The little story of 'Rob Graham,' which lately appeared in these pages, may possibly have aroused some interest concerning the poor but by no means insufficient manner in which children are reared among the Scottish peasantry. They get their food regularly, though in a plain way. They are usually stuffed into holes and corners to sleep. The older girls take charge of the younger; even the boys are pressed into this sort of service. All without exception run about barefooted in summer—not altogether on account of the cost of shoes, but from preference. Where there are burns to paddle in, and waters to cross, shoes and stockings would only be an encumbrance.

A farm establishment in Scotland is familiarly known by the Anglo-Saxon term, the toun. It is so called by the workers on the farm. Embraced in the toun, though situated perhaps at a hundred yards distant, is a row of cottages with little gardens behind them. These are the quarters of the hinds or ploughmen and their families. Ordinarily, there are dwellings for five or six hinds, besides one for the grieve or overseer. Latterly, the condition of the hinds—at least in the southern counties—has been greatly improved. They are each allowed so much oatmeal per annum; and perhaps a cow, which is allowed to graze with the cows of the farmer. There is an allowance of a rig or two of potatoes. A pig may be kept. The farmer engages to give the use of a horse and cart to drive a certain quantity of coals. Besides these indispensable allowances, there is a wage paid in money. The total value may be estimated at from fifty to sixty pounds a year. That does not seem a large income, but the outgoings are small—very different from what they are among artisans in large towns, where everything has to be bought and paid for. There is the house free of rent; the oatmeal for the porridge; milk from the cow in abundance; potatoes for the lifting and storing; coal driven to the very door; vegetables from the garden; fresh and pure water from the mountain rill; hams of the last year's pig dangling from the ceiling. For all this there is doubtless pretty hard labour in the field and barn; yet there are many assuagements. The labour is regular and healthful. Nothing is paid for seats in the parish church; the minister exacts no fees for baptisms; the children are educated for a trifle in the nearest school; even before the late access of educational power, there was no want of schooling, nor was there any disinclination to make use of it. We do not remember ever visiting the house of a Scottish peasant and not seeing books—very frequently a large family Bible—and that is saying a good deal.

For anything like thrift and comfort, there is of course a dependence on the wife. She has no servants to assist her. She could not pay for help. She is wife, house-servant, and cook all in one. Woe be to the hind who marries a slattern, one who likes finery and has a taste for delicacies! This, however, rarely occurs. We can say that within our observation the hinds' wives are thrifty and industrious, making the best of matters within their sphere. To use a common phrase, they soon 'fall into a family.' Then arise new duties to be encountered. We have often been filled with wonder how they at all manage to conduct their multifarious affairs. Not only the house to look after, but a crowd of children. It is a blessed thing for them that there is the open air, with the slip of green before the door, to which all the youngsters at times may be bundled, and where they rollick and tumble about, strengthening their legs and arms, and bringing their lungs into splendid exercise. Without a particle of scientific knowledge, the clachan generally is by intuition kept in excellent health.

The hind's wife, in looking forward to a family, is hopeful that her first-born may be a female. The hope is quite natural. In high life, where it is important to have a male heir to an estate, it is anxiously hoped that the first will be a boy; and when he makes his appearance, the bonfires are set ablazing. Among the cottagers we are talking about, there is no heritage but toil. The poor wife, foreseeing what may be her fate—a 'heavy handful' of children—piously wishes that she may be provided with a girl, who will grow up to help her in her interminable round of duties. Heaven has heard and answered her prayer. A baby girl is placed in the loving arms of her mother. We need not be surprised that the infancy of this eldest daughter, as conventionally considered, is curtailed in order that she may qualify for the position of nurse to her brothers and sisters. As early as her sixth year, she has not only to superintend the amusements of those next to her in seniority, but to undertake the sole charge of the baby while the parent is otherwise necessarily employed. And it is marvellous how aptly a child so placed will assume the air of responsibility, and evince the tact and solicitude of maternity! When children better circumstanced are yet devoted to the interests of their dolls, she is seated at the cottage-door, or on the green bank amongst the daisies, singing to her little human charge, or with matronly pride twining chaplets of the simple flowers for its adornment. Her engrossment would be perfect, but that she has occasionally to cast her eye in the direction of the burn to see that Johnnie, aged four, has not ventured too close to its margin; or to look that Bessie, in the innocence of her two and a half years, does not pull the tail of the faithful but cross-grained old collie which snoozes on the grass beside them. Returned home with her charges as gloaming falls, the baby is transferred to its mother; but the little maid's anxieties are not yet ended. She assists Johnnie and Bessie to their suppers, and then, amid pleasant reminiscences of the day's simple events, undresses them for bed. In virtue of her position in the household, she herself is permitted to sit up an hour or two later, and is rewarded for her good behaviour by being permitted for a short time to nurse baby in its night-clothes. Thus the first-born girl grows up to womanhood—her mother's right hand and the friend-in-council to each and all of her nurslings.

