After gaining some experience, Mrs. Sandieson gave up the earlier style of work with which she had begun, and devoted herself almost entirely to embroidery in silks. She has trained a daughter, who lives with her, to work as well as herself, and no description can do justice to the beauty of their finer work. Their designs are, with very few exceptions, their own, and many of their pieces are singularly beautiful. They have even copied the plate representing a peacock on a branch of a tree, from Gould's "Asiatic Birds," and no one but those who have seen it, could believe in the wondrous working of the bird, and in the feathers of the neck, with the faint change of tint where it catches the light as the bird turns its head. It is marvellous!
But copying flowers from nature is what they chiefly do, and their careful observation and fidelity in representation are very characteristic in their work. Trails of thunbergia, scarlet tropæolum, apple blossom, cherry, and bramble; willow, with its catkins, a little titmouse on the branch; snowberry, with a robin perched on it; the red and white lapageria, eucalyptus, pepper tree, and others are some of their subjects. And this is what the crofter's wife, who commenced with the old dyed shawl for a foundation, has, totally unaided, taught herself and her daughter to accomplish; and this is the crofter's wife who, one hundred and forty years afterwards, was employed by Lady Aberdeen to finish the quilt which the Countess of 1745 had commenced. Is there not a little pathos in the history of a piece of work begun and completed in such different circumstances?
The work of these peasant-artists, mother and daughter, is now very well known among ladies in Aberdeenshire, and has lately been brought under the notice of Her Majesty, who condescended to purchase largely of it; but the writer believes the quilt shown by Lady Aberdeen, in Edinburgh, to be the only specimen that has been exhibited publicly.—Ladies' Treasury.
WONDERFUL GRACE.
John Dickson, a farmer in the parish of Ratho, near Edinburgh, was long a stranger to the riches of divine grace. He paid no regard to the sacred ordinances, or, if ever on the Lord's Day he entered the house of God, it was more for a desire of ridiculing than profiting by what he heard. The Word preached did not profit him, not being mixed with faith.
In this dreadful situation was he when his wife died, after bringing into the world an infant daughter. The good providence of that gracious God who calleth the weak things of this world to confound the strong had ordained that the nurse of this child should be a woman of exemplary faith, who walked in the Spirit, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost. The carnal mind of the father still continued at enmity with God; but he was, ere long, to be brought to a full conviction of his own unworthiness, and a delightful experience of the riches of redeeming love.
The child, being now about twenty months old, and beginning to prattle a few words, was one day sent for by her father, who was sitting after dinner with some of his profane acquaintances. To his great astonishment the child repeated, two or three times, in its infant tones, "Oh, the grace of God!" These words made a deep impression upon the father. He began to reflect upon his sins, and the power of that grace which cleanseth from sin, so long the subject of his impious ridicule. The Holy Ghost had opened his heart, and now brought him, like a sheep that had been astray, into the fold of divine love. Since that time he has walked as becometh one called in the Lord, bringing forth fruit meet for repentance. The words which, through the grace of God, became the happy instrument of his conversion were the customary ejaculation of the godly nurse, and had thus been learned by the infant. So truly was the Scripture verified that "out of the mouths of babes and sucklings the Lord hath ordained praise."
R.