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who has been in her grave in Abbotshall | niece to Mrs. Keith, residing in No 1 North Kirkyard these fifty and more years? We Charlotte Street, who was not Mrs. Murray may of her cleverness-not of her affection- Keith, although very intimately acquainted ateness, her nature. What a picture the with that old lady. My aunt was a daughanimosa infans gives us of herself, her vivac-ter of Mr. James Rae, surgeon, and married ity, her passionateness, her precocious love- the youngest son of old Keith of Ravelstone. making, her passion for nature, for swine, for Corstorphine Hill belonged to my aunt's husall living things, her reading, her turn for hand; and his eldest son, Sir Alexander expression, her satire, her frankness, her Keith, succeeded his uncle to both Ravelstone little sins and rages, her great repentances! and Dunnottar. The Keiths were not conWe don't wonder Walter Scott carried her nected by relationship with the Howisons of off in the neuk of his plaid, and played him- Braehead, but my grandfather and grandself with her for hours. mother (who was), a daughter of Cant of

intimate footing with our Mrs. Keith's grandfather and grandmother; and so it has been for three generations, and the friendship consummated by my cousin, William Keith, marrying Isabella Craufurd.

which was 'a gift to Marjorie from Walter Scott,' probably the first edition of that attractive series, for it wanted Frank,' which is always now published as part of the series, under the title of Early Lessons.' I regret to say these little volumes have disappeared.

The year before she died, when in Edin-Thurston and Giles-Grange, were on the most burgh, she was at a Twelfth Night supper at Scott's, in Castle Street. The company had all come-all but Marjorie. Scott's familiars, whom we all know, were there-all were come but Marjorie; and all were dull because Scott was dell." Where's that bairn? what can "As to my aunt and Scott, they were on have come over her? I'll go myself and see." a very intimate footing. He asked my aunt And he was getting up, and would have gone; to be godmother to his eldest daughter Sophia when the bell rang, and in came Duncan Roy Charlotte. I had a copy of Miss Edgeworth's and his henchman Tougald, with the sedan-Rosamond, and Harry and Lucy' for long, chair, which was brought right into the lobby, and its top raised And there, in its darkness and dingy old cloth sat Maidie in white, her eyes gleaming, and Scott bending over her in ecstasy-hung over her enamored." "Sit ye there, my dautie, till they all see you;" and forthwith he brought them all. You can fancy the scene. And he lifted her up, and marched to his seat with her on his stout shoulder, and set her down beside him; and then began the night, and such a night! Those who knew Scott best said, that night was never equalled; Maidie and he were the stars and she gave them Constance's speeches and Helvellyn, the ballad then much in vogue-and all her répertoire -Scott showing her off, and being ofttimes rebuked by her for his intentional blunders.

We are indebted for the following-and our readers will be not unwilling to share our obligations-to her sister :

"Her birth was 15th January, 1803; her death 19th December, 1811. I take this from her Bibles. I believe she was a child of robust health, of much vigor of body, and beautifully-formed arms, and, until her last illness, never was an hour in bed. She was

* Her Bible is before me; a pair, as then called;

the faded marks are just as she placed them. There is one at David's lament over Jonathan."

"Sir Walter was no relation of Marjorie's, but of the Keiths, through the Swintons; and, like Marjorie, he stayed much at Ravelstone in his early days, with his grandaunt Mrs. Keith; and it was while seeing him there as a boy, that another aunt of mine composed, when he was about fourteen, the lines prognosticating his future fame that Lockhart ascribes in his Life to Mrs. Cockburn, authoress of The Flowers of the Forest : '—

"Go on, dear youth, the glorious path pursue
Which bounteous Nature kindly smooths for you;
Go bid the seeds her hands have sown arise,
By timely culture, to their native skies;
Go, and employ the poet's heavenly art,
Not merely to delight, but mend the heart.'
Mrs. Keir was my aunt's name, another of
Dr. Rae's daughters." We cannot better
end than in words from this same pen: "I
have to ask you to forgive my anxiety in gath-
ering up the fragments of Marjorie's last
all that pertains to her. You are quite cor-
days, but I have an almost sacred feeling to
rect in stating that measles were the cause

