conduct to one of his family, and a sacred promise of marriage given. This was made out an exceedingly bad story, and excited the indignation of the reformers in a terrible degree, though it seems only to have been an affair of very common gallantry, which the lady herself seems never to have resented. The earl was hardly set; his life was at stake, and if he escaped with that, he saw nothing but debasement and ruin before him. At the same time, the great person, his opponent, proffered to save both his life and his honour, if he would ally himself by marriage to his house, and join interests with him. Lord George refused absolutely for a while, but the weariness of confinement, and the dread that a warrant might be signed for his execution, at last overcame his spirit, and he consented. Accordingly, his brother John was dispatched to make choice of one to the earl, for he himself was quite callous about the matter. Neither would they suffer him to leave prison till he was married firm and fast. Sir John had plenty of choice of sisters, cousins, and aunts, and took the one he thought his brother would like best. The two were married in prison, the lady wearing a veil; but in troth the earl never looked at her, for he abhorred the very thoughts of her, thinking only of his beloved fairy queen, and the love-tokens which they had exchanged. They went to the earl's house in the Canongate, where a banquet was prepared, but the bride did nothing but sob and weep, and the earl sat as glum as if his death warrant had been signed. It was a melancholy wedding, and, notwithstanding the efforts of some gentlemen and ladies to raise a little mirth, they failed, and a funereal gloom hung over the assembled friends. When the ladies retired, the earl began and drank at the wine as through desperation, or as if he resolved to be cheery in the midst of his despair; but at rather a late hour his squire announced to him that a stranger lady was in the hall who desired to speak with him. "Ask her what she wants," said Lord George; "I will speak to no more ladies tonight." The squire went and did as desired, and came back with a small diamond cross in his hand, saying, “The lady desires to return you this, my lord, but she requests the favour to give it into your own hand." The earl struck the table with his closed hand till every cup jangled, sprung to his feet, overturned the chair, and then leaped over it, and seizing the squire by the throat, he cried, “I would give my earldom, you dog, to have the lady who owns that under my roof." "Hoo-hoo! and so you would?" said Ranald, a servant mentioned formerly; "put you need not be kiffing half te mare of tat, for she pe te fery same lady, and I know her goot enough." The earl burst into the hall, and there indeed was his lovely countess, standing in the same green habit and green veil in which he had first beheld her. He first bowed to her and kissed her hand, and then taking her into his arms, he kissed her cheek and chin, and then her cherry lips, as if inhalling the soul of love from them. He was in perfect rapture, and knew not what he was doing, for he forthwith led his queen of the fairies into the festal hall among his new wife's relations, and proclaimed his recovered fair one his betrothed and his own true love, declaring that he would never part with her again till death separated them. The company stared at one another, and believed the earl gone quite mad, and more so when he addressed the great nobleman as follows: " And now, my good lord, take home your daughter, or your niece, or whatever she be, safely with you again. She is none the worse of me, but she shall be the better. I am quite in earnest. Take her home with you, and require what dowery you please with her, even to the half of all I possess." The great earl could scarcely contain himself, but, springing up, he came to the twain and said, "My Lord George, have you really lost your reason, or has the wine deprived you of your true sight, that thus you insist on my taking home my young kinswoman with me, and at the same time stand swearing you will never part with her? That lady, my lord, is your bride, your married wife. Look at the ring you so lately put on her finger." The lady stretched forth her hand, and Lord George mechanically stretched forth his; but his eyes were dazzled, he could distinguish no one thing from another. He could only kneel at her feet, kiss her hands in an agony of joy, while the tears trickled from his eyes. This lady, notwithstanding the mystery that hung over her art, proved a most exemplary wife, and mother of a fine family. There are many other curious stories about her and Jenny Elphingston; but these being quite distinct from this, can be told by themselves at any time. It appears, both from oral and written lore, that Jenny Elphingston and she, when combined, could almost have effected any thing, which all the country weened to have been done by the black art. TO A LADY, WHO ASKED ME TO WRITE FOR HER A POEM OF NINETY TASK a horse beyond his strength, Ninety miles I'd walk for you, Though my thoughts were thick as showers, When you have drunk up the sea, Even the bard who lives on rhyme, Well you know my love is such, You could never ask too much; Yet even love itself declines Such a work as ninety lines. Though you frown'd with ninety frowns, Bribed me with twice ninety towns, Offer'd me the starry signs, I could not write ninety lines. Many a deed I've boldly done Long I