Where the elder children are boys, the less fortunate mother has to do her best with the material at her disposal—that is, invest one or other of her manikins with the rÔle of nurse. The character is not so natural, nor can the experiment, we are afraid, be considered an invariable success; and yet we have known boys with strong innate love for children, whose skill and devotedness in nursing would put to shame many a woman of average maternal instinct. But however that may be, the young rustic rarely escapes altogether what to many of them is at times the irksome task of 'minding the bairn,' although, on the score of his incipient manhood, he may the earlier transfer the service to his juniors. At one stage or other of his boyhood, if his supply of sisters is limited, he is liable to be called from his hoop or marbles, or to forego his projected bird-nesting, in order to rock the cradle or dandle the baby while mother washes up the house or gets ready father's dinner. Even the youngest of the family does not always succeed in evading the doom of his elders; for one or other of these having married young and settled down in the neighbourhood, has of course defied all that philosophy has said or might have to say on the subject, and straightway added to the population; so that nothing is more natural than that the immature uncle or aunt should be wheedled or coerced into tending their still tenderer relatives until one of them shall have developed sufficiently to assume the hereditary duties of its position.

A curious reversion of this case is when the grandchildren are called upon to 'mind' their uncles or aunts—a by no means inconceivable circumstance, when the frequency of early marriages among the poor is considered. We remember some years ago, while on a visit in Forfarshire, that this very subject was broached by our hostess, who, as faithful helpmate of the minister, was herself mother-in-chief to the parish. She told us of a poor woman who had had a great number of children, all of whom had died young except one, a girl, who had married early, but who also died, in giving birth to an infant son. The infant was taken care of by the bereaved grandmother, who was still in the prime of life, and who had herself, after the adoption of her grandson, other two children, one of which survived, a fine boy of fifteen months old. At our friend's invitation we visited with her the humble cottage where this singular combination of relationships existed. The mistress was busy churning as we entered, while seated by the fire was the grandson, some eight or nine years of age, engrossed in the task of amusing the baby. After greeting the good dame in homely kindly manner, the minister's wife turned to the children and asked: 'How are you to-day, Jockie?'

'Fine,' answered the little fellow bashfully.

'And how is your uncle?' continued his questioner with a merry twinkle in her eye and a significant glance at us.

'Ou, he's fu' weel; only gey girnie whiles wi' his back-teeth,' glibly answered the urchin, throwing aside his shyness when his precious charge had become the subject.

'Dear me, Jockie,' laughed my friend, 'you will have some trouble with him then?'

'Whiles,' soberly said the boy, who, although conscious that the question was meant for banter, seemed unable to restrain himself on a matter evidently near his heart. 'He disna sleep weel, an' I'm obliged to sit up at nicht an' whussle till him; but he's guid, puir mannie, when the fashious teeth are no troublin' him.'

We were much affected by the artless affection which Jockie displayed towards his uncle; and learned recently with pleasure that he had, through the minister's good services, been appointed pupil-teacher in what was formerly the parish school; and that his nursling, hardier than the rest of the family, was acquiring his first knowledge under his nephew's affectionate tuition.

Without pleading ignorance of the evils frequently attendant on the practice of intrusting children with the care of infants, we prefer simply to accept it as inevitable, and to contemplate the advantages with which it is as undoubtedly accompanied. In the first place, it is this early discipline, this facing of the harder realities in their lot from the outset, which could alone prepare those in the humbler walks of life to tolerate the position in which their maturer years will have to be spent. The girl whom necessity has taught the rudiments of housewifery simultaneously with her alphabet, and the mysteries of nursing together with the secret of making pot-hooks and hangers, will blend most naturally and easily into the mistress of a poor man's home, where the anxieties and solicitudes common to women are indefinitely multiplied. If not so palpable, the value to boys of the knowledge of simple household duties is after all scarcely less important; for aptitude in these is perhaps the most efficacious weapon with which he can enter the lists of a determinately arduous life. In their acquirement the future workman has been taught self-reliance and the habit of industry—qualities on which his success mainly depends; while he is specifically prepared for the not uncommon eventuality—as soldier, sailor, or emigrant, or even in the ordinary casualties of married life in his own sphere—of having to minister to the physical wants of himself and others. Nor in the last of these situations will his juvenile experience of 'minding the bairn' be without its useful application; for at meal-times, in his evenings off work, and even in the night-watches, he will be called upon to accept his share in those solemn rites which his domestic felicity has entailed.

There is a reflection too of a far higher character to which the consideration of this simple theme not inaptly gives rise. Solicitude for the welfare of those whom they have cared for and protected remains with the elder brothers and sisters in greater or less force throughout life; and the younger members of the family can never wholly divest themselves of the confidence and respect which such services have engendered. Each unit in the tale of the poor man's family thus stands to the other not merely in the fraternal, but, in varying degrees, also in the filial relation. Hence that wonderful tenacity of kindredship by which they are distinguished. Diverging careers, conflicting interests, petty jealousies, and even animosities, may temporarily step in to arrest the current of their affection; but the advent of calamity or sorrow to one or other is a signal which rarely fails to reunite them in bonds stronger than ever. Is not blood, after all, thicker than water, in their own idiomatic phrase? The successful digger or colonial shepherd needs nothing more transcendental than the memory of the humble home in which all were mutually dependent, to send his tenderest thoughts wandering across the ocean which divides him from his playmates and friends. Wherever their various lots may be cast, there is to the end a common haunt in which their loving spirits may meet, in the 'auld clay biggin' or 'humble cot' where each in his turn performed his part in 'minding the bairn.'

The family affections are, moreover, the pith and marrow of patriotism; and who will venture to estimate the degree in which a nation's stability is dependent upon the primitive economy of the poor man's household? It is only by association with the loves and sorrows and joys of his childhood that the external surroundings of his home become endeared to the heart of man. How naturally Burns arises, in his Cotter's Saturday Night, from the more immediate reflections which the happiness of his humble characters suggests, to that eloquent exclamation in praise of his native land, beginning,