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of her death. My mother was struck by the patient quietness manifested by Marjorie during this illness, unlike her ardent, impulsive nature; but love and poetic feeling were unquenched. When Dr. Johnstone rewarded her submissiveness with a sixpence, the request speedily followed that she might get out ere New Year's day came. When asked why she was so desirous of getting out, she immediately rejoined, Oh, I am so anxious to buy something with my sixpence for my dear Isa Keith.' Again, when lying very still, her mother asked her if there was any thing she wished: Oh, yes! if you would just leave the room door open a wee bit, and “The Land o' the Leal," and I will lie play and think, and enjoy myself' (this is just as stated to me by her mother and mine). Well, the happy day came, alike to parents and child, when Marjorie was allowed to come forth from the nursery to the parlor. It was sabbath evening, and after tea. My father, who idolized this child, and never afterwards in my hearing mentioned her name, took her in his arms; and while walking her up and down the room, she said, Father, I will repeat something to you; what would you like?' He said, Just choose yourself, Maidie." She hesitated for a moment between the paraphrase, Few are thy days, and full of woe,' and the lines of Burns already quoted, but I decided on the latter, a remarkable choice for a child. The repeating these lines seemed to stir up the depths of feeling in her soul. She asked to be allowed to write a poem; there was a doubt whether it would be right to allow her, in case of hurting her eyes. She pleaded earnestly, Just this once;' the point was yielded, her slate was given her, and with great rapidity she wrote an address of fourteen lines, to her loved cousin on the author's recovery,' her last work on earth :

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"O Isa, pain did visit me,

I was at the last extremity;
How often did I think of you,

I wished your graceful form to view,
To clasp you in my weak embrace,
Indeed I thought I'd run my race:
Good care, I'm sure, was of me taken,
But still indeed I was much shaken,
At last I daily strength did gain,
And oh at last, away went pain;
At length the doctor thought I might
Stay in the parlor all the night;
I now continue so to do,
Farewell to Nancy and to you.'

She went to bed apparently well, awoke in the middle of the night with the old cry of head!' Three days of the dire malady, woe to a mother's heart, My head, my water in the head,' followed, and the end

came.

"Soft, silken primrose, fading timelessly."

any

It is needless, it is impossible, to add thing to this: the fervor, the sweetness, the flush of poetic ecstasy, the lovely and glowing eye, the perfect nature of that bright and warm intelligence, that darling child,-Lady Nairne's words, and the old tune, stealing up from the depths of the human heart, deep calling unto deep, gentle and strong like the waves of the great sea hushing themselves to sleep in the dark; the words of Burns, touching the kindred chord, her last numbers "wildly sweet" traced, with thin and eager fingers, already touched by the last enemy and friend,-moriens canit,—and that love which is so soon to be her everlasting light, is her song's burden to the end,—

Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides
"She set as sets the morning star, which goes
Obscured among the tempests of the sky,
But melts away into the light of heaven."

COLONEL FREEMANTLE's articles on the South- ligion, par le Vic. de Sarcus; "Des Idées ern States, which appear from time to time in morales dans la Tragédie," by Paul Stupfer; Blackwood's Magazine, have made the public "Typographes et Gens de Lettres," by Décemsomewhat eager for "Three Months in the South- bre Allonnier; "Cours oral de Franc-Maconerie ern States, from April to July, 1863, by Lieuten- symbolique en douze séances," par H. Cauchois; ant-Colonel Freemantle," which Messrs. Black-"Voie Romaine en Limonsin Fixation de la wood and Sons have on the eve of publication.

"QUELQUES Mots sur la Philosophie de la Re

Station de Prætorium," par E. Buisson de Mavergnier, are among the recent miscellaneous French publications.

From The Spectator, 7 Nov.
THE EMPEROR'S SPEECH.

its happy chances," and who, then speaking "in the name of France," that is, of almost THE hush of strained expectation with irresistible military power, summons all Euwhich Europe listens for the annual speech rope to Congress to furnish the solution which of the Emperor of the French has this year" at the North as well as at the South ”— been amply rewarded. There is no living in Scandinavia as in Rome and Turkey— sovereign, there is perhaps but one in history, "powerful interests" demand. It is not the who may compete as an orator with Napoleon status of Poland, or Italy, or Servia, or SchlesIII., and he has delivered no speech to be wig, or even of Germany, but of Europe, compared with this. Couched in that tone which a new Congress of Vienna is summoned of apparent frankness which is the specialty to Paris to decide. One immense but peaceof Bonaparte oratory, which was as marked able re-arrangement, to be based on the wishes on the 18th Brumaire as in the apology of the nations, and to disarm the" subversive for Villafranca, or Prince Jerome's plea for parties" by surrendering "narrow calculaevacuating Rome, almost colloquial in its tions," to be enforced by irresistible power, references to the living facts of the hour, and and therefore without the sabre, and followed studded with the epigrammatic sentences by a general disarmament, this is the which royalty always avoids, it is full to re- splendid dream with which the Emperor of pletion of the imperial force which belongs the French summons the world to council. It only to great ideas uttered from a throne. is a dream, too, deep in his heart, for under Acknowledging with the faintest suspicion of his counsel may be heard an undertone of a mental shrug the result of the elections, menace. "Those who refuse he will suspect sketching slightly, but ably, the pleasanter of secret projects which shun the light of features of his own régime for the year, the day." There "are but two paths open; the budget which provides for conquest without one conducts to progress by civilization and a deficit, the immense additions to trade, the peace, the other, sooner or later, leads fatally five millions of children present in the pri- to war by the obstinate maintenance of a past mary schools, the expansion of French influ- which is crumbling away." ence on the American and Asiatic continents, -the emperor proceeds to develop his plan for the re-organization of Europe. And what a plan! Affairs like the insurrection in Po-ordinary diplomatists, or emperors, or preland, which may replace an old nationality, questions like that of Schleswig Holstein, which may cover Central Europe with blood, even difficulties like the occupation of Rome, the settlement of which may evolve a new era of religious organization, shrink for the moment into insignificance before this imperial dream. It is difficult, as we read, not to forget that the speaker directs the most warlike nation in Europe, not to imagine that we are listening to some politician of the study instead of the master of fifty legions. It is all real, however, and it is an emperor of the French, whose words are themselves events, who declares that Europe is "everywhere agitated by the elements of dissolution," that "the jealousies of the great powers hinder the march of civilization," and that the" day has arrived to reconstruct on a new basis the edifice ruined by time and destroyed piece by piece by revolutions; " who asks whether "we shall eternally maintain a state which is neither peace with its security, nor war with

