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her train; and from some glade in the forest, the peeping sylvans stole partial glances of the virgin goddess. Then why, since "ut pictura poesis," be offended by the description of North more than of Poussin? Homelier, indeed, are the names and the natures of his bathing beauties; yet chastity is the virtue by which Scotia's shepherdesses are guarded and adorned; and the waters of the Talla, are they not as pure as those of the Ilissus ?

Let us then re-angle our way down the pastoral rivulet, and leave the laughing lassies in the linn. Soon will they collect their scattered garments, and with playful titterings reapparel their innocence. Already is the pearly moisture wrung from their hair, and adjusted every silken snood. Fresh-breathing balm from every warm

somersets backwards, they went with a plump and a plunge into the water, and on re-rising to the surface, lay by a beautiful instinct, with just the tips of their noses out, from which we could not but observe the little air-bells bubbling all over the subsiding pool. The whole was still as death. We began seriously to apprehend that six young women were about to lose their lives; yet there was great difficulty, delicacy, and danger in any scheme for their deliverance. Byand-by a sweet Doric tongue was heard breathing from the waters-"What for are ye sittin' glowerin' there, ye auld chiel? Siccan behaviour's a great shame for ane o' your years; and I wadna hae expeckit it o' you, when you was playing thae bonny tunes last nicht wi' tears in your een. For gudesake, sir, tak aff your specks-gang awa wi' you-and let a set o' puir naked lassies geted bosom again blends with the fragrance of the to their claes!" The appeal to our humanity was irresistible, as indeed at all times it is from a female in distress. "Pardon us, our dearest Girzie," we tenderly exclaimed; and then, for the first time, looking modestly to the ground, we saw ourselves encircled with all the possible varieties of female apparel, which to name profanely would incense against us the Eumenides. Truth and simplicity spoke in every tone of our voice; and Girzie, raising her weel-faured face from the foam, with a neck shown just down to the snow that covered her beating heart, conscious, as we thought of her charms, nor even, in her bashful disquietude, unproud of their manifest effect on a man well stricken in years, said, in still sweeter accents and with imploring eyes"That's a bonny man-gang your wa's-and dinna tell ony stories, na, about our ploutering, to the lads."- "Will you promise to give me a few kisses, then, Girzie, ony time we chance to forgather, and I'll gang my wa's?"-"Ou ay, Mr North-ou ay, sir-but oh! gang your wa's, for Tibbie's just chockin' ower-by yonner aneath the water-pyet's nest-and Kirsty's drank a gallon at the least, and maun be sair swalled. Oh! gang your wa's, my bonny Mr North-gang your wa's." We felt it was indeed time to "gang our wa's;" for Girzie, as she was growing more and more impassioned in her beseeching, rose higher and higher from the water, and stood nearly to the waist unveiled, the long-sought Naiad of the Silver Pool of Talla.

hill-flowers-a brighter crimson is on every cheek -a brighter radiance dances in all their eyes-and down the braes like birds they fly, and not without a choral song. With many a gleesome smile over their strange adventure, they part in a little broomy hollow, and each wings her way towards her own nest. Each carries her blooming beauty into a home gladdened by her presence-all household affairs are cheerily attended to by them whose limbs health has braced; and what difficulty is there in imagining any one of them to be the wooed maiden of the "Cottar's Saturday Night?" for this is indeed the last day of the week, and Robert Burns-hallowed be his memory !-sung then a strain true to the manners and morals of Scotland over all her hills and plains.

Accompany us, in imagination, next day to Tweedsmuir Kirk, and the same voices will be sweetly singing the psalm of worship-one maiden sitting between her parents-one near her lover-one with her little brother on her knee: all thoughts of labour or of amusement will then be hushed, and the small house of God overflowing with thankfulness and praise. The low galleries, the pews beneath them, the seats in the main body of the kirk, forms set in the middle lobby, and even the very stairs up to the pulpit, all covered with well-dressed people, sedate in rational piety. At the close of the service, family parties form in the kirkyard, and move away through opposite gates, each towards its own hill-home. And what if old Christopher North go with the minister to the manse-partake of a dinner yesterday prepared

Gentle reader! be not displeased with this picture, for, remember, that to the pure, all things are pure; and thou, we know well, art the very soul of purity. Often, mayhap, hast-all but one dish which is warm, a few Tweed thou, leaning on friend's or lover's or husband's arm, moved slowly along the picture-gallery of some peer's palace, and for a moment hast let thine eyes dwell on some nymph scene, in some place of waters, trees, and precipices, with its gleam of azure sky. No painful emotion blushed around those eyes, when the huntress queen, wearied with the chase, stood disrobed among | minister.

trouts of his own catching-and having laid aside his Saturday's merriment, with his green velvet jacket and jean trousers, and with his black suit put on a spirit befitting the day-enjoy a few such serious hours as no man having heart and soul can ever forget, who has passed a Sabbath evening in the manse of a Scottish

HUGH MILLER. BORN 1802: DIED 1856. (From "Essays, Historical and Biographical," etc.)

