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My dear Aunt Peggy,

"I have been very wrong, and am now very unhappy, and I want comfort; may I come to you? You see what I think of you by my asking this so boldly; but I know how you love me, and I love you, and long to be with you. I want to spend the winter with you quietly. I want that you should not make the slightest change in your way of living, but that I should come to your home just as it is, and be with you. I will tell you everything; I am not afraid of telling you my faults. I am very unhappy here, though I am with one of the kindest of friends; and I feel that I am ungrateful, but I cannot help it. I want freedom, and peace, and quiet, and to learn how to live usefully in short, I want to be with You know when we parted you told me to write to you at any moment, and that you would always be ready to receive me; yet, now that I am taking you at your word, I am afraid lest it should be presuming or selfish to do so. Do not scruple to refuse me, if it is in any way inconvenient to you. Pray answer this note as soon as you can, and do not make any comments on what I have told you, till I have time to tell you all. Do not condemn any one but me; me you must needs condemn, yet I know how gently it will be. Good-bye, dear Aunt Peggy. Believe me always your most affectionate

you.

"EDITH KINNAIRD.

"Forgive me if I have asked what I ought not to ask, and do not scruple to say, No."

When this letter was fairly despatched, she felt a momentary relief, succeeded, however, by a state of great impatience. So anxious was she for the arrival of the answer, that she could scarcely control herself so as to conceal from Mrs. Dalton that she had some more than ordinary cause of mental disturbance. It was the day on which Mr. Thornton was expected, (he had deferred his visit a little, and written, out of consideration for his host, to specify times and seasons rather more definitely than was his wont,) and Edith felt almost incapable of encountering him. To philosophize or to flirt with him, as she used to do, was, of course, out of the question; and she dreaded his observing the change in her, and attempting to discover the reason of it. Besides, his idea was interwoven with so many miserable recollections, that she could not think of meeting him once more without the acutest pain. What would she not have given to be already in her quiet retreat with Aunt Peggy!

After wandering restlessly about during the greater part of the morning, alternating between total indifference and morbid sensibility to all outward circumstances, she took down a book which she had offered to lend Alice Brown, and set off for a solitary walk to Beechwood. Mrs. Dalton promised to follow her in about an hour, and renew her acquaintance with Edith's humble friend, which she had for some time intended to do. When Edith arrived, she found Mrs. Brown alone, Alice being absent with one of her pupils. She almost forgot her own griefs for the time, in sympathy for the quiet anxiety and unobtrusive sorrow of the mother, who was evidently most uneasy about her daughter's health. She moved to the window, and, busying herself in the arrangement of Alice's flowers, was revolving in her mind the possibility of conveying to Mrs. Brown, in such a manner as not to wound her delicacy, a present which might enable her to enjoy an interval of relaxation

object of all this care coming up the street, accompanied by two gentlemen. One of them, to her surprise, was Mr. Thornton, the other a total stranger. In another moment Alice entered the room, introducing her companions somewhat bashfully,

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"Mr. Verner, mamma, and Mr. Thornton. O, my dear Miss Kinnaird"-perceiving Edith, and responding warmly to her greeting-"how glad I am to see you!"

"I little thought to see so old a friend to-day," said Mr. Verner, as he shook hands with Mrs. Brown; "I found you out quite by accident. I have not been in England above a week, and am on my road to Devonshire."

"Yes," cried Mr. Thornton, "it was a most curious coincidence. Verner and I were on the same coach; I recognised him directly, though he had quite forgotten me, for it is more than ten years since we met. I happened casually to mention your name, and it turned out that you were the very person he was most So we sallied forth to find you out, anxious to see. if possible, and had the good luck to meet Miss Brown before we had been five minutes walking."

"Mr. Thornton is so very kind, mamma," interposed Alice, "as to bring me an order to execute some botanical drawings for a work that is just coming out. The order is given on his recommendation. I am sure I don't know how to thank him."

"Pray say no more about it," returned Thornton; "you have already thanked me a great deal more than enough."

