tiny to Russia. The attempt may be made in sufficient time, although they do not accelerate the course of events; but passion and prejudice often overcome reason. The alliance between France and Russia has been denied without the same clear and official authority afforded by the Danes. The denials or explanations have come, indeed, from our own Government, their friends and organs. They are confined within narrow limits. First, it was said there were doubts of its truth in the city. So there were everywhere, in or out of the city. Then there was ignorance of the compact among the Russian merchants. This is at least probable; for merchants are not likely to have any exclusive information concerning treaties. Last, the Emperor was said to have telegraphed to the mother of the Empress that he was innocent of any design against Austria. An Emperor would probably not supply the particulars of a secret treaty by telegraph to a female relative. All doubts on the subject are solved by the answer of Prince Gortschokoff to our our own Government. An inquiry had been made into the nature of the treaty, if any secret transaction existed between France and Russia. The answer given was, that only an agreement and not a treaty existed. There may be an agreement-the Prince wrote between the two Emperors-but it does not affect England. It would be useless to expose this subterfuge further than by the repetition of the rubbish. An agreement_between two absolute emperors, reduced to writing, is a treaty. The existence of this agreement, contemporaneously with the interference of Russia to prevent mediation between Austria, France, and Sardinia, by Britain, was a fraud on the part both of France and of Russia; it was a dishonour and a swindle-equal to anything so low as evento banis h a Baron | from Tatersall's. That unhappy fact, so fresh and green, prevents any prudent man from relying on the assurances of these courts. And while the Russians say that their treaty does not affect England, we think it may be proved that within a month they gave the Austrians reason to believe that they should not interfere in any way to affect them. Indeed, their friends say, on the same day, Do not be alarmed, the Emperor of Russia has tele graphed to his mother-in-law that he will do nothing to affect Austria; and do not be alarmed, the Russians only are to march an army of 60,000 men to the borders of Austrian Gallicia, as a corps of observation The opinion of the Derby Government on that transaction is given by the Queen's proclamation, of £10 in bounty for ablebodied seamen, from twenty to forty-five years of age; £5 for each ordinary seaman; and £2 for each landsman between twenty and twenty-five years. The men are wanted, or money would not be paid for them; and the bounties will be cheaper in the end than the press gang. We have no sympathy with Austrian mis-government; but this crusade against that power occurs at a period when France is not practically freer than Lombardy, where, at least, material improvements had been introduced by a GovernorGeneral, who is personally popular. under To a rising by Italians for Italian freedom, independence, and unity, we could only seek success, if it were taken in the absence of the French armies, who more than once before, in this century, and for the last time in 1848, have trampled Italian freedom and freemen in blood, as they will do once more. this war, on the part of France and Sardinia, we can only fear a prosperous issue. A check to Napoleon now might relieve Europe from his schemes, and save his dynasty, if that be an object, from a third wreck. Το We cannot expect this consummation of the existing troubles. They will proceed, expanding as they go; involving new interests and new territories. Neutrality has been proclaimed at nearly all the hustings of this country during the election week, as the opinion of elected and electors. Neutrality, in the first contest, is a good doctrine. Austria has been attacked, and yet the principles of its government tie up our hands, if our people and our statesmen deemed our interference, for any other reason, prudent. Other states may be assailed. If the Russians march into Prussia on one side, or Turkey on the other, What then, and then? Are we to allow the division of the world by Chassuers from Vincennes, by Cossacks from the Volga, or even of Europe. These are the considerations which render useless a vow of neutrality. The priest and the Levite were, we suppose, neutral, and it may have fared ill with each of them, some day, between Jericho and Jerusalem; for thieves are not charmed by drab any more than by red, and would not repay with gratitude their neutrality. Neither would crowned and sceptred thieves be merciful to us because we allowed them, without any more active remonstrance than good advice, to rob and steal. Lord Cowley is an excellent representative in half the cases that usually lead to war; and we | adhere in them to Lord Cowley, going no farther than his means. There are other cases where Lord Clyde is the bteter representative, and we sincerely wish that he were near to home. If the new allies are bent on more mischief than the dismemberment of the Austrian empire, and the reduction of Austria to a second-rate German power-which is their object in the first placewe shall probably hear of it from India. They will not fail to secure our neutrality, if possible, by giving our army employment there. In the contest, as it