three fine youngsters came into the room. I might have left with the impression that I had seen the whole family, but on a sudden an awful noise, as if the house was falling, was heard overhead, followed quickly by the sounds of infant weeping.

our early Sunday dinners. I forget self in the neighborhood of my ancient whether it was on his second or third flame, and of course lost no time in appearance that he coolly wedged him-calling. While I was talking to Julia self in between me and my charmer, (who looked almost as young and and engaged her with an elephantine charming as ever) and her husband, airiness, for which I was entirely unprepared, in gay and unparochial small talk. I had an uneasy laugh or two in my sleeve at his elderly gambols; but I shall never forget my feelings when a few weeks later my mother announced (as if it was a matter in which I could have little or no interest) that Julia and the Perpetual were engaged. If I have never felt as shocked, I have certainly seldom felt as foolish as on that occasion. However, there was no help for it. I went back to school in due course, and if I did not quickly recover from the blow I had at least sense enough to bow to the inevitable.

"Ah!" exclaimed the ex-Perpetual with a sigh, as his wife rushed hurriedly from the room, "there are five more up-stairs."

I never forgave him that sigh.

From The Leisure Hour.

KEYS FOUND IN LOCHLEVEN.

an

Years, long years passed before I saw the fortunate bridegroom again. AFTER Mary Queen of Scots had In the interval I am greatly afraid that succeeded in effecting her escape from "there had been many other lodgers in the grim old fortress of Lochleven, my heart's most secret cell" once oc- when a furlong from the shore, her cupied by the divine Julia. I have no deliverer, Willie Douglas, threw the doubt that it was chiefly due to his keys which had brought her her sighedwife's charming manners and appear- for freedom into the waters of the lake. ance - for a beautiful woman has in There they lay till the dry summer of all ages been the best of all canvassers 1805, when a boy named William Hon- that shortly after his marriage the eyman, while strolling on its banks, Perpetual was presented to a good liv-picked up a bunch of five keys, large ing in a distant part of the county. It and small, described as being of " was not long before he was actually a tique workmanship, and fastened by desired guest at the palace, and at the houses of the local aristocracy. People are said (some people, that is) to improve with prosperity, and this may occasionally be the case. More often, no doubt, it is the way of the world to excuse, or even to admire, in prosperous people the errors and vulgarities which were noticeable, and unpleasant, Another relic of Queen Mary was in the days of their indigence. Of old discovered when the loch was drained nobody had seemed to think him any-in 1821. It was a sceptre with a cane thing out of the way save in being stem, kilted with ivory and mounted duller and snuffier than the majority. But to have been able to win the affections (as I suppose he did) of such a charming woman was proof positive of the possession of something, albeit invisible, above the common. I am sure I have earnestly tried to be fair.

an iron ring, which mouldered away when rubbed by the hand.” These the finder thoughtfully carried to the parish schoolmaster, Mr. John Taylor, who immediately forwarded them to the Earl of Morton, hereditary keeper of Lochleven Castle, at Dalmahoy, near Edinburgh, where they still remain.

with silver.

"It had probably," says

Miss Agnes Strickland, "formed part of her travelling regalia in happier days when she visited Lochleven, where she had a throne and cloth of estate, and occasionally gave receptions."

At the Exhibition of the Royal House One day I unexpectedly found my-of Stuart, recently held at the New

Gallery, Regent Street, one of the most | Club) that he never missed attending interesting of the numerous relics of them from 1817 to 1831, when the fatal

loss of health obliged him to seek for its restoration in foreign parts. Before he went abroad he presented me with a pledge of his regard, on which I set a high value- -a most curious and magnificent key of great size, which he said in the note accompanying it had been given to him as the key of the apartments in Lochleven Castle in which Queen Mary was confined. He added that it should be followed by a more particular account of how he came by it. In the mean time, he said, the friend who had sent it to him was a sound antiquary, not likely to be imposed on himself, and sure not wilfully to impose on others. That that gentleman believed it to be the key. As to himself, Sir Walter added that he would only say that if it was not the key, it deserved to be so from its elegance, strength, and structure. I afterwards received the more detailed and particular account."

