are we to say to them, when they avail
themselves of their portable apparatus, and
snap you up at your most unguarded
moments, in your most unbecoming deshabille,
and stamp you for ever with such insolent
resemblance of attitude and feature, that it
is impossible to deny the identity? and yet,
so altered in the process, so harshened in the
expression, so vulgarised in the apparel, that
you might safely indite the performance as
a libel; being calculated to bring you into
hatred and contempt. At first, I used to
take these travelling geniuses for professors
of the thimble-rig, and expected to see them
produce their peas and other property when
they planted their three-legged stand in our
lane. When the mountebank in a few minutes
threw a black cloth over his head and box,
I was in expectation of seeing some
extraordinary metamorphoses of his countenance,
and hearing him commence in the familiar
strains of Punch and Judy. At that very
moment he was setting his lenses right upon
my face; and, in the twinkling of an eye, there
was the visible representation of a country
gentleman, with an expression of the most
foolish and open-mouthed surprise, which for
all future time will be a reminiscence to the
gratified operator of his visit to the classical
village of Marlydown.

What right has that fellow to my portrait?
I think, I hear the uncomplimentary remarks
which the wretched animals, male and female,
his uncles and cousins, sisters and brothers, to
whom he will show the results of his
summer's excursion, will make on my picture.
"What a snob!" they will cry; "what an
ill-tempered looking ruffian! what an idiotic
looking spoon! what a pretentious looking
old beau! what a ragged-coated old miser!"
For, one peculiarity of the photographic
process is, that it admits a thousand interpretations
of the result of its labours, so that the
most diverse opinions are expressed of the
same production and to all this I am
subjected by an interloper who never asked my
leave or license, and whose foolish head I
should have broken with my weeding spud
if he had had the audacity to ask my
consent. The wretch had the further
impertinence to ask the villagers who I was;
and he wrote it on a slip of paper affixed to
his caricature, so that generations yet unborn
will see Likeness of C—l—l W—Ik¯ns, Esq.,
Marlydown, Sussex, as he appeared at two
o'clock in the afternoon of Saturday, June
tenth, eighteen hundred and fifty-four,—by
me——then follows the complacent idiot's
name.

Can it be that this iniquitous individual
is the talented editor of the Lives of the
Yachters? or the still more unprincipled
proposer of a series of shilling biographies
to be called Notes on Potato-growers, who
demands a full and circumstantial account of
all my actions on the strength of my white
kidneys?

These, I assure you, are only a few examples
of the inconveniences I experience from
the inquisitive propensities of the present
age. As to the Income-Tax, I did not like it
at all, especially while it was at sixteen pence
in the pound; but I never considered it half
so annoying and inquisitorial as the biographic
and photographic enthusiasts, who worry
me out of house and home. You paid the
tax-gatherer, and were troubled no more
till the ensuing half-year; but these fellows
are perpetually on your track. If you are
somebody, they insist on your insertion
among the great ones of the earth. You join
the Wellingtons, Napoleons, Caesars, and
Alexanders, and are content with your
fellow-immortals, for haven't you invented a
new cheese-press, or in some other way been
of use to your country and species? But for
us,—us who live forgotten and die forlorn,
is there no way of escaping the hateful
confession of our uselessness, our ignorance,
our dulness, our stupidity ? If we are
profoundly conscious of our unworthiness to
appear in the company of the Somebodies,
is it absolutely impossible to avoid the
necessity of writing ourselves down among the
Nobodies?

     THE WITCHES OF SCOTLAND.

THE first notable trial for witchcraft in
Scotland was that of Bessie Dunlop; which
was held on the eighth of November, fifteen
hundred and seventy-six. We exclude the
execution of the unfortunate Lady Glammis,
in fifteen hundred and thirty-seven; for
though it has been the fashion to class
her among the earliest and the noblest
victims of the witch delusion, she was, on
the contrary, burnt for high treason; and
her death was a political, not a superstitious
murder. We also pass by the trial and
execution for witchcraft of Janet Bowman,
in fifteen hundred and seventy-two—the
Record presenting no point of special interest
—and give, as the first of any historical
value, the tragic history of poor Bessie
Dunlop, "spous to Audro Jak in Lyne."

Bessie deposed, after torture (it is very
important to observe those two words) that one
day as she was going between her own house
and Monkcastle yard, driving her cows, and
making "hevye sair dule with hirselff,"
weeping bitterly for her cow that was dead,
and her husband and child who were lying
sick "in the land-ill" she herself still weak
after "gissane," or child-birth— she met "ane
honest, wele, elderlie man, gray bairdit; and
had ane gray coitt with Lumbart slevis of
the auld fassioun; ane pair of grey brekis
and quhyte shankis gartenit abone the kne;
ane blak bonet on his heed, cloise behind
and plane befoir, with silkiu laissis drawin
throw the lippis thairof, and ane whyte wand
in his hand." This was Thom Reid, who