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THE MURDER OF BRONTE.

North. And would that my fist were now at his jugular! Shepherd. What a nieve' o' airn!-Unclinch't, sir, for its fearsome.

North. Had the murder been perpetrated by ten detected Gilmerton carters, I would have smashed them like crockery! Shepherd. En masse or seriawtim, till the cart-ruts ran wi their felon bluid, and a race o' slit noses gaed staggerin through the stour, and then like a heap o' bashed and birzed paddocks walloped intil the ditch.

North. 'Twas a murder worthy of Hare or Burke, or the bloodiest of their most cruel and cowardly abettors.

Shepherd. I agree wi' you, sir;-but dinna look sae white, and sae black, and sae red in the face, and then sae mottled, as if you had the measles; for see, sir, how the evening sunshine is sleeping on his grave!

North. No yew-tree, James, ever grew so fast before-Mrs Gentle herself planted it at his head. My own eyes were somewhat dim, but as for hers - God love them!—they streamed like April skies—and nowhere else in all the garden are the daisies so bright as on that small mound. That wreath, so curiously wrought into the very form of flowery letters, seems to fantasy like a funeral inscription-his very name-Bronte.

Shepherd. Murder's murder, whether the thing pushioned hae four legs or only twa-for the crime is curdled into crime in the blackness o' the sinner's heart, and the revengefu' shedder even of bestial blood would, were the same demon to mutter into his ears, and shut his eyes to the gallows, poison the well in which the cottage-girl dips the pitcher that breaks the reflection o' her bonny face in that liquid heaven.—But hark! wi' that knock on the table you hae frichtened the mavis! Aften do I wonder whether or no birds, and beasts, and insecks, hae immortal sowls!

English Opium-Eater. What God makes, why should he annihilate? Quench our own Pride in the awful consciousness of our Fall, and will any other response come from that oracle within us-Conscience-than that we have no claim on God for immortality, more than the beasts which want indeed "discourse of reason," but which live in love, and by love, and breathe forth the manifestations of their being through

1 Nieve-fist.

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the same corruptible clay which makes the whole earth one mysterious burial-place, unfathomable to the deepest soundings of our souls!

Shepherd. True, Mr De Quinshy-true, true. Pride's at the bottom o' a' our blindness, and a' our wickedness, and a' our madness; for if we did indeed and of verity, a' the nichts and a' the days o' our life, sleepin and waukin, in delicht or in despair, aye remember, and never for a single moment forget, that we are a WORMS-Milton, and Spenser, and Newton-gods as they were on earth-and that they were gods, did not the flowers and the stars declare, and a' the twa blended warlds o' Poetry and Science, lyin as it were like the skies o' heaven reflected in the waters o' the earth, in ane anither's arms? Ay, Shakespeare himsel a WORM— and Imogen, and Desdemona, and Ophelia, a' but the eemages O' WORMS- and Macbeth, and Lear, and Hamlet! Where would be then our pride and the self-idolatry o' our pride, and all the vain-glorifications o' our imagined magnificence? Dashed doun into the worm-holes o' our birth-place, among all crawlin and slimy things-and afraid in our lurking-places to face the divine purity o' the far far-aff and eternal heavens in their infinitude!-Puir Bronte's dead and buried-and sae in a few years will a' Us Fowre be! Had we naething but our boasted reason to trust in, the dusk would become the dark-and the dark the mirk, mirk, mirk;-but we have the Bible, and lo! a golden lamp illumining the short midnicht that blackens between the mortal twilight and the immortal dawn.

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North (blowing a boatswain's whistle). Gentlemen-look here!

(A noble young Newfoundlander comes bounding into

the Arbour).

Shepherd. Mercy me! mercy me! The verra dowg himsel! The dowg wi' the star-like breast!

North. Allow me, my friend, to introduce you to O'BRONTE. Shepherd. Ay-I'll shake paws wi' you, my gran' fallow; and though it's as true among dowgs as men, that he's a clever chiel that kens his ain father, yet as sure as wee Jamie's mine ain, are you auld Bronte's son. You've gotten the verra same identical shake o' the paw-the verra same identical (See, (See, as Burns says, hoo it "hangs ower his

wag o' the tail.

VOL. III.

B

18

een.

O'BRONTE'S EDUCATION.

hurdies wi' a swurl.") Your chowks the same-like him, too, as Shakespeare says, " dew-lapped like Thessawlian bills." The same braid, smooth, triangular lugs, hanging doun aneath your chafts; and the same still, serene, smilin, and sagacious Bark! man- —bark! let us hear you bark-Ay, that's the verra key that Bronte barked on whenever" his blood was up and heart beat high :" and I'se warrant that in anither year or less, in a street-row, like your sire you'll clear the causeway o' a clud o' curs, and carry the terror o' your name frae the Auld to the New Flesh-market; though, tak my advice, ma dear O'Bronte, and, except when circumstances imperiously demand war, be thou-thou jewel of a Jowler-a lover of peace!

English Opium-Eater. I am desirous, Mr Hogg, of cultivating the acquaintance-nay, I hope of forming the friendship-of that noble animal. Will you permit him to

Shepherd. Gang your wa's,1 O'Bronte, and speak till the English Opium-Eater. Ma faith! You hae nae need o' drogs to raise your animal speerits, or heighen your imagination. What'n intensity o' life!-But whare's he been sin' he was puppied, Mr North?

