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videatque, indigna suorum Funera: nec, cum se sub leges pacis iniquae Tradiderit, regno aut optata luce fruatur, Sed cadat ante diem, mediaque inhumatus arena."

Which Dryden, if with rather too much amplification, still very beautifully translates thus:--

"Yet let a race untamed and haughty foes His peaceful entrance with dire arms oppose, Oppress'd with numbers in th' unequal field, His men discouraged and himself expell'd: Let him for succour sue from place to place, Torn from his subjects and his son's embrace. First let him see his friends in battle slain, And their untimely fate lament in vain; And when at length the cruel wars shall cease, On hard conditions may he buy his peace. Nor let him then enjoy supreme command, But fall untimely by some hostile hand, And lie unburied on the barren sand."

Lord Falkland's eye fell on the following lines in the eleventh book:--

"Non haec, O Palla, dederas promissa parenti. Cautius ut saevo velles te credere Marti! Haud ignarus eram, quantum nova gloria in armis, Et predulce decus primo certamine posset. Primitiae juvenis miserae! bellique propinqui Dura rudimenta! et nulli exaudita Deorum Vota, precesque meae!"

--which the same translator has rendered as follows:--

"O Pallas, thou hast failed thy plighted word, To fight with caution, not to tempt the sword; I warn'd thee, but in vain, for well I knew What perils youthful ardour would pursue; That boiling blood would carry thee too far, Young as thou wert to dangers, raw to war; O curs'd essay of arms, disastrous doom, Prelude of bloody fields and fights to come, Hard elements of unauspicious war, Vain vows to heaven and unavailing care."

An old Gaelic MS.--"The Bewitched Bachelor Unbewitched"--Fairy Lore--Lacteal Libations on Fairy Knowes.

In looking over some old papers the other day we stumbled on some sheets of Gaelic MS. that had lain neglected for years, and every existence of which, indeed, we had well-nigh forgotten. One of these sheets contained the original of the following lines. It is in many respects a curious composition, written in a sort of rhythmical alliterative prose rather than in verse, somewhat in the manner of the conversational parts of the Gaelic Sgeulachdan or fireside tales of the olden time. Its tone throughout is gay and lively, with an occasional admixture of humour and double entendre that is very amusing, while its allusions to the manners and customs and superstitious observances of a past age render it, to our thinking, extremely interesting. The sheet in our possession is only a copy, the original, taken down from oral recitation, we believe, being in a MS. collection of Gaelic poems and tales by Rev. Mr. M'Donald, at one time minister of the parish of Fortingall, in Perthshire. Having only internal evidence to judge from, it is impossible with any confidence to assign even an approximate date to such a production as this, but we are probably not far wrong in placing it as early at least as the middle or close of the last century. It bears no title in the original; we may call it--

The Bewitched Bachelor Unbewitched.

The gudeman mumbled and grumbled full sore Over the butter-kits, all through the dairy: Over cheese, over butter, and milk-pails, he swore "'Tis the work, I'll be bound, of some foul witch or fairy.

How can I ever be happy or rich, If robbed and tormented by fairy and witch," Quoth he; and lo, with a sudden turn He stumbled and spilt the cream-full churn!

He went to his mother -- He went to his mother, that Bachelor gruff: He was mild with her, though with others rough.

"Mother," quoth he, "I have not now One-half the butter or cheese, I trow, That loaded my dairy shelves when you Had charge of my household and dairy too: Tell me mother, what shall I do? I vow and declare that some fairy or witch Is robbing me still and doing me ill--I shall never be rich."

"My son," the mother mild replied, "See that you pay the fairies their due; A tribute due should ne'er be denied-- Others don't grudge it, and why should you? Nor thrive their flocks nor kine, I ween, Who scorn or neglect the shian green."

"But, mother, the witch that lives down i' the glen?" "A widow, my son, with a fatherless oe, Who has seen much sorrow and years of woe; Give her as heretofore, my son, Of your curds and whey, and let her alone. And oh, my son, if you would be rich, And free from dread of fairy and witch. And happy and well-to-do through life-- Go get thee, my son, a winsome wife!"

