58

A SKYLARK.-NO UGLY WOMEN.

fou o' double-Ws-and I had to whiff and whustle them out. But hush and list, sir-list and hush! For that finest, faintest, amaist evanescent music-merry, or mournful, just as ye may be disposed to think and feel it—but now it is merry—dear me! it's clean gane-there-there it is heard again—like the dying tone o' the sma'est chord o' the harp o' an angel happy in the heart o' the highest heavens—and what may it be— since our ears are too dull to hear seraphic string or strainbut the hymn, to us amaist hushed by the altitude-although still pourin and pourin out like a torrent-o' the lyrical Laverock, wha, at the first patterin o' the spring-shower upon the braird about his nest, had shot, wi' short, fast-repeated soarings, a-singing up the sky, as if in the delirium o' his delicht he would hae forsaken the earth for ever-but wha, noo that he has reached at last the pinnacle o' his aerial ambition, wull sune be heard descendin, as if he were naething but a sangand then seem a musical speck in the sky-till again ring a' the lower regions wi' his still loud, but far tenderer strains-for soarin he pours, but sinkin he breathes his voice, till it ceases suddenly in a flutter and a murmur ower the head o' his brooding mate-lifted lovingly up wi' its large saft een to welcome her lover-husband to their blessed nest!

North. My dear James, you have illustrated your definition of weather by an exquisite example

Shepherd. But I'm no half dune yet

North. For the present, if you please, James.

Shepherd. But I dinna please-and I insist on being alloo'd to feenish my Spring-Shower.

North. Well, if it must be so-first tell me what you meant by averring that there is no such thing in nature as bad weather. I am rather disposed to believe that—whatever may have been the case once-now there is no such thing as good. Why, James, you might as well seek to prove by a definition that there is no such thing in nature as an ugly woman.

Shepherd. Neither there is, sir. There are different degrees o' beauty, Mr North, frae the face that outshines that o' an angel's seen in a dream-doun-doun-doun—ever sae mony hunder thousan' degrees doun, till you meet that o' the tinkler-randy, whase looks gar you ratherly incline to the ither. side o' the road-but nae ugliness. Sometimes I've kent mysel likely to fa' intil a sair mistak na, a sair fricht — by

THE UNION OF EARTH AND HEAVEN.

59

stumblin a' at ance on a lassie geyan far doun in the degrees, and wha really did seem at first sicht unco fearsome ;-but then, sir, the mistak arose frae the suddenness, and frae considerin the face o' her by its ain individual sel, and no as ane o' many on the mysterious scale o' beauty. But then a man o'ony powers o' memory and reflection, and ony experience amang the better half o' creation, soon corrects that error; and finds, afore he has walked hardly a mile alangside o' the hizzie, that she's verra weel-faured, and has an expression, mair especially about the een and mouth

North. James! James!

Shepherd. The truth is, Mr North, that you and the likes o' you, that hae been cavied' a' your days in toons, like poutry, hae seldom seen ony real weather-and ken but the twa distinctions o' wat and dry. Then, the instant it begins to drap, up wi' the umbrella and then vanishes the sky. Why,

that's aften the verra best time to feel and understaun' the blessed union o' earth and heaven, when the beauty is indeed sae beauteous, that in the perfect joy o' the heart that beats within you, ye wad lauch in an atheist's face, and hae nae mair dout o' the immortality o' the sowl, than o' the mountain-tap that, far up above the vapours, is waiting in its majestic serenity for the reappearance o' the Sun, seen brichtenin and brichtenin himsel during the shower, through behind a cloud that every moment seems mair and mair composed o' radiance, till it has melted quite away, and then, there indeed is the Sun, rejoicing like a giant to run a race

North. A race against time, James, which will terminate in a dead heat on the Last Day.

Shepherd. Time will be beat to a stand-still.

North. And the Sun at the Judge's stand swerve from the course into chaos.

Shepherd. That's queer talk-though no withouten a wild dash o' the shooblime. But how do you account, sir, for the number o' mad dowgs this summer? And what's your belief about the Heedrofoby?

North. I have for many years, James, myself, laboured under a confirmed hydrophobia

Shepherd. Tuts, nae nonsense-I want to hear you speak seriously on canine madness.

1 Cavied-cooped up.

North. Dogs, James, are subject to some strange and severe disease which is popularly called madness; and the question is, can they inoculate the human body with that disease by their bite? Perhaps they can-and I confess I should not much like to try the experiment. But an acute writer in the Westminster Review has declared his conviction that the disease called hydrophobia in the dog has nothing to do with the disease of the same name in the human species-and I am strongly disposed to agree with him

Shepherd. What? Believe in a pairodowgs' o' that outrageous natur?

North. Yes, James, to use his own words, that the madness of the biter has no effect on the madness of the bitten, and that a man who has been bitten by a dog in perfect health, is just as likely to have all the symptoms of the hydrophobia as if he had been bitten by a mad one.

Shepherd. A perfeck pairodowgs, sir-a perfeck pairodowgs! North. He gives his reasons, James, and they are not easily set aside.

Shepherd. Let's hear them, sir.