North. On board a whaler. No education like a trip to Davis Strait.

Shepherd. He'll hae speeled, I'se warrant him, mony an iceberg-and worried mony a seal—aiblins a walrus, or sea-lion. But are ye no feared o' his rinnin awa to sea?

North. The spirit of his sire, James, has entered into him, and he would lie, till he was a skeleton, upon my grave.

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Shepherd. It canna be denied, sir, that you hae an unaccoontable power o' attaching to you, no only dowgs, but men, women, and children. I've never douted but that you maun hae some magical pouther, that you blaw in amang their hair—na, intil their verra lugs and een-imperceptible fine as the motes i' the sun-and then there's nae resistance, but the sternest Whig saftens afore you, the roots o' the Radical relax, and a' distinctions o' age, sex, and pairty-the last the stubbornest and dourest o' a'-fade awa intil undistinguishable confusion-and them that's no in the secret o' your glamoury, fears that the end o' the warld's at haun, and that there 'ill sune be nae mair use for goods and chattels in the Millennium.

Tickler. As I am a Christian

1 Gang your wa's—get off.

O'BRONTE SWALLOWS OPIUM.

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Shepherd. You a Christian!

Tickler.

opium.

-Mr De Quincey has given O'Bronte a box of

Shepherd. What? Has the dowg swallowed the spale-box o' pills? We maun gar him throw it up.

North. Just like that subscriber, who alone, out of the present population of the globe, has thrown up-THE Magazine. Shepherd. Haw, haw, haw!-capital wut! Sin' he couldna digeest it, he has reason to be thankfu' that the Dooble Nummer didna stick in his weasen, and mak him a corp. What would hae become o' him, had they exploded like twa bomb-shells?

English Opium-Eater. The most monstrous and ignominious ignorance reigns among all the physicians of Europe, respecting the powers and properties of the poppy.

Shepherd. I wush in this case, sir, that the poppy mayna pruve ower poorfu' for the puppy, and that the dowg's no a dead man. Wull ye take your bible-oath that he bolted

the box?

English Opium-Eater. Mr Hogg, I never could see any sufficient reason why, in a civilised and Christian country, an oath should be administered even to a witness in a court of justice. Without any formula, Truth is felt to be sacred-nor will any words weigh

Shepherd. You're for upsettin the haill frame o' ceevil society, sir, and bringin back on this kintra a' the horrors o' the French Revolution. The power o' an oath lies, no in the Reason, but in the Imagination. Reason tells that simple affirmation or denial should be aneuch atween man and man. But Reason canna bind, or, if she do, Passion snaps the chain. For ilka passion, sir, even a passion for a bead or a button, is as strong as Samson burstin the withies. But Imagination can bind, for she ca's on her Flamin Ministers-The Fears;-they palsy-strike the arm that would disobey the pledged lipsand thus oaths are dreadfu' as Erebus and the gates o' hell.But see what ye hae dune, sir,-only look at O'Bronte.

[O'BRONTE sallies from the Arbour-goes driving head-overheels through among the flower-beds, tearing up pinks and carnations with his mouth and paws, and, finally, makes repeated attempts to climb up a tree.

English Opium-Eater. No such case is recorded in the medical books—and very important conclusions may be drawn from na accurate observation of the phenomena now exhibited by a

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distinguished member of the canine species, under such a dose of opium as would probably send Mr Coleridge1 himself to

Shepherd. his lang hame-or Mr De Quinshy eitherthough I should be loth to lose sic a poet as the ane, and sic a philosopher as the ither-or sic a dowg as O'Bronte.-But look at him speelin up the apple-tree like the auld serpent! He's thinkin himsel, in the delusion o' the drog, a wull-cat or a bear, and has clean forgotten his origin. Deil tak me gin I ever saw the match o' that! He's gotten up; and's lyin a' his length on the branch, as if he were streekin himsel out to sleep on the ledge o' a brig! What thocht's gotten intil his head noo? He's for herryin the goldfinch's nest amang the verra tapmost blossoms !-Ay, my lad! that was a thud!

[O'BRONTE, who has fallen from the pippin, recovers his feetstorms the Arbour-upsets the table, with all the bottles, glasses, and plates, and then, dashing through the glass frontdoor of the Lodge, disappears with a crash into the interior. English Opium-Eater. Miraculous!

Shepherd. A hairy hurricane !-What think ye, sir, o' the SCOTTISH OPIUM-EATER?

English Opium-Eater. I hope it is not hydrophobia.

Tickler. He manifestly imagines himself at the whaling, and is off with the harpooners.

Shepherd. A vision o' blubber's in his sowl. Oh! that he could gie the warld his Confessions!

English Opium-Eater. Mr Hogg, how am I to understand that insinuation, sir?

Shepherd. Ony way you like. But, did ever onybody see a philosopher sae passionate? Be cool-be cool.

Tickler. See, see, see!

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comes spanging back into the cool of the evening, with CYPRUS, NORTH's unique male tortoise-shell cat in his mouth, followed by JOHN and BETTY, broom-and-spitarmed, with other domestics in the distance.

1 S. T. Coleridge was a great consumer of opium. See his "confessions" in Cottle's Reminiscences. Born in 1771, Coleridge died in 1834.

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