The bachelor hied him home full soon-- He sent to the widow, far down in the glen, A kebbuck of cheese as round as the moon, Of oaten cakes he sent her ten, With a kindly message, "Come when you may For curds and whey in the good old way." He sent her withal, 'tis right you should know, A braw new kilt for her fatherless oe.

And ever he saw that his maidens paid To the fairies their due on the Fairy Knowe, Till the emerald sward was under the tread As velvet soft, and all aglow With wild flowers, such as fairies cull, Weaving their garlands and wreaths for the dance when the moon is full!

And lo! at last he took him a wife, A comely and winsome dame, I trow, Who shed a sunshine over his life, And silvered the wrinkles upon his brow. 'Twas well with the kine, and well with the dairy, Nor dreaded he ought from witch or fairy; And often they went to the cot by the linn, Where mavis and merle made merry din.

The English reader will probably require to be informed that oe--the Gaelic ogha--signifies a grandchild, while shian is a fairy knoll. To show what a power fairies were at one time in the land, and how wide-spread was the belief in them, we have only to consider that there is perhaps not a hamlet or township in the Highlands or Hebrides without its shian or green fairy knoll so called. Within half a mile of our own residence, for example, there is a Sithean Beag and a Sithean Mor, a Greater and Lesser Fairy Knoll; there is, besides, a Glacan-t' Shithein, the Fairy Knoll Glade, Tobar-an-t' Shithein, the Fairy Knoll Well; and a deep chasm, through which a mountain torrent plunges darkling, called Leum-an-t' Shithiche, the Fairy's Leap, with which there is probably connected some very wonderful story, although we have been unsuccessful hitherto in meeting with any one able or willing to repeat it. The truth is, that a belief in fairies and fairyland, or faery--faint, no doubt, and ill-defined now-a-days--still lingers ghost-like, the shadow of its more substantial former living self, in our straths and glens; and, in accordance with the old superstition, it is considered that the "good people" should only be spoken of on rare and unavoidable occasions, and then only in serious and respectable terms. Hence it is that you always find old people reluctant to impart such fairy lore as may be known to them, though garrulous enough on all other subjects; and hence, also, it happens that in our old Sgeulachdan--the Arabian Nights Entertainments of our Celtic forefathers--although you find giants, and dwarfs, and misbegotten beings of every imaginable shape and size; animals, too, that can speak and reason and lend their superhuman aid to prince and peasant in extremity, as well as genii, kelpies, and spirits of flood and fell, you rarely if ever meet with one of the "good folks," or fairies proper, introduced upon the scene. The people thoroughly believed in them, believed that they had a veritable existence, and although invisible to mortal eye, that they might be at your elbow at any moment; that they disliked being spoken of at all as a rule, and that a disrespectful word about them especially would inevitably be followed by some signal punishment, or "mischance," as it was more cautiously termed in the South--all this they believed, and therefore they held it wisest to speak of fairies, good folks though they were, as seldom as possible. The allusion to paying--

"The fairies their due on the fairy knowe,"

has reference to the custom, common enough on the western mainland and in some of the Hebrides some fifty years ago, and not altogether unknown perhaps even at the present day, of each maiden's pouring from her cumanbleoghain, or milking-pail, evening and morning, on the fairy knowe a little of the new-drawn milk from the cow, by way of propitiating the favour of the good people, and as a tribute the wisest, it was deemed, and most acceptable that could be rendered, and sooner or later sure to be repaid a thousand-fold. The consequence was that these fairy knolls were clothed with a richer and more beautiful verdure than any other spot, howe or knowe, in the country, and the lacteal riches imbibed by the soil through this custom is even now visible in the vivid emerald green of a shian or fairy knoll whenever it is pointed out to you. This custom of pouring lacteal libations to the fairies on a particular spot deemed sacred to them, was known and practised at some of the summer shielings in Lochaber within the memory of the people now living.

Transit of Mercury--Improperly called an "Eclipse" of--November Meteors--Mr. Huggins--Spectrum Analyses of Cometary Light--Translation of a St. Kilda Song.