hope for thee and me Ninety songs the bird will sing, But his life the poet tines, If he aims at ninety lines. Ask me for a thousand pounds, I have ate of every dish— I have drunk of every cup, Since, then, you have used me so, Ninety times a long farewell, H. G. B. A TALE OF ST MARY'S KIRKYARD. By Thomas Tod Stoddart, Author of " The Deathwake," I LOVE lakes,—I love their sunny calm, their storm, and their moonlit heave; they resemble the quiet and the passion of human life. Who that enjoys Scottish scenery, but has spent a day by the green banks of the solitary St Mary's Loch? It is a calm and a melancholy sheet of water, unspotted with a single island, and walled in by mountain scenery of wild outline; but still green, and covered to the hill tops with numerous sheep. On one side is seen an old churchyard, rising half-way up a slope of brown heath. A few head-stones are all that give character to the spot: no tomb or epitaphed marble, but only the grey fragments of some fallen rock, sown over with lichens, and planted at the top of lowly mounds each the sealed entrance to a narrow home. One there is more elevated than the rest; it contains two dwellers, a female and a suicide. Their story is a sad one, Walter Grieve, the only son of a shepherd, was a wild and daring lad, of an open and generous disposition. Welcome at every cottage, he gained the hearts of the old as well as the young. There was always laughter where he went; even the austere Cameronian unbent his features at the mention of some of his happy jokes or wild adventures, embellished only by the native wit of the narrator. For miles round, he was the pride of every body; and when on the Sabbath days, in his new plaid, he crossed over the hill to the church at Ettrick, he was always accompanied by a group of both young and old, to whom, by his happy, but not unappropriate conversation, he relieved the tediousness of their sacred journey. Among such as composed this train, was Mary Scott, the daughter of an aged farmer on the banks of the Meggat, a mile or two above Henderland. She was the flower of the forest. Beautiful in person, and happy in temper, she commanded the admiration of the young, and the esteem of the old. Not a youth about the Cramoult but would have risked his life for the innocent-hearted girl; and none more ready than Walter Grieve. Many a time had he clambered those precipitous rocks that shadow the Grey-mare's Tail, a short way below Loch Skene, for no other purpose than to bring back the brood of the blue falcon to laughing but anxious Mary; and the burn of Winterhope was not seldom travelled to furnish the old farmer and his daughter with a creelful of fine trout, No wonder an early attachment took place. Walter Grieve loved; and Mary, by her avowed preference, signified, in the presence of others, that she was not regardless emotion. They would have married, and a happier couple n have been met with; but Mary's father died immediat before the expected crisis of their union. The bri robes were exchanged for the garment of sorrow; an Walter Grieve laid the head of his parent-in-law in th grave, on the very day that was to have fixed him as Mary's husband. After the funeral, he went back to his weeping bride. A relation of her father's, who dwelt in a distant part of Scotland, was about to remove her to his own family. This was a blow that Walter had forgot to anticipate among the others created by the recent loss. But now he felt it heavily. To be separated for a whole year, till her regret was removed, and time should again sanction the nuptials so sadly disturbed, was nothing. But Mary was going out into the world!too innocent not to be corrupted, too simple not to be deceived! She would now see many, more embellished with the art of flattery, more captivating to the unsuspicious; though few she would find so honest in their professions, so true in their attachments. Walter would be forgotten, the bold, the sincere Walter: but Mary trusted other wise; and the vow she made before departure, told how keenly she felt the reproaches of the jealous lover, It was a lovely night, that before which the fatherless girl was to leave her native home. The moon shone through the solitary vale—all along over Meggat stream, and the white sheep fed in her light up among the Glengaber Hills; here and there the wreck of an old tree— outliving the decay of a great forest that had once stretched over the whole country-groaned like a broken harp in the hands of an expiring minstrel, whose wizard ear was palsied by the frost of age, and the current of whose thoughts was barred at its entrance to eternity by the gathering channels of stormy years. Walter and Mary were together for the last time, and they walked down in silence, as if by one common impulse, to a favourite haunt of their younger days. It was the grave of Cochran-a noted marauder, defeated centuries before by one of the Scottish kings. A stone slab, with an elaborate inscription, is all that marks the spot. On this they sate down together. Situated on the top of a considerable eminence, before them lay the loch of St Mary's, silvered over with a magic veil of moonshine, that shadowed away all idea of the depths below; and the Meggat rose up imperceptibly in the opposite direction, appearing at short intervals, as the windings of its channel came to be fres from the concealment of the high and lonely embankment. It was here that Walter first broke the sorrowful silence each