a song these guid folks are wantin', and nane o' your clavers," and forthwith he strikes up:

I am a son of Mars,

Who have been in many wars,

And show my cuts and scars
Wherever I come, &c., &c.,

all as in the soldier's song in the "Jolly Beggars." It is a little strong in some parts, but Mr. Geddes is again out of the room, and we can stand a good deal of expressive language in Carglen.

He ends it; and the kebars shake

Aboon the chorus' roar ;

While frighted rattons backward leuk,
And seek the benmost bore.

There is no fairy fiddler in the neuk to skirl out encore ! as in the case of the gangrel assembly in Poosie Nansie's, though our old man Heap-o'-bones does not fail to produce a fiddle-a woebegone instrument, from a woe-begone poke-and commences to scrape with all the energy of a rejuvenated man, whereat, as in Burns,

There rises up the martial chuck,
And stills the loud uproar.

It is a rude interposition, but it has point and startling effect.

"Whist, again say I, grandda; and whist, ye ne'er-do-weel man o' ae leg; the tane o' ye may be a guid fiddler eneuch, an' the tither as braw a fechter as ony cock on a midden, but, wae's me, ye provide ill for them o' yer ain hoosehald. See here!"-and the dame rustles her tattered rags in a manner which might give a shock to some who have never known our ways of life in the North. Grandpère looks at the ceiling and listens, presumably, to the "rattons"; the man of war sniffs the air and beats his stump; and the daft girl winks, with still broader effect, at the herd-laddie. Maggie's countenance is the best study. Concern is there, and, if we mistake not, compassion as well, and some of us would hazard a big stake that that loudtongued dame will go away warmer and better clad to-morrow morning at grey daylight. It is a great farce, an old set piece, but we are, as serious kindly souls, in duty bound to minister to imposture in bitter need.

Oh! to tell of the songs, the stories, the grimaces, the "foursome reels," the sweet looks and snatched kisses, with the ludicrous undertone of chirping mice and squeaking rats, which follow. "It's as guid as 'brose day an' bannock nicht,'" declares one; "Better

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nor a spree in the bothy," says a sinful, thirsty soul; "Guid as het kail to a cauld an' hungry stamach," is the opinion of the laddie ; and "Infinitely better than Problem XIII., Book II., in Euclid," thinks one in the company, a sad truant to duty.

And now another person joins us. It is Reuben the shepherd, from the bleak hillside. At his heels follow two sleek collie dogs, quiet as lambs, because they have had enough of the chill and the snow for one day at least, regardless even of the presence of our gaberlunzie visitors, at whom, in other circumstances, they would without doubt have delivered more than one bark and angry snarl as to persons of an inferior degree. The shepherd brings a whiff of the cold mountain and the snow-covered heather with him, which makes the ruddy light of the flames and the genial heat all the more kindly. Reuben is a strong man, and his voice is a deep bass (startling is its shout on the slanting moor); and he is now charged with a further piece of unexpected news.

"Oich! oich! it's an awfu' storm," says Reuben.

"Mair nor awfu', shepherd," rejoins, as a privileged person, Grandpère the beggar.

"Hae ye the sheep, Reuben?" inquires the farmer in gentle

tones.

"A' richt, guidman; richt as a lady's glove," stoutly declares Reuben Stevens.

"But noo tae the pint," he continues. "Ye'll a' hae heard it." "Ay, ay, as tae Aundrew," puts in Jock the ". tauld 'em a' aboot it."

orra "

man. "I

"Oh, ye tauld them, did ye? Weel, I'm free to say ye didna. Ne'er glare at me, man—AUNDREW'S OOT!"

"Oot!" cry we, as the pipe falls from the unnerved hand of Kit Clerk, the needle from the fingers of Maggie the fair, and the bonnet, red tassel, and all, from the head of Jock the "orra" man; as the soldier cocks his tattered hat, the dame shakes off the first approaches of sleep, and even the simpleton ceases her grinning.

"He's oot, because he niver was in," adds Reuben sententiously. "Back he cam' safe an' soond wi' the gamekeeper fallows, an' noo he's in his ain bit hoosie, snug an' cantie by the ingle neuk." "Weel, an' there noo!" say some;

likes o't?" cry others.

saw ye

iver onything like the

It is a queer story-and, in all its details, a long-that Reuben has to tell; so long, and, moreover, constituting such a ludicrous ending to an almost tragical adventure, that we reserve it for another occasion. For we are going to the kirk on Sunday, unless the snow

storm prevent, and the true history of Andrew's arrest and triumphant return will be rehearsed in the course of the weekly palaver outside the sacred doors-rehearsed with fulness and much added grace. He that hath ears to hear let him be there.

