ourselves, Tibby; save just the auld Maister himself, and the young Chevalier. There's canny Mr. Gilbert, our auldest hope,-let number one alone to see after him. And as for mim Miss Mysie, I'll wager she's thinking more than this night, Sabbath though it be, of her bridal fal-als, and the blankets and sheets she can rieve frae the Fernylees, to her new hame, and of the hundred more pounds o' tocher she should have had, had so much not been spent on Charlie's learning, than o' the father's house, and the kindred she's leaving, and the witless, glaiket brother she is parting from."

Tibby could not dispute this affirmation. With the goose smoking on the assiette, between her

The devotional feelings of Charles Hepburn, though he had made shipwreck of his intended

*Greysteel, the name, few natives of Scotland need be

told, given by James the Fourth, when a boy, to the Douglas. The young Pretender was called the Chevalier.