several of his own children at this time emigrated to America, along with a great number of his neighbours. His heart, indeed, was completely devoted to these two interesting strangers, while the lady, on her part, repaid his kindness with an affection only inferior to that of a daughter. One day, however, after she had been fifteen months in his house, she went out with her child in her arms, as if to take a walk, and to the inexpressible grief of Mactaggart, she never returned.

The story, reader, does not end here. Its conclusion was as remarkable in one respect as its commencement; and that we shall now give. In the first place, however, it must be explained that the lady was a daughter of Maclean of in the island of Mull, privately wedded to a young gentleman, whose family residence was upon the opposite coast of Morven. Like Romeo and Juliet, these young persons had formed an attachment in defiance of an inveterate feud between their parents. When Stewart of learned the state of his son's affections, he hastily procured a commission for him in the navy, and had him sent off to the station at Minorca, before he could take any measures for acknowledging his bride. On this event, Flora Maclean confessed to her father that she had been secretly married to her lover; but the old man was so averse to an alliance with his rival and enemy, that he commanded her never to say a word of the circumstance, and when a rumour to that effect was circulated, took every opportunity of contradicting it. The passions of her father were of so dreadful a character that, though she soon after found herself in a condition which rendered the avowal of her marriage more than ever necessary, she durst not take any such steps. For some time she hoped that her lover might find some means of rescuing her, but in this she was cruelly disappointed. By the vigilance of her father every means which he took to correspond with her was balked. At length, confounded with the unusual distress into which she was plunged, without a friend to consult as to her future course, and desperate under the extreme cruelty

of her parent, she left her home, and wandered forth she knew not whither, and with no object but to perish in a land where she might be unknown.

Being rescued, in the manner already related, at once from death and from despair, she contrived while living under the roof of her deliverer to correspond with her husband. The elder Stewart in the meantime died, leaving his son to inherit his large estates in Morven and Breadalbane. The youth accordingly returned home, and, as had been concerted, his spouse at a certain time left the house of John Mactaggart, in order to meet him. The secret manner of her departure was the result of considerations arising rather from the artificial ideas of society than from natural feeling. Though grateful and affectionate in the highest degree to her kind protector, she feared to let her extraordinary story follow her into the sphere of life in which she was henceforth to move. Judging, therefore, that to inform Mactaggart of her intentions could not be done without the risk of a divulgement of her secret, she resolved that even he should never know whom he had saved-a resolution to be condemned as seemingly ungrateful, or at least partaking of false pride.

In thus going off in an unceremonious manner, the lady believed that her benefactor required no pecuniary remuneration for his kindness, which was true. Unfortunately, John Mactaggart was not destined to be always prosperous. Already deserted by all his children, who joined the tide of emigration then rolling towards North America, he endured a shock more severe than he could well endure in the loss of the lady and her child. His worldly wealth had been much diminished by the provisions he was required to make for his children; his own listlessness of mind tended further to injure his affairs; and finally, one or two bad seasons completely ruined him. Just at this crisis his wife died, and poor John was left quite alone in the world, to struggle in his old age with hardships he was ill able to endure. He then wandered from his home, with much the same

object as what had been once entertained by Flora Maclean - namely, to sink in some place where his poverty and misery would bring no discredit upon his name or kindred. As he afterwards confessed, he was not without money, but it was only enough to furnish the means of putting him under the earth without assistance from strangers—an object he cherished so warmly, that no extremity of want could have induced him to break in upon the little sum. His course was

eastward into Perthshire, and for some days he wandered regardlessly on, receiving here and there food and lodging from people nearly as poor as himself. At length he was overtaken in Glendochart by a very severe snowstorm, with which he struggled for some hours till he was nearly exhausted. I once,' he thought to himself, 'saved a fellow-creature from dying in the snow: it now seems likely that such will be my own fate. He was just about to give up all hope, when he arrived at the gate of a respectable mansion, and on applying for admission, was kindly received into the kitchen, and solaced with some warm soup by the cook. While he sat by the fire pondering on fancies all of which were bitter, a lady came down to give some household orders, attended by a girl of four or five years, who began to play about the kitchen. The lady, seeing the old man's eye fixed upon the child, asked if he had ever seen her before.

