The sentimental school of 1403, Scotland may be considered as still a barbarous nation. The feudal system,' &c. &c. Or there is the commencement descriptive

|

"Heavens! they are ringing the dinner bell, and I am as yet only beginning. When, O when! shall I see my monumentum exactum, my kingdom conquered, my crown of glory won?" H. G. B.

stream.

By Lieut.

late of the Royal Irish Dragoons.

"

adapt myself to any thing.
writing is popular. I should like to try it :-
"It was on one of the loveliest evenings of August, an
hour before the sun had set, that Rosalie stood on the
banks of the Garonne, watching the approach of a gaily-
pennoned little boat, which came slowly on against the
She knew that it contained her lover, and that
it was freighted, therefore, with her whole store of worldly
happiness; for Rosalie was at that bewitching age, when
the treasures of the heart pour themselves freely ont, 'and
bless the giver no less than the receiver.' (An admirable
moral reflection, which will immediately gain me the
reader's confidence.) The boat at length drew near with
its tiny flags glittering in the auburn light' (the auburn
light,' fine) 'like so many Lilliputian rainbows. It grates
upon the white pebbles; it touches the green bank; the
sails are furled. Like a young sea-god, the delighted
Conrad leaps ashore. Another moment, and they are
locked in each other's arms,-in a long and pure embrace.'
(I might here introduce a quotation either from Petrarch
about alma gentile,' or from Rousseau about paisible
et douce jouissance.') How can they ever forget that sun-
set hour upon their own Garonne? Though family feuds
have disunited their fathers, their souls are made for each
ether. May no rude storm break upon the calm of their
felicity! Suddenly a horn rings through the neighbour-
ing wood." It is my brother's! He is returning with
his attendants from the hunt. Fly, Conrad; unloose the
moorings of your barge, and away! Hark! I hear al-
ready the tramp of their horses! See! see! they come !
The moorings were unloosed; and Conrad had impressed
a wild and burning kiss upon the lip of Rosalie, when
the young St Germaine galloped to the spot, calling upon
his followers to second him. He flung himself from his
steed, with a dark frown upon his brow, and bared his
well-tried weapon. But, with a bound, Conrad leaped
on board, and gave his sails to the breeze. He leaped not
alone; St Germaine, too, was in the boat. Just then the

YOU'RE right, old boy. Enough of play I've seen in my time. And deep play, too, never doubt me. Wasn't I kept lying as a prisoner at large, for ten long years, in Paris, and isn't there a Palais Royal there? And wasn't I at Vienna at the last Congress? And weren't old Blucher and our own Duke, God bless him! the devil's own hands for a tight set-to? And didn't I see there, and at Aix-la-Chapelle, on my way back, enough of my old friends of the Palais Royal? Och! and you may say it, I have seen something of play in my time.

7

Well, then, you ask me what I think of this hubbaboo that has been kept up about our ears in this dirty little town of yours. Faith and troth, if you had asked me with our legs under the mahogany, I would have told you quietly, that you are much readier with your tongues than your triggers, on this side the water. But you have written me a civil card about this same, so I suppose I must be after answering yon' in a quieter fashion; and so, though I have neither the learning of old Daines Barrington, (as, sure, I have not half his ill humour,) nor of my old messmate Napier, (and sure I had not half his devilry, when his friends at Dublin sent him to school, just to keep him out of harm's way,) I'll just be telling you what I think of the matter, and the readier that it's a damned canting set ye are, one and all, and much the better you would be of having a little truth told you any how.

