said the captain. "It is impossible I could be so foolish as to give away my diamond ring, either as a present or by mistake."

"If you're no inclined to do that muckle justice to an injured man, maybe you'll gie me the papers that belang to Mr Anson, by virtue o' this letter o' authority" (taking out the letter). "Tak your choice."

"The papers, sir," said the captain, getting frightened, are all I want. I care nothing for the prosecution of the man. It's certainly possible I may have given him the ring by mistake; but how do you account for the portmanteau being in his lover's house?"

Lewis read to him Giles Baldwin's deposition.

"Then," said the captain, "all the evidence against Maxwell is the ring?"

"Naething mair," said Lewis.

"He shall not be hanged for that," said the captain. "I shall go off to the authorities, and inform them that it is very probable I gave the man the ring in the way you mention. You say nothing of Mr Anson and the papers, you know."

"I canna interfere, luckily," said Lewis.

On the statement of Captain Beachum, Mike was liberated. He afterwards took a farm, married Alice Parker, whom he admired the more for her love of truth, and lived with happily for many years; but he ever lamented the course of life he had led. He run a great risk of being hanged, from the curious combination of circumstances that conspired against him-lost reputation by it, and caused unspeakable grief to one of the best of women. Hence our moral: that one is not always safe from the effects of vice, though he act within the laws.

VOL. XII.

REUBEN PURVES; OR, THE SPECULATOR.

SPECULATION is the soul of business; it is the mainspring of improvement; it is essential to prosperity. Burns has signified that he could not stoop to crawl into what he considered as the narrow holes of bargain-making; and nine out of every ten persons who consider themselves high-minded profess to sympathise with him, and say he was right. But our immortal bard, in so saying, looked only at the odds and ends the corners and the disjointed extremities—of bargain-making, properly so called; and he suffered his pride and his prejudices to blind, in this instance, his mighty spirit, and contract his grasp, so that he saw not the allpowerful, the humanising, and civilising influence of the very bargain-making which he despised. True it is, that as a spirit of speculation or bargain-making contracts itself, and every day becomes more and more a thing of farthings and of fractions, it begets a grovelling spirit of meanness, that may eventually end in dishonesty; but as it expands, it exalts the man, imbues his mind with liberality, and benefits society. The spirit of commercial speculation will spread abroad, until it render useless the sword of the hero, cause it to rust in its scabbard, and to be regarded as the barbarous plaything of antiquity. It will go forth as a dove from the ark of society, bearing the olive-branch of peace and of mutual benefits unto all lands, until men shall learn

war no more.

But at present I am not writing an essay on speculation or enterprise, but the history of Reuben Purves, the Specu lator; and I shall therefore begin with it at once. Reuben was born in Galashiels, than which I do not know a more

thriving town, or one more beautifully situated, on all the wide Borders. As you pass it, seated on the outside of the Chevy-Chase coach on a summer day (if perchance a sunny shower shall have fallen), it lies before you as a long and silvered line, the blue slates reflecting back the sunbeams. In its streets, cleanliness and prosperity join hands; while before it and behind it rise hills high enough to be called mountains, where the gorgeous heather purples in its season. Before it-I might say through it-wimples the Gala, almost laving its thresholds. There the spirit of speculation and of trade has taken up a local habitation and a name," in the bosom of poetry. On the one hand is the magic of Abbotsford, on the other the memories of Melrose. But its description is best summed up in the condemnation of a Cockney traveller, who said, "Vy, certainly, Galashiels would be wery pretty, were it not its vood and vater!"

But I again digress from the history of Reuben Purves. I have said that he was born in Galashiels: his father was a weaver, and the father brought his son up to his own profession. But although Reuben

"Was a wabster guid,

Could stown a clue wi' onybody,"

his apprenticeship (if his instructions from his father could be called one) was scarce expired, when, like Othello, he found "his occupation gone," and the hand-loom was falling into disuse. Arkwright, who was long considered a mere bee-headed barber, had-though in a great measure by the aid of others-brought his mechanism to a degree of perfection that not only astonished the world, but held out a more inexhaustible and a richer source of wealth to Britain than its mines did to Peru. Deep and bitter were the imprecations of many against the power-loom; for it is difficult for any man to see good in that which dashes away his hard-earned morsel from the mouths of his family, and leaves them calling in vain for food. But there were a

few spirits who could appreciate the vast discovery, and who in it perceived not only the benefits it would confer on the country, but on the human race. Arkwright, who, though a wonderful man, was not one of deep or accurate knowledge, with a vanity which in him is excusable, imagined that he could carry out the results of his improvements to an extent that would enable the country to pay off the national debt. It was a wild idea; but, extravagant as it was, it must be acknowledged that the fruits of his discoveries enabled Britain to bear up against its burdens, and maintain its faith, in times of severest trial and oppression. Reuben's father was one of those who complained most bitterly against the modern innovation. He said, "the work could never be like a man's work. It was a ridiculous novelty, and would justly end in the ruin of all engaged in it." It had, indeed, not only reduced his wages, the one-half, but he had not half his wonted employment, and he saw nothing but folly, ruin, and injustice in the speculation. Reuben, however, pondered more deeply; he entered somewhat into the spirit of the projector. He not only entertained the belief that it would enrich the nation, but he cherished the hope that it would enrich himself. How it was to accomplish his own advancement he did not exactly perceive, but he lived in the idea-he dreamed of itnothing could make him divest himself of it; and he was encouraged by his mother saying

"Weel, Reuben, I canna tell, things may be as ye say— only there is very little appearance o' them at present, when the wages o' you and your faither put thegither are hardly the half o' what ane o' ye could hae made. But ae thing is certain-they who bode for a silk gown always get a sleeve o't."

"Nonsense, woman! ye're as bad as him," was the reply of his father; "wherefore would ye encourage the callant in his havers? I wonder, seeing the distress we are a' brought

he doesna think shame to speak o' such a thing. Mak a

fortune by the newfangled system, indeed!

my truly! if it continue meikle langer, he winna be able to get brose without butter."

"Weel, faither," was the answer of Reuben, "we'll see; but you must perceive that there is no great improvement can take place, let it be what it will, without doing injury to somebody. And it is our duty to watch every opportunity to make the most of it."

"In my belief, the laddie is out o' his head," rejoined the father; "but want will bring him to his senses."

Reuben, however, soon found that it became almost impossible to keep soul and body together by the labours of the loom. He therefore began to speculate on what he ought to do; and, like my honoured namesake, the respectable poet, but immortal ornithologist, he took unto himself a PACK, and, with it upon his shoulders, he resolved to perambulate the Borders. There was no disgrace in the calling, for it is as ancient, perhaps more ancient, than nobility; and we are told that, even in the time of Solomon, "there were chapmen in the land in those days." Therefore Reuben Purves became a chapman. He, as his original trade might lead one to suppose, was purely a dealer in "soft" goods; and when he entered a farmhouse, among the bonny buxom girls, he would have flung his pack upon the table, and said—

"Here, now, my braw lassies; look ye here! Here's the real upright, downright, elegant, and irresistible muslin for frills, which no sweetheart upon this earth could have the power to withstand. And here's the gown-pieces-cheap, cheap-actually giein them awa-the newest, the most elegant patterns! Only look at them!-it is a sin to see them so cheap! Naething could be mair handsome! Now or never, lassies. Look at the ribands, too--blue, red, yellow, purple, green, plain, flowered, and gauze. Now is the time for buskin your cockernony-naething could withstand