THE NEW YEAR.*

ERE our sheet shall have passed from the press into the hands of our readers, we shall have entered on a new year. It is barely ninety degrees distant from us at the present moment. It landed on the eastern extremity of Asia as the 1st of January 1845, just as we were rising from our breakfasts in Edinburgh on the 31st of December 1844; and it has been gliding westwards towards us, in the character of one o'clock in the morning, ever since. In a few hours more it will be striding across the backwoods of America, in its seven-league boots, and careering over the Pacific in its canoe. And then, at some undefinable point, not yet fixed by the philosopher, it will find itself transformed from the first into the second day of the year; and thus it will continue to roll on, round and round, like an Archimedes screw, picking up at every Eyration an additional unit, until the three hundred and sixty-five shall be complete.

The past year has witnessed many curious changes, as a dweller in time; the coming year has already looked down on many a curious scene, as a journeyer over space. It has seen Cochin-China, with all its unmapped islands, and the ancient empire of Japan, with its cities and provinces unknown to Europe. It has heard the roar of a busy population amid the thousand streets of Pekin, and the wild dash of the midnight tides as they fret the rocks of the Indian Archipelago. It has been already with our friends in Hindustan; it has been greeted, we doubt not, with the voice of prayer, as the slow iron hand of the city clock indicated its arrival to the missionaries at Madras; it has swept over the fever jungles of the Ganges, where the scaled crocodile startles the thirsty tiger as he stoops to drink, and the exposed corpse of the benighted Hindu floats drearily past. It has travelled over the land of pagodas, and is now entering on the land of mosques. Ancn it will see the moon in her wane, casting the dark shadows of columned Palmyra over the sands of the desert; and the dim walls of Jerusalem looking out on a silent and solitary land, that has cast forth its interim tenants, and waits unappropriated for the old predestined race, its proper inhabitants. In two short hours it will be voyaging along the cheerful Mediterranean, greeting the rower in his galley among the isles of Greece, and the

* Published January 1, 1845.

seaman in his bark embayed in the Adriatic. And then, after marking the red glare of Etna reflected in the waves that slumber around the moles of Syracuse,-after glancing on the towers of the Seven-hilled City, and the hoary snows of the Alps,-after speeding over France, over Flanders, over the waves of the German Sea, it will be with ourselves, and the tall ghostly tenements of Dun-Edin will re-echo the shouts of the High Street. Away, and away, it will cross the broad Atlantic, and visit watchers in their beacon-towers on the deep, and the emigrant in his log-hut, among the brown woods of the west; it will see the fire of the red man umbering with its gleam tall trunks and giant branches, in some deep glade of the forest; and then mark, on the far shores of the Pacific, the rugged bear stalking sullenly over the snow. Away, and away, and the vast globe shall be girdled by the zone of the new-born year.

Many a broad plain shall it have traversed, that is still unbroken from the waste,-many a moral wilderness, on which the Sun of Righteousness has not yet arisen. Nearly eighteen and a half centuries shall have elapsed since the shepherds first heard the midnight song in Bethlehem: "Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, goodwill to the children of men." And yet the coming year shall pass, in its first visit, over prisons, and gibbets, and penal settlements, and battle-fields on which the festering dead moulder unburied; it will see the shotted gun, and the spear, and the crease, and the murdering tomahawk, slaves in their huts, and captives in their dungeons. It will look down on uncouth idols in their temples; worshippers of the false prophet in their mosques; the Papist in his confessional; the Puseyite in his stone allegory; and on much idle and bitter controversy among those holders of the true faith whose proper work is the conversion of the world. But the years shall pass, and a change shall come: the sacrifice on Calvary was not offered up in vain, nor in vain hath the adorable Saviour conquered, and ascended to reign as King and Lord over the nations. The kingdoms shall become His kingdoms, the people His people. The morning rises slowly and in clouds, but the dawn has broken; and it shall shine forth more and more, until the twilight shadows shall have dispersed, and the sulphurous fogs shall have dissipated, and all shall be peace and gladness amid the blaze of the perfect day.