had hitherto preserved, and he sought a renewal of Mary's first consent, prefacing his earnest demand with a vow of eternal love, "Nay, Walter, ye had spoken of ither things, did ye ken what was uppermaist in my heart; but my puir father-I maun see him nae mair!” "Ye hae lost ae friend, Mary; it was God's will-he aye rules for the best: ye are about to part frae anither." "No, for ever, as I hae dune wi' him; we'll meet again." "Heaven grant it so; but why part, Mary?" Mary burst into a flood of tears. "There's nane here I can stop wi'; it's no' but what they'd mak me welcome, but they're a' strangers in a way, an' my auntie says I maun gang wi' her, an' my puir father had axed her afore," "It's no sin to marry, Mary." "Na, na, dinna speak o't, or ye'll brak my heart; it's no decent, I hae nae a mind to't the noo; gin a year come" "An' ye may hae forgotten Walter Grieve." "Forget! I may forget mysell—I may forget Heaven but ye canna think it—it's no in ye; Oh, Watty, an' ye did ken what I feel." “Gie me your hand, Mary; we'll aye luve, come what altered in her love, and fondly persuaded that all was well. At length the year expired, and custom allowed her the privilege of dispensing with her garments of sorrow. She talked of her union with Walter as an ap y; mony a time will I be here by mysell, and a' yon arns shinin', an' yon moon wi' its bricht and bonny Ace; an' I'll sit doon on this green stane, an' think o' he lovely Lady Cochran, that hid hersell ahint the waterfa' till the cruel men cam an' stabbed her; an' than o'proaching event, little suspecting the fatal inroad made thee, Mary! wi' thy bonny tresses a' dancin' in the wind". "Whisht, Watty, that's no talk for the like as I am, a puir orphan; let's gang, the cauld dew's no for a fever, an' I've a warm brow an' a sair heart." And Walter kissed Mary's fair cheek, and they went home, Walter to his own hut, and Mary to her lonely house. The day after, she was removed away, far from her native hills, to the bustle of a market town near Glasgow. Walter was now no longer himself. The sheep died on his hands through neglect; he lost every relish for the social amusements of his companions, and kept himself strangely retired from their observation. The cause of this was known to all, and for the time lamented; but still it was thought he took too grievously to heart a misfortune which a few months would remedy, when he would find restored to his own heart the now divided object of its regards. But Walter harboured a strange presentiment-a sort of undefinable dread crept in upon his mind-a vague something distracted his imagination. He fancied himself no longer the object of Mary's affections; he created dreams of rivals that never existed, except in the shadowy vagueness of his ungrounded suspicions. : upon her hopes. The day soon arrived for her return to her native home; every new scene brought her nearer to his cottage; that cottage now untenanted-now solitary. When arrived at Henderland, she was met by a shepherd -it was Gilbert Brydon; he started as he saw her, and passed without notice. At the Cramoult, she was received in somewhat a similar manner, by one of the herds-once her father's. "Walter Grieve! dead! killed himself!" exclaimed she, falling down upon the hard ground. John Anderson had a warm heart, and he lifted the poor girl into her father's old house, and there she heard the whole story, how Walter had received a letter, accusing her of inconstancy, and how it went to his heart, and how he strangled himself with his own hand, and was buried up Not far from where Walter lived was the dwelling of by the Birch Craig, in a morass. Poor Mary! her brain one Gilbert Brydon. Of the same occupation in life, was struck with the sad recital, and a long, long fever they had long been companions together. Gilbert had she had before she rose from her lonely bed. At length her little attraction to recommend him; unamiable in dispo- health came back, but not the fair bloom, nor the mirthsition, of harsh features, and fierce and disagreeable into- ful heart. She was strangely altered, and never a word nation, he secured the secret dislike of all he came in did she say to those that were round about her, only she contact with. Nor was Walter unacquainted with his asked to be led to Walter's grave; and they took her up character; though obliged often to be together, he main- to the lonely spot, and showed her a head-stone they had tained towards him nothing more than a show of friend-placed there, and she kissed the green turf, and sang a ship there was no reciprocal feeling or similarity of hymn over it, and they led her away home to her dwelltemper. Of late years he had regarded him with marked ing. A few nights after, she was missed at the humble hostility, on account of some reported insult offered to board. The poor girl had gone all alone to her lover's Mary Scott. She herself had never breathed his name, grave, and she dug up the spot with her own hands-for and her father in his lifetime had forbidden his presence. she could not bear to think of Walter lying in unholy Gilbert was a man of the worst passions; he saw him- ground-and she lifted the corpse herself, still fresh as self despised, and he brooded over revenge. Now that old when first found, being kept from decay by the nature of Adam Scott was removed, and his daughter placed be- the moss where it was buried. It was a strange task for yond reach of counteracting his design, he no sooner