y o' doing in India;
and everything has gane right and prospered wi' our whole family frae
that day to this."

THE BURGHER'S TALES.

THE ANCIENT BUREAU.

The sources of legends are not often found in old sermons; and yet it
will be admitted that there are few remarkable events in man's history,
which, if inquired into, will not be found to embrace the elements of
very impressive pulpit discourses. Even in cases which seem to disprove
a special, if not a general Providence, there will always be found in
the account between earth and heaven some "desperate debt," mayhap an
"accommodation bill," which justifies the ways of God to man. It may
even be said that the fact of our being generally able to find that item
is a proof of the wonderful adaptability of Christianity to the fortunes
and hopes of our race. That ministers avoid the special topics of
peculiar destinies, may easily be accounted for otherwise than by
supposing that they cannot explain them so as to vindicate God's
justice; but if ever there was a case where that difficulty would seem
to the eye of mere reason to culminate in impossibility, it is that
which I have gleaned from a veritable pulpit lecture. I have the sermon
in my possession, but from the want of the title-page, I am unable to
ascertain the author. The date at the end is 1793, and the text is,
"Inscrutable are _his_ judgments."

Inscrutable indeed in the case to which the words were applied--no other
than an instance of death by starvation, which occurred in Edinburgh in
the year we have just mentioned. In that retreat of poverty called
Middleton's Entry, which joins the dark street called the Potterrow, and
Bristo Street, the inhabitants were roused into surprise, if not a
feeling approaching to horror, by the discovery that a woman, who had
lived for a period of fifteen years in a solitary room at the top of one
of the tenements, had been found in bed dead. A doctor was called, but
before he came it was concluded by those who had assembled in the small
room that she had died from want of food; and such was the fact. The
body--that of one not yet much past the middle of life, and with fair
complexion and comely features--was so emaciated, that you might have
counted the ribs merely by the eye; and all those parts where the bones
are naturally near the surface exhibited a sharpness which suggested the
fancy, that as you may see a phosphorescent skeleton through the glow,
you beheld i