During the civilities which followed this speech, and the rapid interchange of question and answer among friends who had been so long separated, Edith had leisure to survey the new comer, the mention of whose name in a conversation at Selcombe Park she perfectly remembered. He was of niddle age, of slight and insignificant figure, but gentlemanly in deportment, and refined in manner. His face was very striking, both as to feature and countenance; the character spiritual rather than intellectual, but this arose from the predominance of the former expression, and not from any deficiency in the latter. The brow was wide and fully developed, the eyes deep-set, finely cut, calm and contemplative, in colour a purplish gray; the nose small, but strictly aquiline in form, with that slight expansiveness of nostril which indicates natural energy, the lips delicately shaped, and firmly closed; when at rest, a little sarcastic, but, speaking or smiling, full of benignity. Edith felt certain, from a single look, that he was not the Verner who had ruined himself by extravagance, and afterwards married for money. His voice and manner were full of repose,-of that truest repose which seems rather an achievement than a gift; which implies both discipline and enthusiasm, if not passion; which is a perfected self-command, and not an easy self-indulgence.

From the conversation, it appeared that he had known Mrs. Brown intimately in former days, but, during a long absence from England, had quite lost sight of her. He was now returned, in consequence of ill-health, and, having been appointed to a small living in Devonshire, was going to take possession of his new home; he casually mentioned its name, and Edith felt a strange sensation of pleasure when she found that it was close to Aunt Peggy's present abode, which, indeed, was within the parish. She felt very desirous to know more of him, and then wondered at herself for the childishness of the feeling;—a wish,

between man and the animals that his Creator destined for his service. The Arab horse gallops forward to meet his master at his call, its colt lies beside his children in their tent. The camel kneels by his owner's side untethered, and he informs the creature confidentially of the objects of his journey before he thinks it reasonable to expect that he will start. The mahout of the elephant tells him long tales, supposed to be very gratifying to his nature; and when a traveller sits under a tree, to make his frugal meal of grain or unleavened bread, every bird, that happens to have noted him, hops and walks around to see what is to be gained, with an absence of fear which very agreeably proves the general benevolence of the people to the lower order of creation.

Thus have I seen the buffaloes of an Indian village in the pleasant waters of its river quite undisturbed by the groups upon its brink. Brahmins are, perhaps, performing their ceremonies of prayer and ablution; a group of women filling their water vessels; merry urchins swimming from bank to bank, now vaulting with shouts of laughter on the blue back, rising above the water, and then sliding down over the animal's snout, using the horns as supporters; the animals are, however, in no way disturbed by all this active life; they seem to understand that all are friends about them, that none there will slay them with cruel force or goad them to fury; and the gharree (wagon) driver, seeking to cross the ferry, patiently makes his way among them, happy in shortened toil, if his advance can induce even one lazy, self-indulging buffalo, to "come up" out of the river, and leave room for him to pass.

In the forty-third chapter, and the first verse, we read, "And the famine was sore in the land." It is scarcely possible to imagine any fact more touchingly sad, than that so beautifully and so simply stated. I happened to be in the province of Kattiawar, in Western India, when famine consumed it with all the countries adjoining. The richer people sought the coasts, and embarked, some for Bombay, some for the ports of the northern and southern Concans, where rice-crops are generally abundant, or is brought down by Bunjarra merchants to exchange for salt and cottons. Some of the artizans, with a little corn in a sack, mounted their families on half-starved ponies, and sought with tedious marches a land where there was bread. And it was a touching sight to witness the departure of these little groups from the poor huts in which their children had been reared, and in which their aged parents had wished to die, going forth they knew not where, with gaunt Famine ever on their

track.

The thin-cheeked mother, her infant in her arms, and her two elder children clinging to her waist, a burthen almost too great for the hollow-eyed, staggering creature that bore it;-the aged man, leaning heavily on his staff, and slowly dragging onwards his nearly exhausted frame;-the husband, bearing on his back his poor old mother, whose grey hair falls over his breast as her head rests upon his shoulder. Such groups were, alas! too common, and the dread of leaving home, which exists so powerfully in the mind of an Asiatic, must be known in its full force before an idea can be formed of the agony endured by those so constrained to seek another land. But for these wanderers there is hope,-it may be life; they may not perish by the way, streams may refresh them, the berries of the forest may aid to support them, a more fruitful land may be gained, the cheek of the wife may recover its fair proportion, and

