will burst."

People began to gather about the body--but awe kept them aloof; and as
for removing it to a house, none who saw it but knew such care would
have been vain, for doubt there could be none that there lay death. So
the groups remained for a while at a distance--even the old pastor went
a good many paces apart; and under the shadow of that tree the father
and child composed her limbs, and closed her eyes, and continued to sit
beside her, as still as if they had been watching over one asleep.

That death was seen by all to be a strange calamity to him who had lived
long among them--had adopted many of their customs--and was even as one
of themselves--so it seemed--in the familiar intercourse of man with
man. Some dim notion that this was the dead body of his wife was
entertained by many, they knew not why; and their clergyman felt that
then there needed to be neither concealment nor avowal of the truth. So
in solemn sympathy they approached the body and its watchers; a bier had
been prepared: and walking at the head, as if it had been a funeral, the
Father of little Lucy holding her hand, silently directed the procession
towards his own house--out of the FIELD OF FLOWERS.

COTTAGES.

Have you any intention, dear reader, of building a house in the country?
If you have, pray, for your own sake and ours, let it not be a Cottage.
We presume that you are obliged to live, one half of the year at least,
in a town. Then why change altogether the character of your domicile and
your establishment? You are an inhabitant of Edinburgh, and have a house
in the Circus, or Heriot Row, or Abercromby Place, or Queen Street. The
said house has five or six stories, and is such a palace as one might
expect in the City of Palaces. Your drawing-rooms can, at a pinch, hold
some ten score of modern Athenians--your dining-room might feast one
half of the contributors to _Blackwood's Magazine_--your "placens uxor"
has her boudoir--your eldest daughter, now verging on womanhood, her
music-room--your boys their own studio--the governess her retreat--and
the tutor his den--the housekeeper sits like an overgrown spider in her
own sanctum--the butler bargains for his dim apartment--and the four
maids must have their front area-window. In short, from cellarage to
garret all is complete, and Number Forty-two is really a splendid
mansion.

Now, dear reader, far be it from us to question the propriety or
prudence of such an establishm