stands now, neutrality is due to our character and principles. POETRY, BY JAMES MACFARLAN, THE ROADSIDE INN. AN EPISTLE. DEAR Friend, wrapt in your cloak of care, The quaint old house where years agone As when in older days we met ; The ostler, with his roguish leer (The same as when you saw him last), Moves round the door, and probes me here With grey memorials of the past. The verses scratched across the pane A thousand banished thoughts recal; While memories o'er the musing brain In fitful shadows rise and fall. For changes too have come and gone, And here the innovator bold, Some cruel pranks with time has wrought, From yon old Lion's tarnished gold To sights with deeper meaning fraught. The rosy wench is wedded now (A change you'd hardly wish to see), With matron cares across her brow, And clamorous faces round her knee. In six good feet of honest earth. His widow lives, and moves about With ribbon'd pomp and jingling keys, And deals the foamy blessings out 'Mid all her pewter mysteries. O wizard Past at thy behest A glory crowns one beggar word, While some long dead and buried jest Leaps up to smite us like a sword. Old scenes of fast-receding joy, A heaven of deeper splendour hold; The man looks back upon the boy Wrapt in his morning mists of gold, And grander deems that olden sky Though breathing in the broder day, The present fields that round him lie Wear but a face of common clay. Yet, wherefore should I tease the mind With raising ghosts, and nursing ills; Away! give sorrow to the wind That whistles o'er the Norland hills. But when again I reach the town And buried in its central din, My friend, our thoughts may wander down To revel in this Roadside Inn. THE TWO PATHS. THEY grew together in the old grey hall, And raised one prayer on calm religious eves. There seemed the music of translucent springs. But Time, that holds the helm of circumstance, And shapes the silent courses of the heart, Shut up the volume of their young romance, And cast their lives and actions far apart. One sought the gilded world, and there became Fell on the sword of their hope and died; Swept o'er their ashes with the skirts of pride. The cultivation of a cruel skill, Dwelt 'mong the breezes of her native fields, Laughed with the brooks, and saw the flowers rejoice, Brimmed with all blessings that the summer And life rolled on in one melodious flow An angel touching sterile crags of woe, With summer blooms of heaven's transcendant Like sleep or peace, in dark affliction's place, The howling dens and caverns of Despair. And pure as morn sent forth, her fair white hand, Her heart's large love went brightening ever- TELESCOPIC VIEWS. At last, when Mr. Brown should have grown more impatient, he felt interested in the case. It was half an hour afterwards, passed by the two lawyers in a very animated discussion, when Mr. Semple left his junior to lock his drawers, turn off the gas, which had been early lighted, for he has a very dark room; and as he performed these duties, a elerk of the boy Jones' school heard him say, "You'll take eight or ten days to think over all this; it's too serious by much to be done quick, and you will have new light on your duty next week." ODDS and ends keep accumulating perpetually. | ful married woman more than a spoiled dinner. Those little things chiefly make a man's fortunes. She sets it down as a personal insult, for which When they once get into a mess, it is impossible no apology can be effectually made during that to get them out again without a perfect hecatomb evening. of struggles and toils, and hours lost in them. That journey to London, and his untoward detention there, entirely destroyed Mr. Brown's happiness through all the last winter. He is an extremely laborious and methodical man who goes through an immense amount of labour, and does all well if he be permitted to do it in his own manner; but when a man of that caste is once put out of his step, he feels the utmost difficulty iu getting back again. So Mr. Brown was not in a conciliatory humour when, late in the next afternoon to that I have last mentioned, Mr. Ross Semple walked into his room as he was proposing to walk out, with a carpet bag full of papers for domestic work, and informed him that he had to communicate something of great importance. Mr. Brown was obliged to submit, and to listen to all the circumstances narrated to Mr. Graham on the previous morning, with the additional sufferings" and troubles which had intervened. The narrator could have told another's story more clearly and concisely than his own; and poor Mr. Brown looked at his bag, looked at the clock, then at his watch, as if he wished to check the clock, or contemplate the dial, and thought on Mrs. Brownthat peculiarly precise lady, who tolerated no delay caused by any less personage than the Lord Justice Clerk, or some other dignitary of similar rank, and whose dinner all this time was getting into a most disreputable state. Old bachelors like Mr. John Ross Semple, who have only seen the bright side of the cloud, hardly understand that nothing tries the temper of a care "I have thought over it all that I shall ever think," Mr. Semple replied; "If you will arrange it, I shall be spared a long letter. Good afternoon." "I will fulfil my promise eight days after date." "Precisely eight then," added the older man, and without the days of grace, he said jauntily, as he hurried through the hall into the street and passed away." A few steps brought