There is something so striking in such a proposal coming from such a sovereign,— something so utterly unlike anything which

miers say, or even think, that the mind, be-
wildered by its magnitude, refuses at first to
arrive at any defined conclusion. The facts,
too, are, at first sight, in favor of the imperial
plan. Every man who knows Europe knows
also that Napoleon speaks the truth when he
says that the questions afoot must be solved,
and solved finally, or Europe will, sooner or
later,-and sooner rather than later,-be in-
volved in a general war. All diplomatists
know that he is stating the simplest fact in
the tersest language, when he says
"the
treaties of 1815 have ceased to exist. Ger-
many agitates to change them, England has
generously modified them by the cession of
the Ionian Islands, Russia tramples them
under foot at Warsaw," and France, we may
add, in Prince Jerome's words, "tore them
up at the point of the sword" at Magenta and
Solferino. They have ceased to exist. Eu-
rope does want a new "fundamental pact.”
There is the gravest reason to fear that we
shall establish one only after a war to which

all modern wars will be trifles, which will aration? Many of the questions, doubtless, change from a war of boundaries into one of and among them some of those which appear principles, and be, therefore, without end least soluble, might receive their solution. save exhaustion, and it is a noble effort to Rome can be evacuated whenever the emperor make one last appeal to the reason of man wills, and Austria might take compensation kind, and strive to arrange in what would for Venetia. Russia might, though we doubt really be "a Parliament of Man," if not it, on certain conditions, resign enough of "the federation of the world," at least that Poland to make reconstruction feasible; and of Europe. Since the days of Alberoni, no the cession of Gibraltar to Spain is no more dream more brilliant has been put forward impossible with Moorish help than that of the by a statesman of the first class; but amidst Ionian Islands. Europe combined could, all our admiration we cannot conceal from without bloodshed, mediatize all the German ourselves that it is but a dream, a last effort states but two, Germany so strengthened honest or unreal to stay the European world might resign part of the Rhine, and Schleswig on a course along which the new aspirations is just the question a Congress could finally of nations and the old foolishness of kings, settle. There can be no doubt that, with the uprising of new ideas like those of na- Poland and Italy revived and tranquil, Gertionality, and the crumbling of dominions many divided only into North and South, like that of the Turks in Europe, the want Scandinavia freed from apprehension, and the of statesmen in England, and the existence pride of France gratified to her heart's core, of a Napoleon in France, alike combine to Europe might rest in peace for another thirty urge it. years. But no arrangement can be stable which does not revive Poland, and the revivification of Poland, with Russia as a consenting power, means the dismemberment of Turkey, for it is from Turkey alone she could obtain compensation.

Setting aside the moral question, which is not so powerful as it looks, for Mr. Gladstone, once aided by the consulates, could in three months produce among Englishmen as deep an abhorrence of Turkish rule as was ever felt for that of King Bomba, is it conceivable that the interests of the powers could on such a point be made to coalesce? Is it not absolutely certain that England, which on many questions could be sure of allies, would on this remain isolated, and as certain that the people of this country would not in this matter submit to be overruled? Either, therefore, England would be compelled to fight Congress, i.e., the Continent, or the proceedings of the solemn assembly would be neutralized, Turkey spared, and the compensation on which alone Russia would surrender Poland finally rendered impossible.

