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well after you and your family; so, all things considered, you'll excuse me for saying so, you have more to be thankful for than to grumble at."

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And Mrs. Okey would conclude with a triumphant clash of her knitting needles, whilst Norris would reply :-" Well, well; yes, yes; you are right, Mrs. Okey."

But the spot Norris favoured the most when at the farm, his visits being usually paid during the long bright days of summer, was the garden-seat under the huge old chestnut. There he and Okey would sit along with Jacky, for the two ex-officers did not object to the company of their old favourite, the celebrated drummer of the "First Royal Lancashires," and pass many a pleasant evening. Some golden sunset would tinge, perhaps with its bright reflection, the somewhat worn, but expressive countenance of him who was now styled old Mr. Norris. Warmth and colours would light up his face, and sweet, but sad memories would come across his mind of other summer evenings, now long past, when the fragrance of the flowers was borne on the warm, still air, when the cows rustled, and the soft, drowsy hum of insects came from the hawthorn hedges, and he, a gay-hearted, lively boy, wandered along the banks of the Dee, with the dear mother lying now under the green sod, in the graveyard of St. Werburge's.

But Norris did not often indulge in these somewhat mournful reveries; he and his companions would while away the time by singing alternately old doggrel rhymes, traditional in the regiment, and in which the Lancashire lads were wont to celebrate the different places in the country, which they chanced to march through or be quartered in :

"There's Manchester for pedlars all on a market day,
And Liverpool for jolly tars, and so they sail away.

Then hey for little Lancaster for taking in free strangers,

When they get within the castle walls, adieu to all free rangers.
Then hey for little Pilling, it stands upon a moss;

And Goosuar and Garstang do honour to the cross."

Here Norris would usually make a pause, if he were the singer; and he would tell Okey and Jacky how Catholic these parts were, and how the people had held fast, through evil times, to the Old faith; and then he would say, with a merry laugh, alluding to the state of the Presbyterian ministers at the beginning of the eighteenth century:-" Poor devils! they complained, that so great was the 'profaneness of Popery' in those parts, that they had not a subsistence."

Now, though Norris was himself, probably, more a Presbyterian than anything else, yet he could not resist a feeling of amusement, as he thought of the position of these sectaries, located in a strong

hold of Catholicism; and then, too, he really admired the Catholics for their steadfast adherence to the faith of their fathers, in spite of fines, and imprisonments, and gibbets, remembering, as he did, that this was also the faith of his maternal ancestors.

Some other verses the trio would sing of the same kind, their only auditors, at times, the meek-eyed cows, that were perpetually being drawn from their rich pasture in the clover field, by the songs poured forth by the vocalists:

"Here's hey for little Preston, it stands so very fair.

It's ordered by the sheriff and governed by the mayor;
And hey for little Clifton, there's ne'er such another,
It's house all on one side and barns on the other."

At this point Jacky would usually take up the ditty with his still sonorous voice

"Then hey for little Poulton, and Poulton in the Fylde

There's ne'er a lad in Poulton——”

Beyond Poulton,' Jacky never could get, for Norris would say, with a shake of his head, "We have had enough now," and then turning to Okey, "I believe I have told you what gave rise to this skit upon Poulton,"—which, in truth, if he had told Okey once he had told him a score of times. "The Flyde country, you see, was so ill-drained and so swampy, and malaria, and fevers carried off so many of the inhabitants, that its population seemed to be almost at a stand-still.”

CHAPTER LX.

-cinis, et manes, et fabula fies,'

Persii Sat. v. 152.

To us also, kind reader, the words of the poet, from we have quoted for the heading of this our last chapter, point. In a short time our bodies will be dust, our souls far hence, and our lives, perchance, may furnish matter for a tale to be told of us by those we leave behind.

Six years and more have rolled away since the ex-officer of the First Royal Lancashires, the eccentric but kind-hearted scholar, spent his third honeymoon strolling about the gloomy closes and wynds of old Edinburgh; but those familiar spots shall know him no more. The tattered inmates of the crumbling, ruinous old houses look in vain for the well-known figure, wandering about in his absent fashion. They marvel at first whether he will come again, and after a time, they conclude that he is dead-and so, in truth, it was.

Robert Norris died on the last day of December, and when the

bells from every steeple chimed out the death of the old year, the scholar's spirit passed peacefully and quietly away.

The weather had been mild for the time of year; he went out one morning, more thinly clad than usual, and took, by chance, a slight cold, which, however, ended fatally.

Chance? We withdraw the word. In those last days of the scholar's life, the holly berries yet glistened on the walls, the little carol-singers of the primitive old villages in the north still gathered at the doors, the great winter feast was not yet over, and the echo of the beautiful Antiphons of the Church, telling of ONE fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia, had scarce died away. No, there is no chance.

Robert Norris, as we have before said, wished his remains to be laid beside those of his grandfather. The Norrisses had all been Presbyterians from the days of the Commonwealth, as was the case with very many other families in Lancashire; though after the Restoration, the sect had, from various causes, and especially from its ceasing any longer to be under the control of its old strict Scottish church-rule and discipline, begun gradually to fall away from its original tenets, and also to diminish in the number of its professors.

