XXVI.

(NOVEMBER 1830.)

Scene, Blue Parlour. Time,-Eight o'Clock. Present,NORTH, SHEPHERD, and Jug.

Shepherd. Which o' us three, I wonner, looks best at the settin in o' another wunter? I suspeck it's me-for to say naething o' the jug, wha has lost his nose, you're getting mair and mair spinnle-shankit, sir, ilka year-as for your hauns, ane may see through them-and a'thegither you're an interesting atomy o' the auld schule. I fear we're gaun to lose you, sir, during the season. But dinna mind, sir-ye sall hae a moniment erected to you by a grateful nation on the Calton Hilland ships comin up the Firth-steamers, smacks, and ithers -amang them now and then a man-o'-war-will never notice the Parthenon, a' glowerin through telescopes at the mausoleum o' Christopher North.

North. I desire no other monument, James, than a bound set of the Magazine in the library of every subscriber. Yesmy immortal ambition is to live in the libraries and liberties of my native land.

Shepherd. A noble sentiment, sir, beautifully expressed. Oh! but you're a curious cretur-a Great Man!

North. James, I KNOW MYSELF. I am neither a great nor a small-but a middle-sized man

Shepherd. What the deevil! dinna ye belang to the Sax Feet Club.1

North. No. The Fine Fellows invite me to their Feasts and Festivals—and I am proud to be their guest. But my stature 1 A Society of young Scottish athletes.

54

THE AMPHITHEATRE OF LIFE.

is deficient the eighth part of an inch; and I could not submit to sit at any board below either the Standard or the Salt.

Shepherd. A noble sentiment, sir, beautifully expressed. Oh! but you're a curious cretur-a Great Man!

North. I am not a curious creature, James, but a commonplace Christian. As to my intellectual stature—and of that I spoke when I said that I am but a middle-sized man—it is, I am satisfied, the stature best adapted for the enjoyment of tranquil happiness in this world. I look along the many levels of life-and lo! they seem to form one immense amphitheatre. Below me are rows, and rows, and rows of well-apparelled people-remember I speak figuratively of the mind-who sometimes look up-ungrudgingly and unenvyingly—to where I am sitting, smiling on me as on one belonging to their own order, though placed by Providence-august Master of these august Ceremonies—a little loftier in the range of seats in a half-moon circling the horizon, and crowded to overflowing with the whole human race.

Shepherd. A noble sentiment, sir, beautifully expressed. Oh! but you're a curious cretur-a Great Man.

North. I beg your pardon-but I did not hear you, James— will you repeat that again?

Shepherd. Na. I makes a pint o' never sayin the same thing twice ower for ony man-except a deaf ane—and only to him gin he uses a lug-trumpet.

North. Then looking right and left, James, I behold an immense multitude sitting, seemingly on the same altitude with myself-somewhat more richly robed than our brethren beneath -till, lifting up my eyes, lo! the Magnates, and Potentates, and Princes, and Kings of all the shadowy worlds of mind, magnificently arrayed, and belonging rather to the heavens than to the earth!

Shepherd. A noble sentiment, sir, beautifully expressed. Oh! but you're a curious cretur- —a Great Man! (Aside.) I micht din thae words intil his lug fifty times without his catchin their meanin-for whan the auld doited body begins haverin about himsel, he's deaf to a' things else in the creawtion.

North. Monuments! Some men have been so glorious, James, that to build up something in stone to perpetuate that glory, seems of all futile attempts the most futile, and either

MONUMENTS.-THE WEATHER.

55

to betray a sinful distrust of their immortality, or a wretched ignorance of the

"Power divine of sacred memories,"

which will reign on earth, in eternal youth, ages and ages and ages after the elements have dissolved the brass or marble, on which were vainly engraven the consecrated and undying

names!

Shepherd. A noble sentiment, beau

North. A monument to Newton! a monument to Shakespeare! Look up to Heaven - look into the Human Heart. Till the planets and the passions-the affections and the fixed stars are extinguished-their names cannot die.

Shepherd (starting up.) A moniment to Sir William Wallace! A moniment to William Tell! Look at the mountains of Scotland and Switzerland-listen to their cataracts-look to the light on the foreheads-listen to the music on the lips of the Free

"Kings of the Desert, men whose stately tread

Brings from the dust the sound of Liberty !” 1

North. A noble sentiment, James, beautifully expressed. Oh! but you're a curious cretur—a Great Man!

Shepherd. What! You've been sookin in my flattery a' the time, ye auld sinner-and noo turn intil a banter on mysel the compliment I paid you frae the verra bottom o' my heart? You're a queer deevil.-Hoo hae ye stood the weather this season, sir?