'Ay,' said Mactaggart in his native language, 'I have seen both you and her before: it was on a white day that I saw you first, but, alas! the blackest day to me that I ever knew.'

The lady was Flora Maclean, or, more properly, Mrs Stewart. Overcome by her feelings she screamed, and threw herself upon the bosom of her kind protector, where she remained for several minutes in a passion of tears. The noise brought her husband down to see what was the matter, and she speedily explained to him that this old man was he who had saved her own life and that of her child.

John Mactaggart spent all the remainder of his life in this happy mansion, to which he had been led in the very extraordinary manner we have described.

MONOMANIACS.

It is a

MONOMANIA is a curious form of mental disease. species of derangement, in which one idea is always uppermost in the mind; and to that all must give way. A familiar and simple form of the delusion is ordinarily known as hypochondria, in which, through some kind of nervous derangement, a person imagines himself to be afflicted with an infirmity for which there is no substantial grounds. He thinks he has a heart-disease, and will be cut off suddenly one of these days; or he knows he has consumption, and cannot last long; or he is alarmed at every little pain, and is sure it means something very bad. But these are simple manifestations. The genuine hypochondriac, who has nursed his delusion till it becomes a settled monomania, believes the drollest things of himself. He thinks he is no longer a human being, and has become a teapot; or he is a hen, and wishes to sit on eggs to hatch chickens. In short, there is no end to such delusions. We once knew a man, sound in other respects, who believed that his legs were made of glass, and would break with the least touch. But this was nothing to what is related of a monomaniac by Pinel, a celebrated French physician; and an account of which appeared in the Analyst, a quarterly journal of science and literature, some years ago.

"This monomaniac was a Parisian watchmaker, who lived at the period of the Revolution of 1789. He was infatuated with the chimera of the Perpetual Motion, and to effect the discovery of this, he set to work with indefatigable ardour. From unremitting attention to the object of his enthusiasm, coinciding with the influence of revolu

tionary disturbances, his imagination was greatly heated, his sleep was interrupted, and at length a complete derangement took place. His case was marked by a most whimsical illusion of the imagination: he fancied that he had lost his head upon the scaffold; that it had been thrown promiscuously among the heads of many other victims; that the judges, having repented of their cruel sentence, had ordered these heads to be restored to their respective owners, and placed upon their respective shoulders; but that, in consequence of an unhappy mistake, the gentlemen who had the management of that business had placed upon his shoulders the head of one of his unhappy companions. The idea of this whimsical change of his head occupied his thoughts night and day, which determined his friends to send him to the asylum. Nothing could exceed the extravagant flowings of his heated brain: he sang, he cried, or danced incessantly; and as there appeared no propensity to commit acts of violence or disturbance, he was allowed to go about the hospital without control, in order to expend, by evaporation, the effervescence of his spirits. "Look at these teeth!" he cried; "mine were exceedingly handsome; these are rotten and decayed. My mouth was sound and healthy; this is foul and diseased. What difference between this hair and that of my own head!"

The idea of perpetual motion frequently recurred to him in the midst of his wanderings, and he chalked on all the doors or windows as he passed the various designs by which his wondrous piece of mechanism was to be constructed. The method best calculated to cure so whimsical an illusion appeared to be that of encouraging his prosecution of it to satiety. His friends were accordingly requested to send him his tools, with materials to work upon, and other requisites such as plates of copper, steel, and watch-wheels. His zeal was now redoubled; his whole attention was rivetted upon his favourite pursuit; he forgot his meals, and after about a month's labour, which he sustained with a constancy that deserved a better success, our artist began to think that he had followed