saw one so fair; and she took from her shoulders her grey the impression produced by her departure upon Walter mantle, and wrapped it round her dead lover, and alf Grieve, than he determined, at the cost of every principle, night long carried him in her arms over the dark hills. to trifle with affections so sacred in their nature, as those Few were the stars that shone on her solitary journey; which the latter displayed. Being on a visit to Glasgow, but the wind went by, and lifted the folds of the grey he procured assistance to forge a letter in the name of mantle, and shook the purple heaths and the long ferns, Mary Scott's relatives, purporting not merely an aliena- and, ere morning came, she was alone at St Mary's tion of her wishes, but her approaching nuptials with a Churchyard, bending over the pale corpse; and there was young man of the place where she then resided. This she found, herself as lifeless, with her cheek laid upon was addressed to Walter Grieve. He received it from his, and her blue eyes shut, and her hair, wet with dew, the hands of the carrier a day or two after, the very streaming upon the moss. Both were buried in one night the nuptials were described as to take place. Being grave-under one mound. Gilbert Brydon soon left the directed from the town where Mary lived, he opened it country, and was never more heard of. A confession of with breathless anxiety. The dreadful announcement his fraud was discovered in his own hut-only that many prostrated him upon the ground. When he recovered, it might curse his memory, who had never seen him. was only to rush up among the hills, he knew not where. That night he was missed at home: his father, an old man, went in search of him, and not for many a weary hour did he gain upon any traces of his heart-stricken At length he found him suspended by his plaid upon an old thorn. It was a sad sight for an aged parent to see; he was led helpless from the spot, and a few weeks after was no more. As for Walter, he was removed, cold and lifeless, to a neighbouring hut, and next day buried in the midst of a wild morass-the horror with which the crime of suicide was regarded by the surrounding peasantry, excluding his remains from the common privilege of consecrated ground. son. This was never told to Mary Scott: she lived on un I had returned from a visit to the Ettrick Shepherd the last time I entered St Mary's Churchyard: it was an eve of stillness and beauty. Far down was to be seen the Yarrow, haunted with a thousand recollections of | Border story, on whose banks were the strongholds of the Douglasses, the Murrays, and the Scots, the towers of Hangingshaw and Newark; and then to my right rose a long stretch of the lonely loch, and beyond it its twin sister of the Lowes and Bodsbeck, and the Moffat hills, and the Eskdale moors, famed as the retreat of the persecuted in the day of the Covenant. I heard the foregoing tale from the lips of an aged shepherd, who was then employed in the melancholy task of digging a grave for another child of mortality. ΤΑ ΣΠΟΡΑΔΗΝ, OR MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES OF ANTIQUITY, APOTHEGMS, CUSTOMS, ANECDOTES, &c. By William Tennant. ARCESILAUS, the founder of the Middle Academy, was not only possessed of wealth, but liberal in its distribution. There is recorded one delightful anecdote of his generosity. On learning that Apelles, the celebrated painter, was, in his old age, at once labouring with disease and poverty, he called at his house with a purse of gold in his pocket; and, seating himself at his bedside, “Here," said he, looking round upon the meagre reple. nishments of the chamber, "here is nothing saving the bare elements of Empedocles,-fire, water, earth, and a roomy expanse of empty ether; my friend, you are not even bedded pleasantly; your very pillow is unsmoothed and merciless to you;" so saying, he shook up his pillow, as if for the purpose of smoothing it for the head of his sick friend ; and, in so doing, he secretly slipt in beneath the bolster his concealed purse of gold. After his departure, the attendant old woman discovered the treasure, and, in a state of perplexed admiration, announced it to Apelles. "Ah! it is like him," said the languid painter; "it is one of the thievish tricks of Arcesilaus!" The mirth and turbulent exclamations of joyous congratulation that attended the conclusion of vintage-time, to which allusion is made in several passages of the Old Testament, not only originated the drama in Greece, but gave its name to Tragedy-Tęvyadia, or the song of the wine-lees, having been its original name. The praises of Bacchus, who was also addressed by the name of Dithyrambus, were first shouted and sung by the tumultuary assemblage of vintage-men and vintage-women in extemporaneous verses, which, from his name, were called Dithyrambics. Rapturous expressions of joy, humorous rebukes, and bold sallies of wit, seem to have constituted the substance of their tumultuous entertainment. As a representative of this mirthful body, the chorus was formed, containing originally fifty persons: as that number was found by experience to be too large and inconvenient, thirty-five were withdrawn, leaving fifteen, which continued to be the regular number on the Athenian stage. In order to relieve, by some interruption of interlude, the chorus from their fatigue of chanting and reciting, Thespis, a native of Icara, a village in Attica, introduced one actor with a mask; Eschylus