We were early astir on the morning of the 5th November ; with little thought, be sure, of Guy Fawkes or the Gunpowder Plot, intent only on witnessing, if we might be so fortunate, the transit of Mercury over the solar disc. The phenomenon in question we have seen referred to as an "eclipse" of Mercury, which it certainly was not. A celestial body is properly said to be eclipsed when, by the interposition of another and a nearer orb, it is temporarily hid from view. A star or planet so hidden by the body of the moon, for instance, is said to be "occulted." The sun is truly said to be eclipsed when the new moon at a particular conjunction steps in between us and him, and temporarily intercepts his beams. What again, for convenience sake, is called an eclipse of the moon, is really not an eclipse at all, so far at least as the terrestrial spectator is concerned; it would be more strictly correct to call it simply a lunar obscuration. The temporary appearance of Venus and Mercury as circular and sharply defined black spots on the solar disc, has hitherto always, and very properly, been called in the language of astronomers a "transit" of the particular planet by name, such as the "transit of Venus," or the "transit of Mercury;" and there is no reason to change the term, for it is expressive and true, which the word eclipse, applied to such a conjunction, certainly is not.

Be it called what it may, however--eclipse or transit--we were disappointed in not getting a glimpse of the phenomenon in question on the present occasion. Although duly at our post from before sunrise till the minute calculated for the last contact of the planet with the solar disc, we were unable to obtain anything more than the most momentary blink even of the larger orb, and, of course, the detection of the black button-like disc of the planet itself, in such circumstances, was altogether out of the question. The disappointment, however, was less annoying to us in this instance from the fact that we had already been privileged to witness all the phases of a similar conjunction from first to last on the 12th November 1861. The next visible transit of Mercury does not take place till the 6th of May 1878--ten years hence. There are several other transits during the present century, invisible in our country, however, and on the continent of Europe; but which will probably afford much delight to many an eager watcher over the length and breadth of the South American continent, and generally over the islands of the Pacific Ocean.

Nor, with us here at least, was the night of the 13-14th instant any way more favourable for observation than the dull beclouded morning of the 5th itself. The night was calm and rainless, to be sure, but a heavy impenetrable mass of dark grey clouds, so low as to envelop all the mountain summits around, obscured the vault from horizon to horizon, from sunset to sunrise, so that not a single meteor could be seen by the keenest eye, even if above that pall of cloud the display had been the most brilliant and splendid conceivable. From the fact, however, that in several places widely distant from each other, from which we have had communications on the subject, and where the sky was abundantly clear and unclouded throughout, no unusual display of meteors was seen, the probability is that we have on this occasion missed them in our country, either because they came into contact with our atmosphere in the daytime, when, of course, they would be invisible, or more likely because our contact this year with the meteorolithic annulus was of the slightest, and at a segment thereof where the meteoric bodies are least numerous, and thus we must patiently wait till we again dash through it at its densest before we can hope for such a magnificent meteor shower as astonished and delighted us all in 1866. Only at Oxford, as far as our country is concerned, was there anything like a meteor shower on the present occasion, and even there the display seems to have been too faint and uninteresting to have attracted much attention. Intelligence has reached our country from New York, however, that over that city, and over the States generally, the meteoric display of the morning of the 14th was very splendid indeed, though, owing to the morning being further advanced before it commenced, less of it was seen by the people at large than on some previous occasions. The weather with our Transatlantic cousins seems to have been all that could be desired, as it is stated that "astronomers and others were able to make very complete observations." The worst thing about our insular position with respect to matters astronomical is the extreme uncertainty with which anything like continuous observation can be conducted. The chances always are twenty to one that in Great Britain, at any given hour in any given place, the weather should be such as to render an observation of a celestial phenomenon impossible, or at the least partial and unsatisfactory. One thing, at least, is now pretty certain--that annually, and at a date that falls somewhere between sunset of the 13th and sunrise of the 14th November, we may confidently look for greater or less displays of these meteoric bodies, the only thing likely to interfere with the interesting pyrotechnic exhibition being an unfavourable state of the weather at a moment when we are most concerned that the sky shall be clear and cloudless.