Let us examine the project shorn of the emperor's words as a practical diplomatic scheme. His majesty proposes a new Congress of Vienna, to be attended by representatives of all the powers, and to possess the right of "solving" every question a solution of which" is demanded by mighty interests." Foremost among those questions -questions "of the South as well as the North"-stand those of Schleswig, the Rhine, Rome, Venetia, Poland, and European Turkey, which latter would be made justly enough to include the whole shore of the Mediterranean. Let us imagine that Europe, half awed and half ashamed of preferring war to negotiation, really obeys the summons. Such an occurrence is far from probable; but Russia, the emperor says, in a passage to which we shall have to revert, has consented to such a Congress, provided only all questions are open; the British Government, it seems clear, has agreed to waive the treaties of 1815, and might possibly be induced to take part; and the German powers may, not to mince words, be coerced into accepting their seats. Let us Eastern question " again, is but one of a assume the Congress assembled and ready, score on which the nations are divided, as the first diplomatists of Europe collected un- much by feelings, hopes, antipathies - all der the presidency of its ablest sovereign, and that play of the imagination which really what chance is there of their agreeing on stirs nations-as by those material interests those wide and permanent changes which can which only appear to stir them. France will alone supply the basis of a new "funda- not propose to lay aside her strength because mental pact," or allow Europe to abandon a Congress has sat, and England is armed as its condition of expensive but sterile prep-much from jealousy of France as for any spe

This

fore his blow, to set Poland free. So clear is this one decision, that he goes out of his way to afford to the insurrection a kind of official sanction, as one which "by its duration has become a national movement." If this freedom can be accomplished by Congress, well; if not, it must be by war; but by what war he has not quite decided. War with Russia would seem the more natural course, and Russia is, therefore, menaced in the rough allusion to her present conduct in Warsaw. But the emperor is quite as interested in the Eastern question as in Poland, and "hesitates, therefore, to compromise one of the first alliances of the Continent," an alliance with a power which, since "the peace, has been in agreement with France on the grand European questions," which did not object to the annex

cific end. England will not give up her ascendency at sea for any purpose whatsoever, and it is in fleets, not armies, that the burdensome race of Napoleon and Palmerston has been run. Above all, the greatest source of disturbance, the rising of new ideas within the nationalities themselves, cannot be checked by any Congress, and the first Red explosion in France, or religious movement in Germany, or peasant rising in Russia, might shake down in a week all that Congress had elaborated with such a waste of force and thought and care. Omitting all mention of outside complications, of the jarring among the powers who are settling down on the ancient monarchies of Asia, and the rotting Republics of Spanish America, or of the indefinite disturbing force the United States may exert, the Congress, even in Europe, could settle noth-ation of Nice and Savoy, and would not, the ing but boundaries, and it is not for boundaries that modern nations have waged, or will wage, the fiercest wars.!

emperor thinks, object to that of the Rhine. It might be possible to revive Poland by finding for Russia compensation in Turkey, and the emperor, resolved on his end, hesitates as to his road. Is it to be war for Poland alone, or for Poland and the resettlement of the whole Eastern question? The English alliance will, in all probability, decide his course, and the net result of his speech is, we submit, sufficiently clear,―a Congress of Paris to erase the memory of that of Vienna and

It is difficult not to believe that the emperor sees all, and much more than all this, that he is, as it were, offering to Europe one stately and pleasant alternative sure to be refused, before plunging once more into war. For that, he hints unmistakably, will be the consequence of a rejection of his offer. The speaker can realize prophecy, and it is well, therefore, to study carefully the few oracles" reconstruct the edifice," or a general war he emits. A careful perusal of his whole speech, so far as it bears on Poland, will, we believe, leave this impression upon the mind. The emperor has determined, with that inflexibility which the public always attributes to him, but which he only manifests just be

in spring. The resolve has at last been taken, and with Italy a great state, and Poland recalled to life, even those who believe in Providence may acknowledge Napoleon's raison d'être.

THE first general meeting of the Society for Promoting the Amendment of the Law, now beginning its twenty-first session, will be held at 3 Waterloo Place, Pall Mall, on Monday next, Nov. 9th, at eight o'clock, Sir Fitzroy Kelly, Q.C., M.P., in the chair. The Secretary will move: "That a committee be appointed to consider what action should be taken with reference to the proposal of bringing together into one place or neighborhood all the superior courts of judicature, with the offices attached thereto, and to report on the

same.

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A NUMBER of the Welsh nobility and gentry propose to found a University for the PrincipalMESSRS. CHRISTIE, MANSON, AND WOODS com-ity and Mr. Williams, M.P., promises £1,000 menced the season on Wednesday last by the sale of nicknacks and odds and ends forming the "Collection of Articles of Art and Virtu of the

towards that object. The Guardian suggests that the foundation of a Welsh college at Oxford or Cambridge would be better.

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