LTHOUGH the subject has in this series been accidentally jostled ont of its proper place, springs cannot with propriety be omitted in any sketch of this world as a habitation prepared for men; for they constitute a link of the great circular chain which keeps the cosmical machinery in motion. The springs supply the rivers, and the rivers supply the sea, and the sea supplies the clouds, and the clouds supply the springs.

Although we can trace, with a considerable degree of precision, the instrumental and secondary causes of springs, these facts in the foreground should not conceal from view the evidence of beneficent design which lies behind them. We know that the clouds are attracted to the mountain-tops, that the mountains are composed of strata, not horizontal, but occupying all possible positions between the horizontal and perpendicular, that in the commotions in which the mountains were upheaved, cavities of various sizes and shapes were left in the interior,-and that the rain-water, percolating through the seams into some capacious subterranean cavern, overflows by the most convenient openings as springs on the earth's surface for the refreshing of a neighbourhood. But behind all these facts a question rises, How came all these separate laws and tendencies, in earth and sea and air, to conspire together for the production of the beautiful and beneficent phenomena of water-springs? By chance? You may as well try to persuade me that a man's garments contrived to come from a sheep's back and fit themselves to his body of their own accord. In the union and co-operation of the physical causes that go to produce a spring, I see a far-reaching combination of means successfully employed to produce a result which is not only picturesque

and useful in itself, but a necessity for the life of men upon the earth. No philosophical speculation can rob me of the conviction based on these facts, that a Being wise enough to conceive a universe, and strong enough to create it, meant in his love to produce this result, and took measures in his wisdom fitted to obtain it. Neither myself nor any other man is able to pluck that conviction from my mind and heart. The philosophy which proposes to accomplish this must perform the miracle which it declares impossible,—that is, it must make me a new creature-a creature other than I now am.

If one who had no personal experience of the world's surface should learn from others the main facts that emerge in the evolutions of nature, and the main laws by which they are regulated; and if then he were asked to give his opinion of the ordinary site of springs, he would certainly answer, that they would be found in the bottom of the valleys. The contrary is the fact. While springs may be found in the lowest places of a continent, they are found chiefly on its mountain ranges. Of course any one can perceive that springs are far more useful when they flow from the ground on the shoulder of the mountain, than if they were situated in the plain; but certainly the system that is least useful is the system that, without information as to the facts, we should have been led to expect. That which is at once eminently improbable, and eminently precious, is precisely the thing that happens. If we recognize the Maker and the Ruler of the world, we shall meet here a delightful evidence of his presence and power.

Although we may know, without risk of serious mistake, the natural history of springs, in a rough and general outline, we are very much at sca

branch of the same spring that had so often refreshed me, I stretched out my hand, rather listlessly and sleepily, to get it bathed in the cooling stream. On coming in contact with the water, my hand was smartly scalded. I drew it back with more vigour than I had stretched it out, and I suspect a slight scream escaped me at the moment. I soon perceived that it was a hot spring. I made no inquiry as to the exact temperature of the water; but it was so hot that I was unable to hold my hand on the metallic pipe through which it flowed. While I was meditating on my discovery, a thin little old woman approached, and quietly filled her pitcher at the spout; here is a boon to the poor,-they obtain warm water in any quantity without fires. Addressing the little woman, I inquired, "Does the water from this well flow always hot?" "Always hot," answered the little woman, echoing my last words, without looking up or taking the least interest in the question.

"Ever hot," the words returned, and remained with me. I was arrested and absorbed. My informant had never known any cooling of the temperature, or any diminution of the flow. From generation to generation the inhabitants had obtained hot water from this spring, and still it flows, unwearied, unchanged. And yet the present order of the world is not eternal. Probably the stream is cooling, although no change may be perceptible during the few centuries that have passed since such phenomena began to be in telligently observed. How deep in the earth's crust hangs the kettle that supplies the town of Baden with hot water, and what sort of a fire is it that burns so steadily beneath it? Well may the exterior strata of the globe be called a crust, although the word is ominous. A very little way beneath, as well as above, the surface of the earth, the conditions of vegetable or animal life do not exist. It is only on a very thin belt along the surface that any creature can live. A little higher than our position it is too cold, and a little lower, it is too hot. Here another evidence emerges, that a wise and kind Father has arranged for benevolent purposes the relations of the material world.

When I went first to school, at five years of age, in Forgandenny, a small but very beautiful

hamlet in the lowlands of Perthshire, a well on the side-walk nearly opposite the school-house supplied the wants of the few permanent inhabitants, and the more numerous juvenile population that flocked into the capital by day for the sake of the learning that it supplied. The well, which was covered by rude slabs of red sandstone, seemed very dark and deep when we knelt down and peeped through the joints of the covering on a sunny day, and saw a shimmer of light on the surface of the water. The pump-handle was busily plied during the mid-day hour of school vacation, and we clustered round the spout like bees about their hive. Sometimes the thirst was genuine; and sometimes it was feigned, that the larger boys might throw handfuls of the pure element over the heads of the smaller fry, and enjoy a laugh to see them scampering away as if attempting to escape from a shower of grape-shot.