1

•

*

B

7

lagging servants arrived; but the wind and tide had wafted the obedient pinnace from the shore, and they were too late to stop its progress. But fierce was the struggle I don't know how it is, but there's a world of differ they witnessed as it sailed away. The two young warence betwixt our own little island and the continent. I riors fought like two hyenas. At length, however, St put Ireland out of the question, because that is clean and Germaine's sword was seen to fly from his exhausted clear a place by itself. But as to Great Britain, it's all grasp. It gleamed for a moment above the blue Garonne, decent, regular, quiet, sober people you are, with a certain then fell with a splash into its waters. Bat Conrad wish- way of living, and obliged to work hard for it. Now, all ed not for his enemy's life; he pointed to the prow, where over the continent, there is a pretty neat heap of fellows St Germaine threw himself down in gloomy silence. The good, strapping, gentlemanlike fellows-who have noconqueror took his station at the helm, and steered away thing but their own wits to live on. And the courts with his prisoner towards his paternal domains, but first of the little pocket-pieces of sovereigns, that one meets turned round and waved his heron-plumed cap to the alwith everywhere, are just hot-beds for breeding suchlike, most fainting Rosalie.' full as they are of small nobles, who have little to live "What an exquisite first chapter! Ransack every cir- on, and dare not trade decently for fear of losing their culating library in the kingdom, and show me one to rank and of soldiers brave and clever enough, but compare with it. I think I may say, without vanity, that with pay that won't keep them in clean shirts. I am very nearly a universal genius. Can there be any over and above all, there are the licensed gaming tables, thing more different than these two openings, and yet how where every one may play for what he likes, and the matchless are both! There are also other ways of begin-more the merrier, for the government gets a tax from ning. There is the commencement familiar, as for exthem. Now, look to the upshot. There comes to be a ample: Do you really imagine, Sir John," said Lady regular class who live at or by the gaming table, and it Bevil, have you really the vanity to suppose, that I'will shoots so many polypus-like fibres into the great mass of Listen for a moment to any thing you can say upon the society, that you cannot tell where the honest set leave subject? Certainly not, replied the meek and peace-off, and the rogues begin. But, if I might venture on able massaio; I never presumed, Lady Bevil, to put my stating my own belief, I would say, that it is more diffijudgment on a level with yours; but I thought that cult to meet on the continent with one who is quite aud though the coachman did stay three minutes behind his away the clean potato, but that it's seldom you'll meet time, you might try him once more before you dismissed with such devil's own pigeons as here at home. him. Fie! Sir John! You have no more brains than

And

C

a tom cat, and yet you are always meddling with things you don't understand. It is a lucky thing you have got a wife to take care of you, Sir John.'-Then there is the commencement circumstantial, as thus :- Our hero was

the son of a respectable merchant, who resided in the city of Bristol. His grandfather,' &c. &c. Again, there is the commencement historical; for instance,' In the year

REMARKS ON GAMBLING, WITH SOME ALLUSIONS
TO A DIRTY STORY.

t

And reason good. Mind me, I'm not speaking of London now-that's a ticklish chapter;-I'm speaking of your own decent little Presbyterian sort of a half capital. Now, in the first place, you're all so good, that any person who plays above twopence a-point long whist, must do it under the rose; so that any one who has any itching for high play, must swallow, in the first place, a double dose of hypocrisy, and that ruins him out and out

even though he continue what the world calls honest. Next, when a man does take to cheating—and there never was one who played often, and deep, and well, who did not take to it in the long run-he has, in this same town, no class of society into which he can be received as a player. He must continue ostensibly a man of business, or of fortune. His superior skill, even though it go no farther, is carefully veiled. He pursues his schemes in solitary silence of his own consciousness, without any one upon whom he can look and say, "Thou art like unto me." So you see that there is a difference between a gambler on the continent, and here with us. There, he is a nuisance-a licensed, and a pestilential nuisance— corrupting the inmost core of society: here, he dares not be seen in open day. And well that it is so; for how much healthier the tone of society where vice is ashamed to show its front, and where we may not unfrequently meet with those who not only bid defiance to its seduc-ertion, live luxuriously upon borrowed money, are you tions, but who have lived in pure and happy ignorance of its existence, and where the degradation of him who falls is of tenfold degree! Hypocrisy-consciousness that no one can sympathise with what he really is-withers up all that is human within him. Utter selfishness -the only true and incurable moral cancer-for ever eats at his heart.

You! who, indulging in dreams of future literary ex

not a gambler?

You! who, paid by the country to administer justice, yawn on the bench when kept five minutes longer than usual from your forenoon hand at whist, choose your own name.

clients, whose business accounts are paid once in ten years, who all this while, on the strength of a cash account, and kite bills, are keeping a splendid house, and breeding your children to be leaders of fashion; in striving thus to blind the populace, and trusting to a distant and desperate chance, what are you but a gambler?

You! who launch out into the wide sea of trade with. out a capital, and trust to making your fortune by a couple of bankruptcies, what are you but a dishonest gambler?

You! who opening a banking office without capital of your own, speculate in the funds upon other men's money, though liable every moment to a run, careless of the ruin of the widow and the orphan, whose little peculium has been deposited with you, what are you if not a gambler?