Strange anomaly! In no county in England did Puritanism acquire so strong a growth, and in no other county was its legitimate success, or Presbyterianism, so completely and systematically established by the Parliament, as a state-religion, as in Lancashire -fine old Catholic Lancashire, which from the time that Elizabeth's Government had proclaimed "that the obstinacy of the Recusants of rank and authority had prevented the lower sort from conforming," had ever exceeded all other counties in the number of its adherents to the Old Faith. From the year 1646 to the Restoration, the Presbyterian form of Church Government prevailed throughout Lancashire, Presbyterian Ministers occupied the livings of the Church of England, and even the Warden of the Old Collegiate Church of Manchester was made a Moderator, according to the Scottish mode of the classical division which comprised the parish of that place.

During this state of things Henry Newcome, M.A., rector of the fine old Gothic church of Gawsworth, was invited to fill up a vacancy in the Presbytery of Manchester, occasioned by the death of one of the Fellows of the Collegiate Church.

It was the Rectory of Gawsworth which Piers Thorold was sketching, as we have narrated in our opening chapter. His labour was a labour of love; for, as an artist, he admired the picturesque, half-timber, half-plaster old edifice, with its black and white walls, and at the same time he gratified his friend

Norris, who entertained a great veneration for Newcome, the former occupant of the rectory, and the pastor of his Presbyterian forefathers. While Piers sketched, Norris stretched by his side on the grass, with hammer in hand perhaps, and pockets well stored with minerals from the neighbouring hills, would tell his friend the local history of the place-how Gawsworth Manor and Hall descended from the knightly family of Tilton to two co-heiresses, and how the husbands of the ladies, the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Mahon, disputing about the estates, killed each other in a murderous duel.

After the Restoration Charles the Second soon began to show his dislike to Presbyterianism, and the prosecutions for Nonconformity became so frequent, that Newcome retired from Manchester and took shelter with Lord Delamere, the Earl of Macclesfield, and other Presbyterians of rank and power; nor did he return until the more tolerant, but unfortunate James II., using the dispensing power of the Crown, suspended all sorts of penal laws against Nonconformists and Recusants.

Under this brighter aspect of affairs Newcome's congregation in Manchester had increased so greatly in number, that they found it necessary to build for him "a large and stately chapel ;" this was the Cross Street Meeting-house, which we have before mentioned.

With this slight sketch of the sect, with whom many of his sympathies lay, we will bid farewell to Robert Norris. The scholar's last wishes were fulfilled, he rests alongside his Presbyterian forefathers in Manchester. Amongst the mourners at his funeral, next to his own children, probably none lamented his loss more than the two white-haired old men, now tottering under the weight of years, who, in the days of their early manhood, had served with him in the fine old First Royal Lancashire Militia.

For the last parting words of our story, we add the epitaph inscribed on the stone which covers the remains of one of whom Manchester may well be proud.

HERE ARE INTERRED

THE REMAINS OF

ROBERT NORRIS, M.D., F. R.S.E., &c.

Formerly Vice-President of the Antiquarian Society of Scotland, Author of the Philosophy of Apparitions, and various other Works.

He was born on the 21st of April, 1782, and died at his residence, in Cheshire, on the 31st December, 1848.

verse.

WALTER SCOTT.

SIR WALTER SCOTT was born 15th of August, 1771; his extraordinary talents do not appear to have manifested themselves in early life-in fact, he does not appear to have been remarkable in his class at the High School, Edinburgh, for an astuteness above his fellows; according to the "Percy Anecdotes," it was rather the reHe had several long illnesses in his boyhood, during which he devoured an immense amount of imaginative literature, and thus laid in a vast magazine of thought on which to draw for the romances with which he has delighted the world. Old border legends and other unwritten traditions, which had been handed down for centuries in Highland families, were eagerly stored away by him, and all produced, either in their original garb, or garnished with such accessories as he deemed necessary to add to the dramatic force of his narrative. In the far-famed Waverley Novels, Scott has done more to immortalise the history of his native land than any other writer, either of fact or fiction. Few of the principal events of Scottish history are not produced in his works, which are read and admired wherever the English language is spoken, and have been translated into more than one foreign language. If Scott could have steered clear of the delusive " ignis fatuis," ambition, he might have succeeded permanently. As it was, he placed his aspirations too high; by this I mean, he did not know when to realise. Shakespeare wrote, "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the turn, leads on to fortune." Scott did not know when the tide of his fortunes was on the turn, and in consequence was stranded on the rocks. In plain English, he placed his aspirations too high; he wanted to become the founder of a family, the owner of an estate that would carry weight with it in his country; he wanted Scott of Abbotsford to be on a par with Scott of Bowhill, and in consequence his life was a failure! He attempted too much. If we place our aspirations too high, we are apt to pass over or miss the very comfortable medium position that may be within our reach by the way, and which we are apt to overlook in our extreme eagerness to grasp things that are beyond. A skilful general secures each position before he throws out his advanced picket; and, on the same principle, a man should be sure of one step in life before he makes another. course, there may be occasions to which this rule does not apply— every rule has its exceptions; but in general it may be considered,

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