Mr. Huggins, whose researches with the spectroscope have already made his name famous, has recently communicated a most interesting paper to the Royal Society, giving an account of the spectrum analyses of one of the smaller and commoner class of comets that was visible for a short time in the month of June last. Avoiding technical details, which might be uninteresting to some of our readers, we may simply mention that on testing the nucleus of this comet with the spectroscope, Mr. Huggins found that it was resolved into three broad "bands," precisely similar to the results obtained on examining with the same wonderful instrument such carbon as follows the transmission of electric sparks through olefiant gas. The conclusion arrived at by Mr. Huggins is, that the nucleus of the comet in question consisted solely of volatilised carbon. This paper of Mr. Huggins is altogether a most interesting one, and we may have something more to say about it on a future occasion.

The following is a translation--somewhat freely rendered--of an old Irst or St. Kilda song, the solitary island home of a score or two of hardy inhabitants, and by all accounts a happy and hospitable race too, who cling with an unquenchable love to their lonely rock, as if it were a perfect paradise, ocean-girt and storm-beaten though it be--

"Placed far amid the melancholy main."

Except another specimen given in a small collection of Gaelic songs, edited by the late Rev. Mr. M'Callum of Arisaig, the original of the following is the only St. Kilda song that we have met with. Our copy was procured in this way: Some years ago we were dining on board H.M. Revenue cruiser "Harriet," Captain M'Allister. Going ashore on a fine moonlight night, one of the seamen who rowed our boat sang the song, which we had no hesitation in at once declaring to be of St. Kilda origin, which the man admitted was the case, he having picked it up many years before from an old woman who had spent some time on the island. Of the air, we can only remember that it was a wild, irregular sort of chant, very different from the soft low airs to which our mainland songs are for the most part sung, with the refrain or burden given in a shrill falsetto that was somewhat disagreeable to the ear, although abundantly appropriate, probably, in the circumstances in which the song was composed, and when sung amid all the surroundings of the scene depicted.

The St. Kilda Maid's Song.

Over the rocks, steadily, steadily; Down to the clefts with a shout and a shove, O; Warily tend the rope, shifting it readily, Eagerly, actively, watch from above, O. Brave, O brave, my lover true, he's worth a maiden's love:

Sweet 'tis to sleep on a well feathered pillow, Sweet from the embers the fulmar's red egg, O; Bounteous our store from the rock and the billow; Fish and birds in good store, we need never to beg, O; Brave, O brave, my lover true, he's worth a maiden's love:

Hark to the fulmar and guillemot screaming: Hark to the kittiwake, puffin, and gull, O: See the white wings of solan goose gleaming; Steadily, men! on the rope gently pull, O. Brave, O brave, my lover true, he's worth a maiden's love:

Deftly my love can hook ling and conger, The grey-fish and hake, with the net and the creel, O; Far from our island be plague and be hunger; And sweet our last sleep in the quiet of the Kiel, O. Brave, O brave, my lover true, he's worth a maiden's love:

Pull on the rope, men, pull it up steadily: ; Cunningly guide the rope, shifting it readily; Welcome my true love, and all that he brings, O! Now God be praised, my lover's safe, he's worth a maiden's love:

Our song needs but little elucidation. The reader who knows that the wealth of the St. Kildians mainly consists of the feathers and eggs of wild-fowl, to procure which they are obliged to hang suspended from ropes over the most dreadful precipices, in the clefts and along the otherwise inaccessible ledges of which the sea-fowl breed, will have no difficulty in understanding the general drift of the island maid's very spirited and very earnest song. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to say that as ling, conger, hake, and grey-fish are certain kinds of sea fish, so fulmar, guillemot, kittiwake, puffin, and scart are certain kinds of web-footed sea-fowl.

Bird Music--The Skylark's Song--Imitation of, by a French Poet--Alasdair Macdonald--Scott.

