The milk-cows were nipping the clovery parks, and chewing their cuds at their leisure;--the wild partridges whidding about in pairs, or birring their wings with fright over the hedges;--and the blue-bonneted ploughmen on the road cracking their whips in wantonness, and whistling along amid the clean straw in their carts.
And then the rows of snug cottages, with their kailyards and their gooseberry bushes, with the fruit hanging from the branches like earrings on the neck of a lady of fashion.

How happy, thought we both--both Peter Farrel and me--how happy might they be who, without worldly pride or ambition, passed their days in such situations, in the society of their wives and children.

Ah! such were a blissful lot! During our ride, Peter Farrel and I had an immense deal of rational conversation on a variety of matters, Peter having seen great part of the world in his youth, from having made two voyages to Greenland, during one of which he was very nearly frozen up--with his uncle, who was the mate of a whale-vessel.

To relate all that Peter told me he had seen and witnessed in his far-away travels, among the white bears, and the frozen seas, would take up a great deal of the reader's time, and of my paper; but as to its being very diverting, there is no doubt of that.

However, when Peter came to the years of discretion, Peter had sense enough in his noddle to discover, that "a rowing stane gathers no fog;" and, having got an inkling of the penny-pie manufacture when he was a wee smout, he yoked to the baking trade tooth and nail; and, in the course of years, thumped butter-bakes with his elbows to some purpose; so that, at the time of our colleaguing together, Peter was well to do in the world--had bought his own bounds, and built new ones--could lay down the blunt for his article, and take the measure of the markets, by laying up wheat in his granaries against the day of trouble--to wit--rise of prices.
"Well, Peter," said I to him, "seeing that ye read the newspapers, and have a notion of things, what think ye, just at the present moment, of affairs in general ?" Peter cocked up his lugs at this appeal, and, looking as wise as if he had been Solomon's nephew, gave a knowing smirk, and said-- "Is it foreign or domestic affairs that you are after, Maister Wauch?
for the question is a six-quarters wide one." I was determined not to be beat by man of woman born; so I answered with almost as much cleverality as himself, "Oh, Mr Farrel, as to our foreign concerns, I trust I am ower loyal a subject of George the Third to have any doubt at all about them, as the Buonaparte is yet to be born that will ever beat our regulars abroad--to say nothing of our volunteers at home; but what think you of the paper specie--the national debt--borough reform--the poor-rates--and the Catholic question ?" I do not think Peter jealoused I ever had so much in my noddle; but when he saw I had put him to his mettle, he did his best to give me satisfactory answers to my queries, saying, that till gold came in fashion, it would not be for my own interest or that of my family, to refuse bank-notes, for which he would, any day of the year, give me as many quarter loaves as I could carry, to say nothing of coarse flour for the prentices' scones, and bran for the pigs--that the national debt would take care of itself long after both him and I were gathered to our fathers: and that individual debt was a much more hazardous, pressing, and personal concern, far more likely to come home to our more immediate bosoms and businesses--that the best species of reform was every one's commencing to make amendment in their own lives and conversations--that poor rates were likely to be worse before they were better; and that, as to the Catholic question,--"But, Mansie," said he, "it would give me great pleasure to hear your candid and judicious opinion of Popery and the Papists." I saw, with half an e'e, that Peter was trying to put me to my mettle, and I devoutly wished that I had had James Batter at my elbow to have given him play for his money--James being the longest-headed man that ever drove a shuttle between warp and woof; but most fortunately, just as I was going to say, that "every honest man, who wished well to the good of his country, could only have one opinion upon that subject,"-- we came to the by-road, that leads away off on the right-hand side down to Hawthornden, and we observed, from the curious ringle, that one of the naig's fore-shoon was loose; which consequently put an end to the discussion of this important national question, before Peter and I had time to get it comfortably settled to the world's satisfaction.
The upshot was, that we were needcessitated to dismount, and lead the animal by the head forward to Kittlerig, where Macturk Sparrible keeps his smith's shop; in order that, with his hammer, he might make fast the loose nails: and that him and his foresman did in a couple of hurries; me and Peter looking over them with our hands in our big-coat pockets, while they pelt-pelted away with the beast's foot between their knees, as if we had been a couple of grand gentlemen incog.; and so we were to him.
After getting ourselves again decently mounted, and giving Sparrible a consideration for his trouble, Peter took occasion, from the horse casting its shoe, to make a few apropos moral observations, in the manner of the Rev.Mr Wiggie, on the uncertainties which it is every man's lot to encounter in the weariful pilgrimage of human life.