him, the kingdom of France grew bright before; her cities, castles, palaces, and vineyards, crowded one by one into the growing landscape, and her mariners, unable to contain their joy, shouted, "France! lovely France!" and danced on the decks for gladness.

Paul smiled at their raptures, though he returned with diminished numbers, and had left the ship with which he conquered at the bottom of the sea. Still he returned victor,-a name welcome to all nations, and more particularly to France, where he hoped to be received with applause equalling the classic triumphs of old. He stood on the deck of his frigate in the dress which he wore during the battle, his pistols black with powder, and his cutlass stained with blood.

Macgubb, after a fruitless attempt to wash the stains of the battle from his dress and hands, looked at himself from head to foot, and muttered, "Aweel, fancy's all! There's Tibbie Fowler, wha broke the hearts of three skippers, never to speak of the havoc she made among God's common mariners, Tibbie aye said, cleanliness was a sweet thing in either sow or sailor. But the dames of France think differently. They think it a brave sight to see a man kneeling at their apronstrings, with the foulness of seven unwashen murders on his hands. An enemy's blood on a seaman's jacket is an embroidery new in the French marine, and ony rags will be worship

ped here if they come on a victor's back; so Paul may be right. But I couldna love a

French dame, and that's God's gude truth; though black-eyed, bright-witted, quick o' the leg, and light of behaviour, they winna suit Robin Macgubb of the Mull, whose father was an elder of the parish, and whose uncle rung the kirk-bell."

A French sailor, close to whose ear this speech was uttered, stared at the unceremonious mariner, and answered, "Ah! Robin de Macgubb! you will so love the fair dames of France,-they are lovely, -dark-eyed, and free-witted, and what do you call it ?-condescending to the brave hearts of the age. Ah! they will so fondle you and follow you, and kiss you and caress you, that you will have no other wish all your days but to kill English to oblige the debonnaire dames."—" Atweel," said the Galwegian, "meikle a Caledonian cares for the berry-brown belles of the Seine and the Loire. There was Jenny Ewbanks of Barscraig; I would take Jenny now against the Queen of France and all her painted and jewelled madams. I met her ae May morning,-her coats were short, her legs white, her waist an armful of delight,—her eyes didna look, for they shone, and yielded light like the stars. The very finger-marks of divine perfection were visible on her cheeks, - ye would have thought it the morning of creation, and that Jenny had run glowing away the moment she was made. I got her all in my arms, and saw nae mair

for an hour, I was sae blinded with her beauty. There, could the saffron-necked madams of France do a feat like that, think ye?"

"Ah! Robin de Macgubb," said the patient Frenchman," this Jenny-what-do-you-call-her -Ewbanks? is a shiner, a rosy dame; but then the madams of my country, they are the world's marvels, with their looks so bright and their locks so brown. Ah! come and see them, and then speak.”

"I have seen them, man," said the Galwegian, " and I can neither endure their persons nor their manners. If ye bid them walk, they'll dance; and if ye bid them listen, they'll lend their lips instead of their lugs; frankly, I dinna like such condescending sonsies. Then, for the country,-it's a land of strange grimaces and ludicrous bows-of sad confessions and merry sins-of pursy priests and short masses-of large churches and undevout congregations of saucy dames by day and sinfu' dames by night-of heavy diligences and dirty voitures of thin drinks and everlasting soups. I like neither the land nor the lasses."

Meanwhile the land of France burst fuller on the view. The summit of its verdant hills glittered in the morning sun, and its castle-tops and palaces sparkling with the moisture of the night-air caught on their battlements and spires the horizontal light of the luminary. Along the shore, town crowded upon town, wood towered above wood, green fields and extensive vineyards were mingled in varied

beauty, while here and there the waters of some wide and noble river rolled brightly towards the sea, the course marked out by tower, and palace, and town. The French mariner, Louis Groset by name, glanced his eye proudly on Macgubb, when the splendid scene before him had silenced the loquacious Scot, who, with his hands held over his eyes, and standing on a dismounted cannon, surveyed a country which one may see often, and still think fair and beautiful. Macgubb felt the loveliness of the land, and thought how mean the brown moors of the Mull, the narrow glens of Galloway, with their thatched cots and humble kirks, appeared in the comparison with a country to which nature had done as much as the hand of man. But he was resolved that cold and barren Caledonia should not be depreciated while he could maintain her pre-eminence.

"Weel, now Louis Groset," he said, "if I had not seen the haughs of Dee, the glens of Galloway, and the rich holms of Nithsdale, I should have deemed this country of thine a passable place. Here, ye see, the whole land is as level as an onion-bed, as smooth as a wooer's chin, shaved with the scythe and levelled with the roller. Ye have nae such a thing as a bonnie brown moor, fragrant with heather-blossom and swarming with bees; and where's there an odorous wilderness of long yellow broom moving with the morning

wind, and strewing the shepherd-maiden's road to the ewe-bughts with its ripe and plenteous blossom? A bonnie green knowe, white to the summit with sheep, is a jewel that's not in your king's crown. Were I king of France now, I would make war on some country that could spare a hill for my land and a rock for my shore. It is no wonder the French fail in all their battles with the English,they have not a country worth fighting for. When I want to strike a deadly stroke, I aye think on the Mull, and up flies my cutlass and down drops the foe. But then the Mull is in a manner a twicemade place, it is a garden of lilies, and Ireland is where the rakings and riddlings were thrown."

Against the obstinate belief of the Galwegian, who was in the practice of recommending his opinion by a blow, Louis Groset opposed patience and reason. He abandoned his defence of the fertile provinces of France, and posted himself on what he deemed tenable ground, with full hope of victory. He shrugged up his shoulders so high, that his head seemed in danger of disappearing between them, and observed, "Ah! Robin de Macgubb, you hold a strange opinion about the beauty of nature, you prefer a bramble to an olive-tree, and sour sloes to drop-ripe grapes. But what say you to our palaces and cities ?-Has your bleak land a city like that, rising with all its towers before us, or a palace like yonder one, now lending the sun