Conscious at last that pouting and inordinate weeping became him not, and that, being constantly on the "rampage," like Mrs. Joe Gargery, was hardly consistent with his place in the calendar, April betimes resolved to "tak a thocht and mend," and now, like Richard, is himself again--all sunshine and smiles. The rain-gauge, to be sure, with stern impartiality, will still show an occasional "inch," or parts of an inch, if you are very particular in your inquiries, when examined of a morning, but its readings now at least are in no way appalling, for they represent the warm and genial rainfall of April showers, that, after all, are as necessary on the west coast at this moment, and as refreshing to the soil, as the orthodox cup of mulled port of an evening was believed to be to the weary traveller in the good old days of stage-coaches and post-chaises. The country, at all events, is looking very beautiful just now, everything so green and glad, so fresh and fair, and full of promise of a yet gladder, and gayer, and brighter day at hand, when the swallow, twittering, shall dart, a glossy meteor, in the sunlight, and the cuckoo shall challenge the truant schoolboy to repeat its well-known notes, correctly if he can. Now is the time to hear our native song-birds at their best, warbling their sweetest strains, and to decide, once for all, if it be possible, which you like best; the loud, clear, silvery tinkle of the seed-shelling finch's rich and rapid song; the liquid and mellifluous warblings of the soft-billed tribes; or the soul-entrancing, round, rich, flute-like piping of the throstle, song-thrush, and merle. How it may fare with the reader who tries to decide the point we cannot say. For our own part, no decision that we could ever arrive at could keep its legs for two days together. No sooner did we decide that the skylark and its congeners had the best of it, than the goldfinch, with a score of lively cousins to aid and abet, challenged the verdict, and forced us to acknowledge his exquisite mastery in song--an admission made, however, only to be retracted again almost as soon as made, for in our walk on the evening of that self-same day did we not stand, and for the life of us couldn't help standing--breathless, and hushed, and still--to listen to the merle and song-thrush from the neighbouring copse pouring forth the indescribable riches of their God-taught vespers as the sun went down; and did we not, then and there, vow, in utter forgetfulness of finch and skylark, that no music of earth could for a moment compare, in execution and compass, in distinctness, and cheeriness, and purity of note, with these matchless twilight strains? The truth is that no music is equal to bird-music--wild-bird music, that is--in its season, and amid all its natural surroundings; and the probability is that we shall give the preference at any time to the melody of one bird over that of another, not on any well-defined principles of choice or selection in the matter, but simply in accordance with our own prevailing mood and temperament of the moment. Such, at least, has been our own experience; but the reader has every opportunity at this season of studying the question for himself and deciding. Except that of the nightingale, perhaps the music of no bird has attracted so much attention by its beauty and suggestiveness as the merry trill of the skylark's ascending song. The poets of every country in which it is to be found have vied with each other in their praises of the only bird that sings as he soars, and soars as he sings, scaling on quivering pinions the aerial terraces of heaven, until he can scarcely be discerned, a music-showering speck against the background of the blue profound! The other day we fell in with some curious verses by the French poet Du Bartas, in which he strives, and not altogether unsuccessfully, to imitate the merry trill and rhythm of the skylark's song:--

"La gentille alo?ette, avec son tire-lire, Tire-lire, ? lire, et tire-liran tire; Vers la voute du ciel, puis son vol vers ce lieu, Vire et desire dire adieu Dieu, adieu Dieu!"

The last line, if rapidly repeated with the proper beat and intonation, will be found a really very successful imitation of the concluding notes of the lark's well-known song. Many of our readers will remember that the North Uist bard, Ian Mac Codrum, in his Smeorach Chlann-Domhnuill, manages very happily to imitate the smeorach or song-thrush's notes in the burden or chorus; while Alexander Macdonald--Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair--very naturally falls, like the French poet, into an imitation of the wild-bird music of the woods and groves in a stanza that may be quoted not inappropriately at this season:--

"Cha bhi cr?utair fo chupan nan sp?ur 'N sin nach tiunndaidh ri'n speur?d 's ri'n dreach, 'S gun toir Phoebus le buadhan a bhl?is Anam-fas daibh a's caileachdan ceart, Ni iad ais-eiridh choitcheann on uaigh Far na mhiotaich am fuachd iad a steach, 'S their iad--guileag-doro-hidola-hann Dh-fhalbh an geamhra's tha'n samhradh air teachd!"