Mr. Brown into the lin of omnibuses, but instead of going in the direction of home, he turned quite into the opposite way. When a wise man has made up his mind to take an omnibus, he is better to pursue that course, the vehicle may fill up as it proceeds. He may gain something by walking back and nothing by walking on. And this omnibus was nearly full, "Quite full," said an old lady with an ugly animal on her knee, long whitish-brown hair and red eyes. A gentleman opposite her groaned out a cor roboration of her idea of space, and that was denied by a second in the farther corner under cover of the lady and her dog, who eagerly requested Mr. Brown to interpose his bag and his body between himself and the dog. "The beast is quite mad," he said, "but he may chew away harmlessly at these law papers of yours, Mr. Brown." "Room for one," the conductor pronounced, the door was slammed roughly, and the horses took the signal. It was a serious business for a portly man to squeeze himself through that line of legs and knees with the omnibus in motion, but when the pass between the elderly specimens, male and female, with the mad dog in the female possession, was reached, it became worse. The dog and the lady were alike irritable. The former snapped at the bag, employed as a shield; the latter spoke, and that was perhaps worse. "Gentlemen that carries bags," she said, "should go outside." "The triumph of constitutional principles," answered the wedged-up passenger opposite. "The exposure and thorough overthrow of this contemptible government," said the man in the corner. The man opposite wanted to know if he applied the term contemptible to the Earl of Derby. And the gentleman in the corner disclaimed any personality being only concerned to say that collectively the Government were "contemptible," having attempted shabbily to disfranchise a number of honest voters for English counties. "Are you quite sure of that now, Mr. Davies," asked Mr. Brown. " Respectable or not," said Brown, "I am a Radical, and go farther than you by much, but I call this disfranchisement nonsense-a dodge. Suppose now that you were registered on your place over in St. Cuthbert's" "And so I am!—it's within the Parliamentary boundary." "Just that, now do you think that you should vote in Mid-Lothian, as you may for your place in Libberton." "Surely not-who ever talked such nonsense." "People not only talk of it, but they do it; although I suppose you would lend a hand to suppress the abuse if it existed here." fictitious votes-in Scotland-but he calls this a disfranchising bill." "May be so that only shows how evilcommunications corrupt good manners-but, as a lawyer, I assure you that the only disfranchisement proposed was a clause to compel electors to vote within the constituency in which their qualifi cationa rose. And even that was made prospective ultimately—and applied only to the heirs and successors of the existing voters. The omnibus gave a rather sudden jerk on stopping, as the gentleman opposite the lady rose, at their street, and said, "Thank you, sir," for the argument against disfranchisement-" Thank you, sir,' as he tumbled down upon, or over Fidele and his wife, who together contrived to remonstrate in very angry tones. After the gen tleman was gathered up, and his dog and his wife extracted from the pressure, the lawyer bethought him of his rapidly approaching crisis. He did not anticipate altogether the stormy reception of the gentleman with Fidele for an encumbrance, but he was two hours behind time. A bright idea struck him as he wended his way up the gravelled walk to the cottage, between rows of flower-roots and shrubs that all should have been beautiful and bright, but in the cold east wind of this cold spring, they looked but sick and sorrowful and stricken through the day. They looked worse at night, when gas shone upon their affiction. Before a remonstrance could escape the patient waiter for dinner, Mr. Brown, with a mirthful countenance, rather made up for the occasion though, assured her that he had been detained unavoidably by some marriage settlements. The lady was not accustomed to hear anecdotes of business, and dryly answered that she supposed they did not concern her, she was not to be married. No; but one of her most intimate friends was not to be married—and the disappointment ren dered new arrangements necessary. The foil answered its purpose and the lady forgot to be angry concerning her dinner. In the country, where the woods should all be green and the briar high over the clods, with flowers instead of snow and the hedges white where there should be the busy humming of industrious bees and the songs of merry birds, at morn and night, and the heat of the "three days of April" should be common to every day; yet everything is reversed, and people say that spring and winter have been transferred out of their places; for there is April snow on the distant hills, and it falls in flakes every second day in the lowlands-a sorry sight to see-in the country the spring is more unpleasant than in the town, and—it is everywhere unpleasant. The afternoon was by no means drawn down to evening, for evening comes late now; there is no getting at candles and darkness in this cold weather, when six o'clock came, and with it Mr. Lauder and his friends from the nearest parish, as uncomfortable as people could be possibly who had travelled a few miles in a wet afternoon, tolerably well guarded from the weather, The