the aged parents even live to return to the poor hut of the native village they loved so well. But others, poorer yet, cthers far more helpless remain, who must inevitably perish in their affliction, for the famine is "sore in the land." I was residing at this sad time in the house of the political agent, a gentleman beloved throughout the province for his true and tender-hearted benevolence; and scarcely a day passed in which some young mother did not bring her infant child to beseech him to buy it from her for a few pence, the price of a handful of grain! The bank of the river was strewed with the carcases of the poor animals, who had not, in their failing strength, power to stagger to its brink, to seek in its few pools wherewith to assuage their burning thirst. Carrion birds hovered over them, and they alone seemed to rejoice, as incarnate fiends, that "the famine was so sore in the land." A poor shepherd, with his wife and son, and a drove of thirty head of cattle, attempted to cross the arid plain, and make their way to Cutch, where are many springs of water and herbage of wild thyme, but they made but a two days' march, that poor shepherd with his wife and child! The letter-carrier brought the tale. He had seen them lying dead in the bed of a dry watercourse, and the cattle dead and dying all around them.

The grain merchants had stored grain abundantly, the granaries were filled; but what was that to the poor and starving? It was but the second year of drought, and the Banian traders expected a third, perhaps a fourth. They did not, in manner like unto the governor of Egypt, store the corn, "that the land perish not through the famine,” but to enrich themselves from the necessities of the poor, and none would sell the grain they had so stored. The wealthy feared for themselves prospectively, and the famishing had no strength to appeal, so they laid them down, and died in the shadow of the walls which enclosed the harvests of those "years of great plenty" which God had given as a provision against the season of scarcity. And it is a well-known fact in the East, that seasons of unusual abundance do anticipate those of scarcity, so that, as it is of rain and other effects of nature, the average of a certain number of years uniformly produces an equal result. Many of the poor people, the cultivators of Kattiawar, instead of selling all their grain, except the few measures required for re-sowing (according to the usual practice), had buried some in pits. This was found in a half-decomposed, fermented, rotten state, yet the poor creatures ate it with avidity. The result was the appearance of cholera in its most fear-inspiring forms, and in the belief of the miserable Hindoos the black goddess Kali reigned alone upon the earth, and although there were no cattle left to offer sacrifice on her altars, the mass of the people were victims to the scourge, especially believed to be from the breath of her nostrils, and there was scarcely one person left to make lamentation; for this pestilence that walketh by noonday is in the East (from causes readily imagined) a very common successor to famine, when it has been So sore in the land."

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In the forty-fifth chapter, and at the nineteenth verse, we read: "Now thou art commanded, this do ye; take you waggons out of the land of Egypt for your little ones, and for your wives, and bring your father, and come." The very poor people in the East travel on foot; those a little more blessed with means of life, drive with them a pony, who carries the wife, the aged mother, or the young children with the scrip,

containing a little grain, and the favourite hubble bubble; men of the better class, merchants and traders, transport their families from place to place in waggons," hackeries," as they are called in India.

About a twelvemonth since I was using the house of a Parsee merchant at Gora-Bundah, a village on the river Ferry, which forms the chief road of communication between Bombay and the large and once important city of Surat; the ferry boats plied twice every day, and to meet them travellers from the Presidency arrived in immense numbers, generally in waggons. These waggons, or hackeries, are small, low, and two-wheeled, without springs, but remarkably strong, as they require to be, to bear the wear of the stony, unmade roads of the East, where the friction of their wheels, cutting ruts on the sheet rock of mountain-passes, is often the only form of highway. Bamboo poles are fastened to the corners of these waggons, and mats of date-leaves, or canopies of coarse cloth, protect the travellers from the sun, while they are drawn by bullocks, in the Concan in pairs, but in the hill country in teams of four, or sometimes six; for the animals are small, and their burdens heavy. While at the house of this Parsee, the window of which equally commanded the ferry, and the dhurmsaulah, or room of reception for travellers, it was my frequent amusement to observe the varieties and numbers who composed a family dismounting from their waggons. I remember noting a file of seven of these vehicles arrive, all containing the family of one Banian; his wives, his son's wives, and their little ones.' These waggons had first a layer of straw in them, and then the quilted bedding, commonly used, on this sat the women and children, closely huddled together, and by their sides walked the fathers and husbands armed with matchlocks. Beneath the waggons were swung vessels of water, and the driver sat on the pole, urging the bullocks with loud cries, and bamboos of no common size. The poor people had a long journey before them, but the women were decked in silk and jewels, and fresh flowers were braided in their hair; and as they scrambled from the hackeries, notwithstanding their crowded state, none seemed fatigued, for the system of transit is common to the people, and those friends they were about to join in Surat had probably called them in terms not very unlike those used by the governor of Egypt to his brethren, " Now thou art commanded, this do ye; take your waggons out of the land of Egypt, for your little ones, and for your wives, and bring your father and come."