North. He observes, in the first place, if I remember rightly—and if I forget his words, I have his meaning—that the effects of all poisons, which we are acquainted with, are certain and determinate. Do you grant that, James ?

Shepherd. Be it sae.

North. For example-suppose a thousand persons swallow each the same quantity of arsenic-sufficient to cause death -they either all die, or are all similarly affected, or nearly so, by the poison. No person can use arsenic in his tea instead of sugar-empty half-a-dozen of cups at breakfast, and that evening enjoy the wit and humour of a Noctes Ambrosianæ.

Shepherd. Hardly.

North. But many persons, hundreds, have been bitten by mad dogs, and well bitten too, who have not been one whit the worse.

Shepherd. But then they have swallowed anecdotes.

North. Which is more than I have been able to do in such cases. But it is admitted on all hands, James, that there are no such antidotes. Can we believe, then, that the saliva of

1 Paradox.

DOUBTS AS TO ITS NATURE AND ORIGIN.

61

the rabid animal possesses the virulent property which occasions hydrophobia, when we know that so many persons have been inoculated with it without incurring the disease?

Shepherd. That's geyan puzzlin!

North. Secondly, my ingenious friend in the Westminster observes, that even on those who have been supposed to have been affected by this saliva, the time at which the symptoms appear is altogether indeterminate-contrary to all that we know of the action of poisons. Why-it is believed that it may be injected into a wound, and lie there harmless for months, nay years-till all at once it breaks out, and you are more insane than Sirius. A strange sort of saliva indeed this so capricious and whimsical in its action-whereas all other poisons may be depended on, and do their work subject to certain general regular and acknowledged laws. What say you to all this, James?

Shepherd. Never having received a regular medical education, sir, I'm dumbfoundered, and haena a word to throw to a dowg. But are a' thae fearsome accounts o' the heedro naething but lees?

North. Many of them most miserably true. But my friend believes that the horrid malady originates in the nature and shape of the wound, and not from any virulent matter injected into it; a nerve has been injured, and tetanus sometimes ensues direful spasmodic affections terminating in death. Any deeply-punctured wound may produce the disease called hydrophobia in man.

Shepherd. Ae conclusion to be drawn frae the whole seems to be, that dowgs are mair dangerous animals than is usually suspected, since a dowg that bites you when he's in his perfect senses, is just as likely to gie ye the foby as when he snaps at ye in the hicht o' his delirium in tongue-lolling madness.

North. Accidents will happen-but no very great number of people are bitten by dogs in their perfect senses; and it is only some wounds that occasion tetanus by injuring a nerve. This is certain, that in some of the few authenticated cases of the disease called hydrophobia in man, occasioned by the bite of a dog, there was not the least reason in the world for supposing the dog to have been what is called mad.-But fill your glass, James, to the memory of Bronte.

[It is drunk in solemn silence.

62

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1830.

Shepherd. Let us hae about half-an-hour's talk o' politicsand then hae dune wi' them for the rest o' the nicht.

o' France?

What

North. James, all men who had visited France with their eyes and ears open since the accession of Charles-now exKing-knew that a struggle was going on-only to cease with the overthrow of one of the parties-between the Royalists and the Liberals. Each party strove to change the charter given by Louis XVIII. into so many dead letters. But the Liberals-as they are called-were from the beginning far more unprincipled than the Royalists were even at the end; and had Charles and Polignac not acted as they did, in the matter of the ordonnances,' the monarchy had been virtually destroyed by their enemies.

Shepherd. Do you really say sae, sir.

North. Two courses were open to Charles-to abdicate the throne rather than sit there a shadow-or to support the ordonnances by the sword. That would not have been easy, but it would have been possible; and had Charles been the tenth part a Napoleon, it would have been done-and his enemies having been overawed by the army, the streets of Paris had not been stained with one drop of blood.

Shepherd. Oh! but he was a weak man!

1 "The famous ordonnances, which were the immediate cause of the overthrow of the Crown, and the ruin of the elder branch of the house of Bourbon, were six in number, but the three first only were of material importance. The first suspended the liberty of the periodical press, and prohibited the publication but of such journals as were authorised by Government. The license was to be in force only for three months, and might be recalled at any time. It applied to all pamphlets below twenty leaves. The second dissolved the new Chamber, on the allegation of the arts which had been used to deceive the electors as to the real intentions of the Government. The third, on the preamble of the necessity of reforming the Electoral Law according to the principles of the constitution, and to remedy the evils which experience had brought to light, and of the powers applicable to such cases vested in the King by the 14th article of the Charter, reduced the number of deputies to 258, being the number fixed by the 36th article of the Charter: the colleges of departments were to elect an equal number of representatives with those of arrondissements; and the electoral franchise was reduced to the possession of property paying the requisite amount of direct taxes by the exclusion of the suffrage founded on patents; the duration of the Chamber of Deputies was fixed at five years; and the colleges of departments, composed of the fourth of the electors paying the highest amount of direct taxes, were to choose at least a half in the general list of candidates proposed for the colleges of arrondissements. The prefects were re-invested with all the powers with which they had been invested