their future married and prosperous lot?

It is, indeed, long since I have laid aside the pack--to which, after a
good education, I had taken, from a wandering propensity--and taken up
my residence in the flourishing village of Thornhill, Dumfriesshire;
living, at first, on the profits of my shop, and now retired on my
little, but, to me, ample competency; but I still have great pleasure in
paying a yearly visit to my friends of Mitchelslacks, and in recalling
with them, over a comfortable meal, the interesting incidents of the
snow storm 1794.

THE FAIR MAID OF CELLARDYKES.

I did not like the idea of having all the specimens of the fine arts in
Europe collected into one "bonne bouche" at the Louvre. It was like
collecting, while a boy, a handful of strawberries, and devouring them
at one indiscriminating gulp. I do not like floral exhibitions, for the
same reason. I had rather a thousand times meet my old and my new
friends in my solitary walks, or in my country rambles. All museums in
this way confound and bewilder me; and had the Turk not been master of
Greece, I should have preferred a view of the Elgin marbles in the land
of their nativity. And it is for a similar reason that my mind still
reverts, with a kind of dreamy delight, to the time when I viewed
mankind in detail, and in all their individual and natural
peculiarities, rather than _en masse_, and in one regimental uniform.
Educate up! Educate up! Invent machinery--discover agencies--saddle
nature with the panniers of labour--and, at last, stand alongside of
her, clothed, from the peasant to the prince, in the wonders of her
manufacture, and merrily whistling, in idle unconcern, to the tune of
her unerring despatch! But what have we gained? One mass of
similarities: the housemaid, the housekeeper, the lady, and the
princess, speaking the same language, clothed in the same habiliments,
and enjoying the same immunities from corporeal labour--the colours of
the rainbow whirled and blended into one glare of white! Towards this
_ultimatum_ we are now fast hastening. Where is the shepherd
stocking-weaver, with his wires and his fingers moving invisibly? Where
the "wee and the muckle wheel," with the aged dames, in pletted toys,
singing "Tarry woo?" Where the hodden-grey clad patriarch, sitting in
the midst of his family, and mixing familiarly, and in perfect equality
with all the household--servant and child? My heart constantly warms to
these recollec