A "curious and ancient iron key, much corroded, measuring seven inches in length, and showing remains of inlaid brass and richly cut wards, with The hill, or height, where the queen rounded ornament on stem, and re- was believed to have landed on the mains of art-handle," stated to have lake shore obtained, it is supposed, in been found at Lochleven, was pre-memory of that event, the name of the sented to the Museum of the Scottish" Mary Knowe; "but the place pointed Antiquaries by Professor Simpson in out by Honeyman when in his sixty1829.

Another antique key of elaborate workmanship, having figures of angels and birds twisted into the scroll-work which forms the handle, was found by a young man while digging among the ruins of Lochleven Castle in the autumn of 1831.

eighth year to Robert Annan, Esq.,
surgeon, Kinross, and others, as being
that where he had found the keys
when a lad, is about three-quarters of a
mile to the north of that hill-
"from
the eastern, or Fish Gate of Kinross
House, one hundred and seventy-two
yards, and from the eastern wall of the
old churchyard, eighty-four yards."

The large and very elegant key in the family of Adam, of Blair-Adam, An additional bunch of eight keys,2 which was exhibited at Queen Mary's united by a brooch and flat hook-supTercentenary Exhibition at Peterbor- posed, from their "unique" form and ough, was given to the grandfather of fine workmanship, to have been those the late Sir John Adam by Sir Walter of Queen Mary's wardrobes Scott, who believed it to be the key also found in 1831, by a native of Kinof the apartments in Lochleven Castle, ross, in a "little sandy bay" on the having received it from a most trust-north side of the islet known as the worthy source.”

were

"Paddock Bower," less than three hundred yards to the eastward of the

In the liber rarissimus of Blair-Adam the key is thus referred to by the writer: "I must remark in passing that Sir Walter Scott was so pleased with our meetings (of the Blair-Adamburgh.

1 So called from the basket of fish sculptured on the top.

2 Now in the possession of the S. S. A., Edin

old churchyard of Kinross, nearly in a
line with the donjon of the castle, and
with the spot
-one hundred yards dis-
tant where the large keys now at
Dalmahoy were formerly picked up.

borhood of Sir William Kirkaldy, of Grange, unquestioned, and gained the Fifeshire coast, when, speeding over the rough waters of the Firth, she and her rapidly increasing company landed, according to local tradition, at the ancient wooden pier which formerly jutted into the sea just above the tower of South Queensferry, where she was met and welcomed by Lord Claud Hamilton, son of the Duke of Châtelherault, at the head of fifty armed cavaliers of his name and lineage, and other loyalists of the neighborhood."

From the circumstance of the finding of the keys near to the north-west margin of the lake, and other corroborative evidence, Mr. Annan, from whose interesting notes on the antiquities of Kinross-shire we have derived the greater part of our information, dismisses as improbable the "Mary Knowe" tradition. He strengthens his arguments by pointing out the fact that Afterwards she was conducted by the had Mary in the course of her adven- devoted Lord Seton to his castle of turous voyage made that her goal, she West Niddrie, in Linlithgowshire, must have passed a castellated edifice,1 where, alas! amid joyful greetings and belonging to, and then occupied by, renewed homage, was enacted the the Douglases of Lochleven, which,"last bright scene" of Mary Stuart's had the poor queen attempted to do sadly chequered existence. Here let with her slender retinue, consisting of us leave her, exulting in her newly three persons, namely, Jane Kennedy, the youth Willie Douglas, and a little girl of ten years, and that in the twilight of a May evening, she would have exposed herself to almost certain recapture.

Happily, however, all went well with the royal lady on this memorable occasion. She accomplished her landing in safety, and her dreary imprisonment of ten months and a half was now at an end.