And now the evening is over. The mendicants pass out to the quiet barn, to their nests in the straw; the girls to the byre to milk the kye; the men to the stable to see to the horses; you to your couch in the friendly cottage down in the den by Tap-the-neuk, and I to the house in the corner of the wood. The great snowflakes are still falling and the wind is up. You are in bleak Carglen, remember, in the bitter, boisterous winter; and you need not be surprised if you awake to-morrow morning to find a gigantic wreath piled against the main and only door, and you a prisoner, till helpful hands dig a passage through the snow and relieve the stormbestead household.

ALEXANDER GORDON.

THE

PAINS AND PENALTIES.

PART I.

HERE are few subjects more painfully interesting, perhaps, than that of the penalties which men have inflicted on their fellow-men; and I am not sure that there is any which lends greater support, on investigation, to the theory that at bottom in every man there is something of the brute. Man's inhumanity to man offers, indeed, an exceedingly wide field to the inquirer, and naturally suggests the reflection that if we had taken half the trouble to better the condition of our fellows which we have taken to rack and torture them, the world would have been a great deal happier. That the punishment should not exceed the offence was taught by the philosophers of the elder world, and repeated in his terse way by Horace:

Let rules be fixed that may our rage contain,
And punish faults with a proportioned pain;
And do not flay him who deserves alone

A whipping for the fault that he has done.

But Authority scorned to listen to the wise and humane advice of philosopher and poet, though experience proved that excessive punishments increased offences instead of deterring men from committing them. In the present paper, however, my object is not to moralise on the relation between crime and punishment, but to contribute a few notes on the historical side of the question, and illustrate the ingenious cruelty which has so frequently been brought to bear on the invention of pains and penalties, the victims, not infrequently, being innocent of any wrong, or of any fault other than that of having fallen into the hands of irresponsible Power.

The axe, the poisoned chalice, the gibbet, the stake, the crossthese are only too familiar as forms of punishment. In the good old times lapidation, or stoning to death, was often meted out to adulterers. By the Jewish law it was the ordinary mode of execution. Noyades, or death by drowning, the Romans reserved for parricides, as you will learn from a very eloquent passage in Cicero's oration "Pro Roscio Amerino." He says they were sewn up alive

in leathern sacks and thrown into the Tiber, and he extols the punishment because it separated the guilty wretch from "entire nature, depriving him simultaneously of sky, and sun, and earth, and water, to the end that the monster who had slain the author of his days should no longer enjoy any one of the elements which are regarded as the principle of all existence." The orator points out that, as of common right, the air belongs to the living, the earth to the dead, the sea to the bodies which float on its waters, and the shore to those which the sea rejects. But the parricide lingered out his last breath without inhaling the air of heaven; he died, and the earth received not his bones; he was tossed by the waves, which nevertheless did not touch him; and, finally, when abandoned by the sea, he could not rest even on the rocks.

The Emperor Justinian, in his "Institutes "-the elementary treatise of law drawn up at his command, of which Gibbon furnishes a very complete analysis-revived the old form as set forth in the Twelve Tables, and shut up in the parricide's sack a cock, a viper, a dog, and a monkey (innoxia simia, as Juvenal calls it). In practice, however, the parricide was generally burnt alive or given to wild. beasts. To an incendiary Justinian assigned a twofold punishment: he was first whipped, and afterwards delivered to the flames. A corrupt or malicious witness was thrown headlong from the Tarpeian rock, the punishment which, as everybody knows, was formerly inflicted on traitors:

Bear him to the rock Tarpeian, and from thence
Into destruction cast him.

As for the satirist, he was very properly beaten with clubs, and probably often perished under the executioner's blows, so simple was the law of libel in Imperial Rome! The insolvent debtor, whether simply unfortunate or fraudulent, could be imprisoned by his creditors, bound with a chain of fifteen pounds weight, and restricted to twelve ounces of rice for his daily food.

It is to the discredit of Justinian that one Erixo, who had whipped his son to death, he saved from the just fury of the multitude.

Death by Drowning has been a popular penalty in various countries and ages. According to Du Cange, in our own country it was at one time inflicted upon thieves. In France, even as late as the sixteenth century, upon the incontinent. It was revived during the French Revolution by the infamous Carrier at Nantes (1793). "Why unmoors that flat-bottomed craft, that gabare, about eleven at night