At Branxton Moor!
                           They are so stour,
                           So frantic mad,
                           They say they had
                           Won the field
                           With spear and shield
                           Flodden Hills.
                           Our bows and bills
                           Slew all the flower
                           Of their honour.
                           Are not these Scots
                           Fools and sots?

THE ELVES AND THE CHILDREN.

THREE little ones sit in a flowery mead,
                In the twilight grey;
At home their mother is making their bed,
                "Where linger they?"
                With laughing cheeks rosy
                They skip to and fro,
                Where the flowers upgrow,
In a dewy Whitsun posy.

Down, down the mountain three Elf maids reel,
                From the fir-crown'd height.
Mists thicken, each rides on her spinning wheel;
                Their raiments white
                In the air are flowing;
                Each fairy shoe
                Just brushes the dew
From the tops of flowers fresh blowing.

They sing so sweetly:  they sing to the three,
                "Hail, children at play!
Come, put your hands in ours, and flee
                To a home more gay,
                Under the mountain olden;
                And the ivory row
                Of nine pins throw
Over with bowls pure golden.

"Join ye!  O join ye us maidens three,
                O join ye, and all
Shall pluck the blossoms o' gold, and see
                The song birds small,
                While merrily, merrily, singing;
                Building their bowers
                Of lily flowers,
And pearls like seeds upspringing."

The little ones wax so heavy in mind,
                Smile so dreamily,
They are whirled along on the rising wind,
                But sleep all three.
                The earth shuts above them,
                As swiftly they fall,
                To the Elfin Hall,
Ah, woe to the folk that love them!

Upon the morrow the father runs
                To the fir-crown'd hill,
The elfins have stolen his little ones,
                And guard them still!
                Green grass is creeping
                Above their golden hair;
                Soundly they slumber there.
But above there is wailing and weeping.

WHITBY:  ITS WORKS AND WAYS.

IF you go to Whitby for quiet, assuredly
you get what you go for. Never was such
a tranquil watering-place. Not only is it a
land  "in which it seemed always afternoon,"
but a very long and very dull afternoon,
without much prospect of picking
up in the evening. If you ask people why
they come to Whitby, they give, as a reason,
the fact of there being so many beautiful
excursions in the neighbourhood, which,
being interpreted, means that the place
itself is so dull that they remain in it
as little as possible. They are right as
to the beauty of the surrounding scenery.
Turn which way you will, you come upon
nature in every variety of exquisite aspect
—now grand and bold, now soft and
smiling, heather-covered moorland, broad-
backed bushless down, high cloud-defying
headland, green dreamy dell, with a tiny
thread of silver winding through it, and
just beyond it breaking into the turbid
stream, and the tumbling waterfall. And
towering above all, a conspicuous land-
mark, within, a very short distance, the
ruins of "High Whitby's cloistered fane,"
the fragments and remains, so lovely even
in their decay, of the abbey once presided
over by St. Hilda, and afterwards
dedicated to her.

Coming to Whitby by railway you
branch off at Malton from the direct North-
Eastern route, and proceed by a line for
which, amongst several other benefits.,
Whitby is indebted to the once well-known
Mr. George Hudson. The line was
originally a horse-railway, constructed by
George Stephenson, and is said to have
been the third ever made in England (the
Stockton and Darlington being the first,
and the Liverpool and Manchester the
second), and was literally what the
Americans would call a "one-horse concern,"
until the Railway King took it in hand,
laid down a double line of rails, made
it applicable for steam-traffic, altered its.
course, and finally developed it into what it
is, one of the most picturesque lines in the
kingdom. The loveliness of the scenery
commences so soon as the little town of
Pickering is past, and continues almost
until you run into Whitby station. The
train goes zigzagging in and out, and
curving and serpentining in the most
erratic manner, now dashing along a valley
between perpendicular cliffs of five hundred
feet high, now striking across a purely
Scottish moor with its short crisp turf and
purple heather, now skirting the base of a
large hill wooded to the peak with fir and
fern, and thoroughly Swiss in character.
Here and there iron-works are established,
and occasional tall chimneys uprear
themselves in the midst of the landscape; but
these interruptions to the prospect are
infrequent, and the eye rests with delight on
long masses of rock with broken "Scars,"
on deep black, deadly still pools, on the