The lines of Du Bartas have little meaning in themselves, and are untranslatable, being simply an attempt on the poet's part, in some odd moment of hilarity and abandon, to embody the notes of the skylark's song in something like articulate verse. The general sense of Macdonald's lines describing the irrepressible inclination of all living creatures to be jubilant and joyous at the return of spring, cannot better be rendered than in the first part of Scott's introductory stanza to the second canto of the Lady of the Lake, only that the return of spring in the one case, instead of the return of morn in the other, prompts to the outburst of gladness and song:--

"At morn the black-cock trims his jetty wing, 'Tis morning prompts the linnet's blithest lay, All Nature's children feel the matin spring Of life reviving, with reviving day; And while yon little bark glides down the bay, Wafting the stranger on his way again, Morn's genial influence roused a minstrel grey, And sweetly o'er the lake was heard thy strain, Mixed with the sounding harp, O white-hair'd Allan-bane!"

Severe Drought--The Drive by Coach from Fort-William to Kingussie--Breakfast at Moy--Where did Scott find Dominie Sampson's "Pro-di-gi-ous!"?--Professor Blackie's Poem on Glencoe.

"Hermit hoar, in solemn cell, Wearing out life's evening grey, Smite thy bosom, sage, and tell What is bliss? and which the way?

"Thus I spoke; and speaking sighed; Scarce repressed the starting tear; When the smiling sage replied,-- 'Come, my lad, and drink some beer!'"

And very well hit off, you will confess; an arrow shot from an Ulysses' bow at the puling whimperers of a namby-pamby sentimentalism that they miscalled poetry; but if we dared for the nonce to take these lines in a more serious and literal sense than their author intended, we should say that in such hot and parching weather as we have recently had, and are still having, there is more "bliss" in a good draught of "Allsopp" or "Bass" than is dreamt of in the philosophy of the sentimentalists, and thousands upon thousands of this season's tourists are ready, we'll be bound, to homologate this statement.

It was Dr. Johnson, too, if we remember well, who spoke loudly and dogmatically, as was his wont, of the delightful feeling that one has in being rapidly whirled along a good road in a post-chaise; and remembering the unsteadiness of the "Rambler" on his pins, and his unwieldy corporation, one can readily understand that he found the means of locomotion referred to the easiest and most enjoyable possible. Our own experience of post-chaises has, sooth to say, been somewhat of the slightest, but in lieu thereof we would recommend a well-appointed public coach, with sound, well-cared-for horses, a steady and obliging driver and guard, good roads under foot, and a bright sky above all; and such a conveyance we on a recent occasion found the mail-coach between Fort-William and Kingussie to be; and such a driver and guard, the two in one, is the renowned "Davie Jack," who knows his work, and does it too, in a style that reminds one of the old "Defiance" in its palmiest days; while the weather, if anything, was too fine, too bright and cloudless--the best fault it could have, however, since it is impossible that the weather on any particular day should be faultless, any more than that any human being should be perfect. Nothing, indeed, can be finer than the drive through Lochaber and Badenoch to Kingussie, except perhaps the drive back again. With mountain scenery on all hands, unsurpassed even in the Highlands for wild, and savage, and solitary grandeur; with foaming torrents dashing down the steeps, torrents that at a distance and at this season look like so many threads of purest silver constantly being absorbed and inwefted with the river, that, with a voice more hushed, and a quieter, kindlier step, still gladdens and fertilises the valley as it seeks the sea; with loch and river scenery the most attractive and lovely; and all, in short, that you can reasonably look for of the grand or beautiful from the sea coast to the central Highlands. With all this, and the redoubted "Davie" to handle the ribbons, as only "Davie" can handle them--said "Davie" the while as full of anecdote, and joke, and local tradition as an egg is full of meat--with all this we say, and much more that might be mentioned, the man who cannot enjoy such a journey at this season is little to be envied; for, be his other qualities and qualifications what they may, his non-enjoyment of such a drive clearly proves one of two things,--either he is physically unwell, and out of sorts, and had better stay at home; or, aesthetically, he has no eye for, and no appreciation of, some of the most splendid scenery in the Highlands, and in that case is less to be blamed than pitied. Even in winter we should say that this was the readiest, as well as the most pleasant, line of intercommunication between the north-western Highlands and the south. It were, finally, unpardonable in us, who enjoyed it so much, not to mention the very excellent breakfast on the up-journey, and the equally excellent and substantial "tea," or tea-dinner rather, on returning, to be had in the shepherd's house at Moy. It may seem unromantic and prosaic to say so, but it is a fact nevertheless, that one's appreciation of the sublime and beautiful--let Mr. Edmund Burke say what he likes--is not a little enhanced by a due supply of creature comforts pari pass?. If one cannot carry the comforts of home about with him, any more than honest Bailie Nicol Jarvie could carry about with him the comforts of the "Sautmarket," it is no small matter to meet with good cheer off a snow-white cloth, with the attentions of a smart, intelligent serving girl, in odd and out-of-the-way places, where you least expect it. Altogether, a trip by the Fort-William and Kingussie mail-coach during the present fine weather is very enjoyable indeed--superior, upon the whole, we should say, to the "Rambler's" post-chaise, not forgetting that the latter is a solitary and somewhat surly sort of business, whereas in the former you have the chance of pleasant and agreeable companionship, in addition to its other attractions.