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in the intellectual scale, and possessed an influence over opinion co-extensive with civilised

EDINBURGH AN AGE AGO.* Edinburgh for about a hundred and thirty | man. years after the Union continued to be in effect, and not in name merely, the capital of a kingdom, and occupied a place in the eye of the world scarcely second to that of London. In population and wealth it stood not higher than the third-class towns of England; it had no commerce, and very little trade, nor did it form a great agricultural centre; and as for the few members of the national aristocracy that continued to make it their home after the disappearance of its Parliament, they were not rich, and they were not influential, and added to neither its importance nor its celebrity. The high place which Edinburgh held among the cities of the earth it owed exclusively to the intellectual standing and high literary ability of a few distinguished citizens, who were able to do for it greatly more in the eye of Europe than had been done by its Court and Parliament, or than could have been through any other agency, by the capital of a small and poor country, peopled by but a handful of men. Ireland produced many famous orators, shrewd statesmen, and great authors; but they did comparatively little for Dublin, even previous to the Union. With the writings of Swift, Goldsmith, Burke, Sheridan, and Thomas Moore before us, we can point to only one work which continues to live in English literature-"The Draper's Letters" -that issued originally from the Dublin press. London drew to itself the literary ability of Ireland, and absorbed and assimilated it, just as it did a portion of that of Scotland, represented by the Burnets, Thomsons, Armstrongs, Arbuthnots, Meikles, and Smolletts of the three last ages; and in London the Irish became simply Britons, and served to swell the general stream of British literature. But Scotland retained not a few of her most characteristic authors; and her capital-in many respects less considerable than Dublin-formed a great literary mart, second, at one time, in the importance and enduring character of the works it produced, to no other in the world. Nothing, however, can be more evident than that this state of things is passing away. During the last quarter of a century one distinguished name after another has been withdrawn by death from that second great constellation of Scotsmen resident in Edinburgh to which Chalmers, Sir Walter Scott, and Lord Jeffrey belonged; and with Sir William Hamilton the last of the group may be said to have disappeared. For the future, Edinburgh bids fair to take its place simply among the greater provincial towns of the empire; and it seems but natural to look upon her departing glory with a sigh, and to luxuriate in recollection over the times when she stood highest

Written in 1856

We have been led into this train by the perusal of one of the most interesting volumes which has issued from the Scottish press for several years,-" Memorials of his Time; by Henry Cockburn." Lord Cockburn came into life just in time to occupy the most interesting point possible as an observer. He was born nearly a year before Chalmers, only eight years after Scott, and about fourteen years before Lockhart. The place he occupied in that second group of eminent men to which the capital of Scotland owed its glory was thus, chronologically, nearly a middle place, and the best conceivable for observation. He was in time too to see, at least as a boy, most of the earlier group. The greatest of their number, Hume, had, indeed, passed from off the stage; but almost all the others still lived. Home, Robertson, Blair, Henry, were flourishing in green old age, at a time when he had shot up into curious observant boyhood; and Mackenzie and Dugald Stewart were still in but middle life. It is perhaps beyond the reach of philosophy to assign adequate reasons for the appearance at one period rather than another of groups of great men. We know not why the reign of Elizabeth should have had its family of giants,-its Shakespeare, Spenser, Raleigh, and Bacon; or why a Milton, Hampden, and Cromwell should have arisen together during the middle of the following century; and that after their time, only men of a lower stature, though of exquisite proportions, should have come into existence, to flourish as the wits of Queen Anne. Nor can it be told why the Humes, Robertsons, and Adam Smiths should have appeared in Scotland together in one splendid group, to give place to another group scarce less brilliant, though in a different way. We only know, that among a people of such intellectual activity as the Scotch, a literary development of the national mind might have been expected much about the earlier time. The persecutions and troubles of the seventeenth century had terminated with the Revolution; the intellect of the country, overlaid for nearly a hundred years, had been set free, and required only a fitting vehicle in which to address that extended public to which the Union had taught our countrymen to look; but for more than thirty years the necessary vehicle was wanting. Scotsmen bred in Scotland had great difficulty in mastering that essentially foreign language the English; and not until the appearance of Hume's first work in 1738 was there an English book produced by a Scotsman within the limits of the country, which Englishmen could recognise as really written in their own tongue. But the necessary mastery of the language once acquired, it was an inevitable consequence of the native mass and quality of the Scottish mind that it should make

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