meeting was to have been a field day. Mr. Humphrey and Mr. Niel were afraid of the subject, and they had no objections to change the place of meeting so as to come under Mr. Lauders protection. He has the character of being eminently a prudent man. Many persons without much energy or talent, succeed better in the world than men of genius by the possession of prudence. The wind tore the young branches and cradled the buds and leaves in boisterous rudeness around Kilbattery. The light clouds driven from Russia by the fierce east wind scudded fleety over the mainlands towards the Atlantic, like creatures glad to be free. There was neither sky nor sun visible; and the light was dim and greyish; while cold drops dashed over the ground that was anxious for spring showers. Twenty per cent. of our time is passed under this description of weather without any notable characteristic. There is one English poet who sings hymns to the Northeast wind as the chief agent in the making of Saxondom. If he were not one of the men whom England would miss, I could wish to see him pilloried on the top of one of our crags looking seaward for half-an-bour in a North-east gale, as a reward for his bad taste. I could never feel any good in that wind except for ships bound to South Africa or the West India Islands. The Moorcleuch dissensions for that evening had been removed to Kilbattery, but the Permanent President was in "his place," having come that way from a lecture on the composition of iron ore, in one of the iron towns, on the preceding evening, and brimful of his subject. So when the ordinary business came up for consideration, Mr. Pittenweem expressed his deep regret that the evening must be lost and squandered, seeing that from the very nature of the subject, namely, the circumstances and education of females, it could not possibly be saved. There were subjects that lay beyond human capability, great as it was, so far, at any rate, as it had been developed, for he believed that it was not possible to limit the energy and the power of the masculine soul, or set a "thus far and no farther" to its researches into any lawful subject. He had every reason to believe-indeed it might be held undeniable-that the circumstancea and education of female society was a lawful subject of inquiry at a proper place and time, but now when, more than formerly, the development of the natural resources of this great country had become the duty of every patriotic mind, he could not defend the withdrawal of their attention from investigations connected with the mining interests into inquiries that might be deferred;-as advisable. However, there were thirteen members present. They would be detained four hours-or fifty-two hours in an aggregate-that was five and one-fourth Mr. Nimmo held that the president did not give adequate encouragement to their young friend in the important topic which he proposed to submit to them, but he particularly thought that their president had taken the term, "Masculine soul," from a work described as "The Feminine Soul," by Elizabeth Strutt, and it was a plagiarism, there. fore. The President denied that he had stolen from the work in question, although he remembered it now, as one to which Mr. Nimmo had drawn his attention, and he admitted that it contained some very sensible remarks, indicating that love of truth not always found in masculine souls. Miss Gra. ham did not see the connexion of iron ore with this particular subject, but she added-"I was obliged to Mr. Nimmo for the loan of Miss or Mrs. Strutt's book, and as the subject has been mentioned, perhaps Mr. Pittenweem would be good enough to say whether he agrees with the lady that our souls are precise similitudes of our bodies, because Miss Humphrey's, myself, and others, who are advancing towards the sere and yellow leaf are interested. "Oh, ma'am !" said Miss Humphrey's, "it's far that you are from sere leaves," and she bridled up curtly at the idea of yellow leaves. "I think," Mr. Nimmo remarked, "that our President will better understand the matter if I explain that the authoress holds the beautiful truth that our bodies are exactly our souls made visible to mortal eye." "Like as two peas," Mr. Graham suggested. "Does that not strike you as materialism, Mr. Lauder ?" said the minister of Pittendrum. "We shall hear the opinion of our learned President," suggested the prudent gentleman. "And," interrupted Mr. Neil, for the president. was to offer his opinion, "I am glad of these meetings, because they bring together those who should be the champions of truth, and teach them the errors floating in society. For my own part I have no hesitation in answering the question." "Nor any other question," whispered Mi s Humphrey. "Nor any other question, as my fair friend has just now civilly remarked, connected with my profession. A spirit is without form." "I should like to see this book," said Mr. Garvie, "and, in the meantime, to observe that its authors, and our rev. friend, Mr. Neil, are both guilty of assumptions. I am sure Mr. Nimmo has the book in his pocket.' Mr. Nimmo assented, and handed a little volume to the lawyer, while the president went on— "Thus appealed to, I remark that our friend, Mr. Garvie, errs in holding that both parties in this difference are guilty of assuming as facts matters to them unknown, because it may be distinctly shown that a spirit, if it be a finite spirit, must have form; and in this way that spirit is indivi |