In the forty-sixth chapter, twenty-ninth verse, we see, that "Joseph made ready his chariot, and went up to meet Israel his father at Goshen." The rever ence for parents among the people of the East is one of the most beautiful points in their character. The son always supports his father in his age, if he be poor, and to whatever rank the son may obtain, he humbles himself in the presence of his father. In Cutch is a man of enormous wealth, and yet greater influence, the chief priest of the Khanphuttees,-a monastic establishment, in its objects somewhat resembling that of the Hospice of the Great St. Bernard. The prince of the land cannot sit in the presence of this priest, nor with propriety avoid paying him a yearly visit of ceremony in his monastery; where the priest receives him as his vassal. I visited this monastery, and the priest in his orange-tawny robes, decorated with jewels of great price, sat negligently on his musnud to receive us, scarcely

deigning to return our salutation; but among the crowd came in an aged man, in white robes, leaning on a staff,-the priest rose, passed the crowd, and bent his head to the earth before him':-it was the father of the proud priest who thus received his homage; and the action was a tribute recognised throughout the East, and due from father to son without reference to position. Joseph, we read, "made ready his chariot" to meet his father. This also is still a matter of etiquette in the East. Whenever a man desires to honour another, he goes forth to meet him. And it has frequently been my fate, when riding hurriedly forward to the gates of a city to escape the heat of the rising sun, to be assailed with shouts from the guard-rooms on either side, and told by my own horsemen that I must wait, for the governor was even then mounting to come forth to meet me. I recollect Rao Daisul in Cutch, going forth in a magnificent Rut (waggon of state), covered with crimson cloth, and preceded by horsemen and elephants, to meet his father Rao Bharmuljee, on the return of the latter from a hunting excursion, and when they met, the princes embraced in the Rajpoot fashion, and returned occupying the same carriage; so that Joseph perhaps fulfilled a point of etiquette, as well as followed the impulses of his reverence and affection, when he "made ready his chariot, and went up to meet his father at Goshen."

In the fiftieth chapter, and the tenth verse, after reading of the rites of mourning observed by Joseph on the death of his father Jacob, we are told," And they came to the threshing-floor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan, and there they mourned with a very great and sore lamentation."

Our idea of a threshing-floor in England, is that of the upper chamber of a barn, but in the East the case is widely different. I have seen a threshingfloor such as in all probability was that here mentioned, at which Joseph halted with his chariots and horsemen, a very great company," and will endeavour to describe it. The village to which it belonged was a Sindhian village, on the extreme edge of the deserts between that country and the mountains of Beloochistan; its neighbourhood was productive, and the revenue it afforded of much consequence, being superior to any other in the Shikarpoor district. As a result of this known fertility, it was constantly liable to attack and plunder from Beloochee hordes, and the trembling villagers erected little watch-towers of mud, in the direction of the desert, to avoid, if possible, being taken by surprise ; willing to save their lives, if unable, as was too frequently the case, to protect their ripe crops from these merciless mountain robbers. A little out of the village was the threshing-floor of the principal cultivator,-a clear space in the centre of the plain, raised half a foot perhaps from the general level, and rendered hard by a coating of manure well dried. Sheaves of corn lay on it, and here and there were small pits to hold the loose grain, before it was put in bags. Around this threshing-floor, which would have contained some two hundred persons, were upright bamboos, placed at certain intervals into the ground, with ropes connecting them, thus forming a fence around the threshing-floor. On each division of rope was a huge seal, formed of clay, and stamped in Persian characters, with the name, and title of its owner. The horses belonging to the irregular cavalry who formed our guard were picketed round this threshing-floor; the camels knelt by it; between the cypress bushes of the plain rose the flame and