Let us hear no more, then, of a paltry matter, to which the gossiping propensities of a provincial town have lent Perhaps you will say, that there are very few such in an undue degree of importance; and, above all, let us hear Scotland. Sorry am I to say, that I think there are a no more vapouring on the part of the press about its ingood many. The current of life glides tranquil, and seem-dependence and daring in giving the circumstance publiingly pure, around us; but seek to fathom its depths, and city. Independence! there might have been some in reyou will tell another story. I do not speak of this child's fusing to gratify the universal craving for this gossip. play-this Jury Trial, and the piddling play in which it “Daring, indeed! much daring there is about the mathad its origin. That is, indeed, much noise, and little ter." wool. The affair is simply this :-A few gentlemen occasionally play a little deeper than their after reflection can justify, or than is altogether decorous. One of them A THING OF shreds and PATCHES. -God knows why-it does not seem to have been so much from want of money, as from an innate propensity To the Editor of the Edinburgh Literary Journal. to remove a card from the bottom to the top of the SIR,-I BEG to inform you, that my Common-Place pack—takes undue advantages of his companions. An- Book has been declared, by many of my friends, to be a other, who has lost more than he can well afford, convery uncommon-place book. I am an old literary idler, vinced that there has been foul play, demands his money -a bachelor, and of independent fortune. I do not mean back again, and obtains it. The offender, not contented to say, however, that I am a man of talent; thank Heaven! with being quietly sent to Coventry by his friends, de- I have no talent. I read every thing, but write nothing mands that their verdict be publicly and solemnly ratified-nothing original, I mean; for I write a great deal of by the sentence of a court of justice," and has his wish what others have first written for me. I am a wretched allowed." What is here to wonder at? That young men composer, but an admirable selector. It was a remark of should be imprudent? or that once in a quarter of a cen- either an ancient or modern philosopher, (I am not sure tury a knave should be discovered? Had this been all, which, but I know it was philosopher's remark,) that you might have waited till doomsday for my remarks on there was never a book published out of which something the subject. But there is more behind. useful might not be gleaned. I entirely coincide with the philosopher, and upon this principle I have acted for the last fifteen years. Put any thing in the shape of a book into my hands, from an encyclopædia down to a cheap tract; from Sir Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe" down to Galt's “Annals of the Parish;" from Lord Byron's " Childe Harold" down to Campbell's "Ti zodric;" from Plato's "Idea of a Perfect Republic" down to Mac Culloch's Lectures on "Political Economy ;" and there is not a single volume among the whole from which I shall not be induced to make some extracts. You may call it trifling, if you will, but it is innocent and useful trifling; and I would rather be a virtuoso in thoughts and sentiments, than in butterflies or old coins. Without farther preface, I shall give you a sample of the contents of this Common-Place Book of mine, and flatter myself that your readers may find among them a few passages worthy of remembering, and of transference, perhaps, to the albums kept either by themselves or their fair cousins.

The public opinion has on this occasion been freely and fairly announced, that the gambler is a dangerous and detestable character. But this is not enough, unless we settle who the gambler is. Not he, surely, who, for his amusement, indulges occasionally in a game where skill, or chance, or a mixture of both, may assign him the victory. Such games, to a certain extent, are not only innocent, but useful; many of them exercise and sharpen the wits, all of them may teach command of temper. It is, therefore, only in excess that they are an evil. But certainly risking a portion of our fortune greater than prudence warrants, on the chance of gaining what there is no credit in so gaining, if shameful when done by the instrumentality of cards and dice, is not the less shameful when effected by some other instrument. It is the habitual indulgence in the excitement of having a great sum on the hazard, or the endeavour to raise one's self in the scale of wealth by a lucky chance, instead of honest industry, that constitutes gambling, and every one to whom these charges can be brought home is a gambler.

You! who lately began the world without a farthing, who are obliged to make a continual outlay for your

WALLER.-Waller did not marry the Lady Dorothea Sidney, eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester, whom he courted by all the poetry in which Sacharissa is celebrated a word derived from the Latin appellation of which will convince the reader that the roughness of the previous easier conquest. It has not been discovered that his wife When he had lost all hopes of her, he found an part of his communication was

Our friend the Lieutenant here begins to write a better style,

sugar.

SOPHOCLES.-The ungrateful and impious children of Sophocles summoned him before the judges, on the pretence of lunacy, that they might obtain a decree to take possession of his estate. He made no other defence than by reading the tragedy of “ (Edipus at Colonna,” which he was then composing. The judges were delighted with the performance, and he carried his cause unanimously. This would be a good subject for a poem.-Rutherford's View of Ancient History, Vol. II.