In some exceptionally warm seasons, however, the pump ran dry, and then the people were exposed to some straits. One perennial spring came to the surface at no great distance from the village; but its site was on the property of a neighbouring laird, who was not always on kindly terms with the villagers. It happened one summer, when the well in the village was exhausted, that the laird was in bad humour over some act of trespass or breach of the game-laws; and at the very time when the poor people were deprived of their or dinary supply, he erected a post on the edge of his spring, with a painted inscription intimating that all approach was forbidden, and that trespassers would be prosecuted without mercy. The villagers were thrown into amazement. The women went along the foot-path with their pitchers, looked up and read the terrible threatening, and returned with their vessels empty.

A council of the men was summoned in the evening to consider what should be done in this dire extremity. The schoolmaster could give no advice; the publican was at his wits' end; the skill of the carpenter was of no avail. At length a labourer, hair grizzled and thin, legs twisted with rheumatism like oaken boughs, lower visage much marred by pinches of snuff aimed at the nostrils at intervals during the day, but missing for the most part, and adhering in patches to the skin, announced that he knew a plan that would

prove adequate to the emergency. The eye of Willie Roughbrow twinkled and flashed that moment with a mixture of childlike mirth, and manly self-reliance. He shouldered a mattock, and counselled his compeers to snatch every man his weapon and follow to the spot. They obeyed implicitly; for all the village had secretly come to know, although none confessed as much articulately, that Willie's head, notwithstanding the shagginess of his exterior, was longer by half than any other cranium in the whole parish. Led by the redoubtable Willie, the extemporized gang of navvies, appropriately armed, soon arrived on the scene of action. A small ravine, water-course in winter, but dry in summer, separated the laird's property from the land belonging to another owner on which the hamlet stood; and the well with its green fringe appeared temptingly a few yards distant on the further slope. Fixing on a spot on their own side, exactly opposite the rival proprietor's well, but a little lower, Willie directed all hands to fall in and dig. In half an hour, although they met rock very near the surface, they had sunk their shaft to a depth of two or three feet, and to their great delight discovered a stream of water oozing from the stratified sandstone-"Hold on, lads," cried Willie in much exultation, "another foot down to make all sure; never mind though your feet get wet." Down they went, and the water flowed abundant. Now the men paused and wiped their brows and exchanged congratulations over their success. Meantime Willie, as behoved the engineer-in-chief of the work, took advantage of the pause to reconnoitre in the neighbourhood. Looking stealthily up to the painted board, denouncing in large wellformed letters the last penalties of the law against transgressors, Willie took courage, notwithstanding, to scramble up the steep on the opposite side to examine the condition of the spring, which hitherto had never been known to fail. Perched on the lip of the rival reservoir, and with a look of indescribable glee, the triumphant Willie exclaimed across the miniature chasm to his companions, "Ho, lads; the laird's well is dry!" The villagers had struck the vein which supplied the other spring, and intercepted its supply for themselves. There was great rejoicing in the village that night; with, it must be confessed,

a slight intermixture of triumph over a fallen foe.

The event did not happen in my time. It belonged to the preceding generation; but I learned it from the lips of contemporaries, if not actual eye-witness of the fact.

This incident has frequently recurred to my memory since; and it persistently presents itself as a typical act. Its meaning is not exhausted by one application. These things are an allegory, these things that happened under the lead of old Willie Roughbrow in Forgandenny two generations ago. The parable is meant for the instruction of working-men. The laird's well is the publichouse. If the working-men go there to drink, they will suffer very heavy penalties. Multitudes of them do go there to drink; fines, imprisonment, and ruin are the consequence. A word in your ear, ye working-men of Britain, now while the ball is at your feet, and you have a good opportunity of improving your position. Desert the laird's well; and not only so, dig within your own borders. Break ground at the savings-bank, right opposite the adversary; persevere a few weeks. You will find water; and the water you find there will be all your own. More still: when a number of the men in any neighbourhood dig on their own side, and get water, the laird's well will run dry, the public-house must close its doors, and seek occupation elsewhere.

Another incident of the same date in connection with a well in Strathearn, authentic down to the minutest details, although these fifty years it has had no other record than my memory, may be hung up here as a companion picture. I received it as in the former case from trustworthy contemporaries and intimates of the actors in the

scene.

About a hundred years since, a well belonging to a proprietor in the parish of Dunbarney became silted up by sand oozing gradually through the seams of the mason-work, and refused to supply the laird's family any longer with the necessary element of life. The farm-labourers were called together, and without any skilful superintendence proceeded with the operation of clearing out the sand from the bottom of the well. One man, let down by a rope, filled successively the buckets, which others on the surface