For one to make a discovery, and to think that oneself has made a discovery, are two widely different things. We readily acknowledge the distinction. That we have made a discovery we shall not venture to affirm, but we think we have. Our discovery, if discovery it be, is this, that Sir Walter Scott is indebted for Dominie Sampson's "prodigious!" to Boswell's Life of Johnson. Who can think of the worthy, kind-hearted, most unsophisticated, and withal most learned, albeit life-long kirkless parson, without instantly recalling his favourite exclamation of "Pro-di-gi-ous?" We stumbled on our discovery in this wise:--A few evenings ago we were reading the third volume of a very fine edition of Boswell's "Johnson," kindly placed at our disposal by Lady Riddell of Strontian--and a good edition of a good book is no small matter to one so far removed from libraries as we are--when we came to a page that described Johnson's meeting with a gentleman who had been his companion at Pembroke College, Oxford, some fifty years previously. Mr. Edwards, for that was the gentleman's name, and Boswell accompanied Johnson home, where, in course of conversation, Mr. Edwards said, addressing Johnson, "Sir, I remember you would not let us say prodigious at college. For even then, sir , he was delicate in language, and we all feared him." Now, can any one doubt that it was having his attention particularly called to the word in this passage that made Scott first ponder the absurdity of using a word of such volume and import on every trifling occasion, and caused him, possibly at a long subsequent date --to put it so frequently as an exclamation of unspeakable, indescribable import into the mouth of honest Sampson, whom you can no more help laughing at, at times, than you can loving him with all your heart always? The matter, after all, may seem a trifle, and it is a trifle, but such trifles are dear to the lovers of literature. Were Boswell in the flesh subsequent to the publication of Guy Mannering, and had his attention drawn to such a matter, slight as it seems, what a delightful chapter of gossip he could write about it, with fresh reminiscences of his long and intimate intercourse with his "illustrious friend," for whom till his dying day he cherished so much veneration and awe, ever-more mingled with most pardonable pride that he knew him as no one else knew him, and loved him as no one else loved him, or perhaps could love him.

We have just been reading our friend Professor Blackie's poem on "Glencoe." The manner in which he "goes at" his subject, to use a sporting phrase, the life, and vigour, and swing, and fervour of the whole, is most refreshing in these days of poetical namby-pambyisms, and eminently characteristic of the learned Professor when at his best. Here you have him, like a knight of the Middle Ages, high in his stirrups, with lance in rest, "Dh'aindeoin co theireadh e!" blazing on his shield, and who shall dare to stop his fierce career against the perpetrators of the foulest deed on record? Less polished and less artistic than Aytoun's "Widow of Glencoe," it is, nevertheless, the better poem, on such a subject, of the two. Its very ruggedness and stern headlong force are its chief charm, they best befit the theme. Blackie is terribly in earnest; with Aytoun you cannot help feeling it was a mere matter of sentiment and no more.

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