A little later on, and Mary, full of hope and animation, escorted by the horsemen headed by John Beton, brother to the Archbishop of Glasgow, who had received her on the lake shore, swept past the hostile neigh

1 Its ruined remains, covered with ivy and moss, are still to be seen close to the old margin of the loch.

found freedom, once more a queen, and surrounded by those of her nobles and gentlemen whom, as Miss Agnes Strickland beautifully expresses it, "English gold had not corrupted, nor successful treason daunted.” 2

ELLEN E. GUTHRIE.

2 Mr. Annan, in his notes, says that if the southMary's Tower, from a vague tradition that the uneastern or Glassen Tower, also named Queen fortunate queen was imprisoned in it, was really the scene of her confinement, the most insecure

place in all the fortress had been chosen for her feet from the ground; and that no part of Kinross is visible from it. Whereas, if Sir Walter Scott's accepted as the true one, where he makes it appear account of Mary's escape in "The Abbot" be that a light shone nightly from the cottage of Blinkhoolie as a signal to the royal captive and her watchful attendants, and which also corresponds with the supposed route as indicated by the finding of the various keys, then the queen's apartments must have been in the west side of the donjon.

prison house, its windows being only some nine

ACTION OF QUININE.-An explanation | reaction, is a strong poison for the protoof the therapeutic effect of quinine in ma-plasms of decomposing plants, and greatly laria has been found. So long ago as 1867 Dr. Karl Binz, professor of pharmacology at Bonn, gave an explanation which was little noticed at the time, but has now been signally confirmed by the discovery of the germ of malaria. He showed that quinine hydrochlorate, with neutral or slightly basic

hinders many fermenting and putrescent processes. A. Laveran, the discoverer of the Plasmodium malariæ, has demonstrated that this organism disappears from the blood of malaria patients after the administering of quinine, and that quinine, if permitted to act upon it directly, kills it.

English Mechanic.

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A HYMN FOR HARVEST.

Now to thee, gracious Lord of the Seasons, be honor and glory and praise,

That again in the joy of the harvest our jubilant anthem we raise.

Though many the fears that beset us, though faith waxes feeble and cold, Thy bow, with its promise unbroken, glitters still as it glittered of old.

Though weary we grow in our watching the weeks of the drought as they pass, When the earth is as iron beneath us, and the heaven above us as brass,

Yet the showers come back in their season;
once more in the land there is seen
The brook brimming over with crystal, the
grass as the emerald green.

Though troubled the spirit within us, when
the mist upon valley and plain
Lies thick, and the clouds in their armies
return again after the rain;

Yet the sun cometh forth as a giant, and
after the tempest the morn

Is cloudless and fair, and the color grows golden and rich on the corn.

For seed-time and harvest we thank thee; our fears as the shadows have fled; Thou hast given his seed to the sower, thou hast given the eater his bread. ALFRED CHURCH. Ashley Rectory, Tetbury. Spectator.

DAWN.

Ar every tick of time—when eve is grey, When skies are scorched with noon or blurred with night,

SCATTERED.

Somewhere, on opening wings of early SCATTERED to east and west and north,

light,

The young dawn breaketh; without haste

or stay

Moves the bright wizard on his lustral way
To wind-blown seas, or cities glimmering

white.

Hamlet and homestead, or bleak mountain

height,

Or misty vale, each moment bringing day. O midnight watcher, woe-distraught and sick

Of the blind heaven, whose very hopes do
lour

Like clouds upon thee palpable and thick,
Thyself thy sole horizon !— in that hour
Be such sweet thought thy pillow; 'twill

have power

Some with the faint heart, some the stout,

Each to the battle of life went forth,

And all alone we must fight it out.

We had been gathered from cot and grange,

From the moorland farm and the terraced
street,

Brought together by chances strange,
And knit together by friendship sweet.

Not in the sunshine, not in the rain,

Not in the night of the stars untold,
Shall we ever all meet again,

Or be as we were in the days of old.

But as ships cross, and more cheerily go,
Having changed tidings upon the sea,

To cleanse and calm and make thee cath- So I am richer by them, I know,

olic.

And they are not poorer, I trust, by me.