North. Weather! It never deserved the name of weather, James, even during that muddy and mizzly misnomer-Summer; while the Autumn

Shepherd. Weel, do ye ken, sir, that I never saw in a' my born days, what I could wi' a safe conscience hae ca'd-bad weather? The warst has aye had some redeemin quality about it that enabled me to thole it without yaumerin. Though we mayna be able to see, we can aye think o' the clear blue lift. Weather, sir, aiblins no to speak very scientially in the way o' meteorological observation—but rather in a poetical, that is, religious spirit—may be defined, I jalouse, “the expression o' the fluctuations and modifications o' feeling in the heart o' 1 From Professor Wilson's Poem "On reading Mr Clarkson's History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade."

56

A SPRING-SHOWER.

-THE RAINBOW.

the heevens, made audible, and visible, and tangible on their face and bosom." That's weather.

North. Something very beautiful might be written about weather-climate.

Shepherd. But no by you-by me. Oh! heavens and earth! O God and man! what I-a shepherd-hae felt in a springshower! The dry warld a' at ance made dewy-dewy-dewy as the light in the Angel o' Mercy's een, beheld by contrite sinner in a midnight dream!

North. James, your paw.

Shepherd. A saft, fresh, silent change has been wrocht a' ower the outward creation-and a congenial change-as saft, as fresh, as silent, has likewise been wrocht within your ain heart. Music is maist harmonious-but not mair harmonious nor licht; for licht wears a coat o' many colours-and lo! yonder is the web from which it was cut-hung aloft in the skies. North. There spake at once the Ettrick Shepherd and the Tailor of Yarrow-Ford!

Shepherd. The Rainbow! Is she not the Lady o' Licht, the Queen o' Colour, the Princess o' Prisms, the Heiress Apparent o' Air, and her Royal Highness of Heaven? O Thou! who bendest Beauty like a bridge across the valley-on which imagination's eye may ken celestial shapes moving to and fro alang the braided battlements-Sun-begotten, Cloud-born Angel! Emblem, sign, and symbol of mercy and of peace! Storm-seeker and storm-subduer! Pathway-so sacred Superstition sings-between Heaven and Earth! Alike beautiful is thy coming and thy going—and no soul so savage as not for a while to saften, as thy Apparition comes gradually breathing and blushing out of the sky! Immortal art thou in thy evanescence! The sole light, either in heaven or on earth, of which the soul may not sicken when overcome with the agonies of grief or guilt! O that on my death-bed I may behold a Rain

bow!

North. Nay, James, the jug is empty; and at that moment, with the sudden jerk of your arm, expecting a heavier load on the way to your mouth, you had nearly given yourself a bloody nose. Be more cautious in future-but replenish.

Shepherd. In a single instant, a' the earth is green as emerald, and covered wi' a glorious glitter o' its ain, sic as never shone-or could shine, over the bricht but barren sea. A's

IMAGES SUGGESTED BY SPRING-SHOWER.

57

joy: The knowes, the banks, the braes, the lawns, the hedges, the woods, the single trees, the saughs,' the heather, the broom, the bit bushes, the whins, the fern, the gerse, the flowers, the weeds—sic as dockens, nettles, ay, the verra hemlockare a' harmless and a' happy! They seem a' imbued wi' a sort o' strange serene spirit o' life, and nought in a' creawtion seems-dead!

North. Life-imbued by a poet's soul!

Shepherd. Then look at the animal creturs. Isna that a bonny bit beastie, cavin its large-ee'd gracefu' head in the air, frae the elastic turf liftin up and lettin doun again its lang thin legs sae elegantly, its tail a' the while a perfeck streamer -in many a winding ring it gallops round its dam-and then, half frolicsome, half afraid, returns rapidly to her side, and keeps gazing on the stranger. Some day or ither that bit silly foal wull be wunnin a king's plate or a gold cup; for you see the Aurab bluid in his fine fetlocks, and ere long that neck, like his sire's, will be clothed with thunder.

North. You must ride him yourself, James, next year at Musselburgh.

Shepherd. Fling your crutch, sir, intil a rose-bush, till a' the blossoms flee intil separate leaves, and a' the leaves gang careerin in air outower the lea, and that would be an eemage o' the sudden flicht o' a heap o' snaw-white lambs, a' broken up in a moment as they lay amang the sunshine, and scattered far and wide o'er the greensward-sune to be regathered on the Starting-Knoll; but there the eemage wunna haud, for rose-leaves ance dissipated dee like love-kisses lavished in dreams.

North. Rose-leaves and rose-lips-lambs and lasses—and love-kisses lavished in dreams! And all these images suggested in a shepherd's recollection of a Spring-Shower! Prevailing pastoral Poet, complete thy picture.

Shepherd. See how the trouties are loupin in the pools-for a shower o' insecks hae come winnowing their way on the wings o' the western wind, frae the weel-watered wavings o' Elibank's whisperin woods."

North. No such imitative melodies in Homer! The sentence is like a sugh.

Shepherd. 'Twas nae faut o' mine, sir, for ma mouth got 1 Saugh-willow.

2 On the Tweed near Ashiestiel.