BREVITAS VITE.-Cum per magna camporum spatia porrigeret exercitum, nec numerum ejus, sed mensuram comprehenderet Persarum rex insolentissimus, lacrimas profudit, quod intra centum annos nemo ex tanta juven|will tute superfuturus esset.-Seneca-De Brev. Vitæ, cap. 16.

us.

Surely every body is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a winter fireside;-candles at four o'clock, warm hearth-rugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies on the floor, while the wind and rain are raging audibly without,—

cacies, like ice cream, require a very low temperature of
the atmosphere to produce them; they are fruits which
cannot be ripened without weather stormy and inclement.
I am not "particular," as people say, whether it be snow
or black frost, or wind so strong that you may lean your
back against it like a post. I can put up even with rain,
provided it rains cats and dogs, but something of the sort
I must have, and if I have it not, I think myself in a
manner ill used; for why am I called on to pay so hea-
vily for winter in coals and candles, and various priva-
tions that will occur even to gentlemen, if I am not to
have the article good of its kind? No-a Canadian win-
ter for my money, or a Russian one, where every man is
but a co-proprietor with the north wind in the fee-simple
of his own ears. Indeed, so great an epicure am I in this
matter, that I cannot relish a winter night fully, if it be
much past St Thomas's Day, and have degenerated into
disgusting tendencies to vernal appearances.
Let it be
divided by a thick wall of dark nights from all return of
light and sunshine. From the latter weeks of October
to Christmas Eve, therefore, is the period during which
happiness is in season, which, in my judgment, enters the
room with the tea-tray; for tea, though ridiculed by those
who are naturally of coarse nerves, or are become so from
wine-drinking, and are not susceptible of influence from
so refined a stimulant, will always be the favourite beve-
rage of the intellectual; and, for my part, I would haveing
joined Dr Johnson in a bellum internecinum against Jonas
Hanway, or any other impious person who should pre-
sume to disparage it.-Confessions of an English Opium-
Eater.
LASSITUDE. There are heavy hours when the mind of
a man of letters is unhinged; when the intellectual facul-
ties lose all their elasticity, and nothing but the simplest
actions are adapted to their enfeebled state. At such
hours, it is recorded of the great Mendelsohn, that he
would stand at the window and count the tiles of his
neighbour's house.-Israeli.

"And at the doors and windows seem to call, As heaven and earth they would together mell; Yet the least entrance find they none at all, Whence sweeter grows our rest, secure in massy hall." | All these are items in the description of a winter evening which must surely be familiar to every one born in a high latitude. And it is evident that most of these deli-dral, the Valley of Sarnem, and the Chapel of Holyrood, having successively attracted that attention to which, as beautiful specimens of a new and interesting art, they were so well entitled. Of the three, we believe the Valley of Sarnem was the most successful, though we confess the moonlight view of the Chapel of Holyrood was our favourite. There appears, however, to have been a feeling on the part of the public that it was scarcely worth while paying to see a pictorial representation of a building which stands at our own doors. This feeling, which was nevertheless founded on error, cannot operate in the slightest degree against the present Diorama. Though we and some others have been in Rouen, it is an entirely new scene for the multitude, and is one of the fairest and most picturesque which France affords. The windings of the fine river on which the city stands, with its new stone bridge and ancient bridge of boats, -the romantic appearance of Rouen itself, formerly the capital of Normandy, with its high old houses, venerable cathedrals, and long winding streets,-the surrounding scenery, rich and varied in no ordinary degree, with hill and dale, wood and meadow, all conspire to afford noble scope for the genius of the artist, and to present a view which, when once seen, is not likely to be soon forgotten. M. Bouton has also contrived to heighten the interest of the picture by the beautiful effect of shifting light traversing the whole of it, and exhibitdifferent parts in alternate shade and sunshine as the clouds flit over it. The sky is powerfully painted; and a rainbow, which gradually appears and again disappears, completes the delusion of the whole scene. We should not be at ali surprised to learn that the popularity of this exhibition exceeds that of any of a similar nature hitherto presented to us.

.!

EXPERIENCE. No man ever obtains more from his most zealous endeavours, than a painful conviction of his own defects.-Johnson.

