expect or obtain by
marriage. She has made him a happy father, and a fond, foolish,
indulgent grandpapa.

DURA DEN; OR, SECOND THOUGHTS ARE BEST.

I took my way, a few days ago, fishing-rod in hand, from Cupar in Fife,
by Dura Den, up towards the healthy and sequestered village of Ceres.
Dura Den was once romantic and secluded. Its brawling stream, which
empties the waters of the upper basin into the Eden, leaped and tumbled
over igneous, and penetrated its way through aqueous, formations, till
it mingled into rejoicing union with the lovely Eden immediately under
the old towers of Spottiswood, and the fine Gothic church of Dairsie.
This deep and beautifully-winding ravine was covered from rock to rock,
on each successively sunny side, by trees of various name and leaf, from
the scented sloe and hawthorn, up to the hazel, the birch, and the oak.
It was a perfect aviary during the spring months. A few wild deer
browsed amidst recesses, and various love-smitten maids and men repaired
to this retreat, to talk of many things which were only interesting to
themselves. The soft projecting sandstone rocks had been water-run into
caves and recesses; and in some of these report had fixed the residence,
for a night at least, of the famous Balfour of Burley, after the affair
of Magus Muir.[A] It is not, however, to this, but to a more recent
occurrence, that I am now about to solicit your attention, after,
however, premising the change which has now been wrought upon this once
rural, secluded, romantic, lovely spot. At the very entrance, there
stands a bone-mill, grinding, with grating activity and horrible crunch,
into powder the mingled bones of man and beast. You have scarcely
escaped from the horrible jarring sound of the modern ogre, than you
come full plump upon a spinning-mill, with as many windows as there are
days in the year. There it stands bestriding the valley like a colossus,
and commanding all the collected energies of the once pure and solitary
stream. Bless me! how it thunders: the very rocks seem to shake under
the whirl of the tremendous machinery; whilst at every open window out
flies in clouds the imprisoned dust and stour. A single door opens, and
the sound maddens on your ear into a screwing torture. It shuts again.
You are greatly relieved by the compressed and imprisoned horror. A
little further up this once delightful den, a pillar of smoke shoots out
on the eye, like an eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Th