WISE WISHES.-Qui peut tout ce qu'il veut,
Veut plus ce qu'il doit.-Corneille,

AN EGYPTIAN CUSTOM.-The Egyptians had a custome not unmete to bee used at the carowsing banquets; their manner was, in the midst of their feasts, to have brought before them an anatomie of a dead body, dried, that the sight and horror thereof, putting them in minde to what passe themselves should one day come, might containe them in modestie. But, peradventure, things are fallen so far from their right course, that that device will not so well serve their turn, as if the carowsers of these later dayes were perswaded, as Mahomet perswaded his followers, when he forbad them the drinking of wine, that in every grape there dwelt a divell. But when they have taken their cups, it seameth that many of them doe fear neither the divell nor any thing else.-Barclay's Felicitie of Man.

Italian, German, Greek, Hebrew, Sanscrit, and Malayan tongues. These, however, I reserve for a future opportunity, and am, with great respect, your obedient servant, PERTINAX PRIMROSE.

I must now conclude, Mr Editor, although, to prove my learning, I might have given you quotations in the

DIORAMA OF THE CITY OF ROUEN.

We had a private view of this new Diorama on Thursday, which is at once very beautiful, and entirely different from those which have preceded it. It is the fourth that has been exhibited in Edinburgh,-Chartres Cathe

ORIGINAL POETRY.

A LOVE SONG.

By the late James Hislop.

[In Mr M'Diarmid's "Sketches from Nature" there is an interest. ing Memoir of the late James Hislop. Many of our readers will be glad to see one of his unpublished Poems in the Literary Journal. We shall probably present them, ere long, with a short biographical notice of the Author, with some more of his relics.] 17:

How sweet the dewy bell is spread,

Where Spango's mossy streams are lavin',
The heathery locks o' deepenin' red

Around the mountain brow aye wavin'!
Here, on the sunny mountain side,

Dear lassie, we'll lie down thegither,
Where Nature spreads luve's crimson bed,
Among the bonny bloomin' heather.

Lang hae I wish'd, my lovely maid,

Amang thae fragrant wilds to lead ye;
And now, aneath my tartan plaid,

How blest I lie wi' you aside me!
And art thou happy, dearest, speak?
Wi' me aneath the tartan plaidie,-
Yes; that dear glance, sae saft and meek,
Resigns thee to thy shepherd laddie.

The saftness o' the gentle dove,

Its eyes in dying sweetness closin',
Is like thae languid eyes o' love,

He wept for he gazed on the window, too,
Where the morning sunbeams loved to break;
While within, embosom'd all warm and true,
With his arms around his sister's neck,
In boyhood's love, pure, calm, and deep
As summer lake, he was wont to sleep;

Sae fondly on my heart reposin'. When simmer suns the flowers expand, In a' their silken beauties shinin', They're no sae saft as thy white hand, Upon my love-warm cheek reclinin'.

CHARLES LAMB, the author of Essays by Elia, is preparing for publication a volume of poems, under the title of Album Versesabout as bad a title as we can well conceive.

A new work on the noble science of eating and drinking, to be entitled the Cook's Dictionary, and Housekeeper's Directory, by Richard Dolby, of the Thatched House Tavern, is announced.

Six Lectures on Painting, delivered at the Royal Academy by the late Henry Fuseli, and now first published from the original MSS., are in the press.

A new novel is announced, under the title of Foreign Exclusives in London.

1

A new edition of Godwin's Caleb Williams is about to appear, last impression having been long since exhausted.

The author of Richelieu is at present employed with another work, which will appear speedily, under the name of De L'Orme. Maxwell, a Tale of the Middle Ranks, by the author of Sayings and Doings, is nearly ready.

Mr Edmund Reade, author of Cain the Wanderer, announces the Revolt of the Angels, a dramatic poem.

the

The Hon. Mrs Norton, authoress of The Sorrows of Rosalie, has just ready for publication her poem called The Undying One. The story, we understand, resembles in some respects the legend of the Wandering Jew; but though the scene is in the present day, the narrative is said to relate to events and mysteries which have hap pened in many ages and countries.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE WAVERLEY NOVELS.-We are happy to observe a visible amendment in the ornamental department of the interesting edition of these works now in the course of publication. The arrangement in the frontispiece to the last volume (representing Lady Ashton cutting the ribbon at which hung the piece of gold broken between Lucy and Ravenswood when they plighted their troth) is fine, and it is particularly well engraved. In the forthcoming Number, there is an engraving of Leslie's picture (of which