introduced a second actor with the scenic palla, or magnificent robe which the Athenian priests afterwards copied from him: he also introduced various masks and dances, which he himself practised and taught. Sophocles, shortly afterwards, brought forward a third actor, and invented scenepainting, which was considered as the apex of improvement, and the complete perfection of the scenic apparatus. Till about fifty years before the commencement of the Christian era, the ancients had no large mills driven by water, but ground their corn in small mills of one stone rolling rapidly over another, which were agitated by the hands of slaves, or women servants; to which reference is made in the New Testament. The morning, before sunrise, was the time allotted, in the domestic arrangements, for grinding flour for the use of the family during the day; and so loud was the sound of the operation within the houses, as to be heard in all the streets of towns and villages; a circumstance which gives beautiful illustration to the expression in Ecclesiastes," the sound of the grinding is low." The Grecian women had a song called the Song of the Mill, which they sung when at that employment, beginning, "Grind, mill, grind; even Pittacus, king of great Mitylene, doth grind." For it seems that Pittacus, tyrant, as he was called, of Mitylene, bat nevertheless one of their seven wise men, had been accustomed to resort for amusement to the grinding-mill, that being, as he called it, his best gymnasium-or pleasantest exercise in smallest space. There is a story told of the two philosophers, Menedemus and Asclepades, who, when young men, and students of wisdom under one of the Athenian masters, were enabled to maintain a respectable personal appearance merely by grinding every night at the mill for two drachmæ, or about 1s. 4d. a-night; on hearing which, the Areopagites, in admiration of their frugality and love of wisdom, presented them with an honorary gift of 200 drachmæ.-Mithridates invented and first set up a corn-mill driven by water, in Cappadocia. Thereafter, and probably from this circumstance, the bakers of Cappadocia became celebrated. An interesting particular connected with the Greek and Oriental practice of nocturnal grinding may be quoted from the military history of Julian :-His forces, when besieging some strong place near Ctesiphon, on the Tigris,› had wrought a deep mine under the walls and buildings to the very centre of the city, when his soldiers, on digging the earth upwards to the surface, landed after midnight in the middle of a poor woman's house, who was busily employed in the act of grinding corn for flourbread, and who was doubtless not a little astonished at the emersion into her solitary chamber of such subterranean visitants. The submersion of the town of Helice, on the coast of Achaia, about 400 years before the Christian era, is one of the most remarkable and terrific incidents in the geological history of Europe. Helice was a considerable town of Achaia, about a mile and a quarter from the sea, and celebrated for an altar and statue of Neptune, which was regarded with much veneration by the Ionians and the neighbouring people. The Achaians had slain, about six months before, some suppliants that had fled for protection to the altar; and by that atrocity had, according to the ideas then prevalent, excited the indignation of Neptune, who inflicted upon the place a sweeping and summary vengeance. The submersion took place during winter, and in the night time. A violent vibration of the ground preceded it, and must have loosened the subterranean props of the territory; suddenly the whole shore, for a mile or two, on which the town stood, subsided and sunk to a level with the bottom of the bay that adjoined, and the sea, in one accumulated surge, rushed in on the vacancy created, occupying and overwhelming, in a few seconds, the whole city and plain, so that not a house-roof was in the morning visible. Nothing remained to testify the existence of the town which, the night before, had stood in her pride, and unsuspicious of danger, saving the tops of the few lofty trees that surrounded the altar of Neptune. Not an inhabitant escaped; they must have perished in her, huddled together in the streets, from the alarm given by the earthquake, and more probably asleep in their beds, unconscious of the nature of the tremendous catastrophe that befell them. On the next day the Achaians sent 2000 men to gather and drag for the dead. For many years after, the great brazen statue of Neptune was seen under water, holding in his hand the Hippocamp, which proved a dangerous obstacle to the fishermen as they fastened their nets and plied their occupation over the house-tops of the unfortunate city. There happened to be present, on the night of the submersion, Polis, the Lacedemonian ambassador, who had at one time been an instrument in selling Plato from Sicily as a slave; the Divinity thus punishing him, as an ancient writer says, for his persecution of the philosopher. The extraordinary disaster of this place became a tale of melancholy celebrity throughout the whole heathen world, and was commented upon nearly 500 years after by Antoninus, as a striking instance of the uncertainty and total insolidity of life and human enjoyments. In a state of humble simplicity and comparative poverty, nations, like individuals, use short and rather frequent meals. It is after they have become opulent and luxurious that they use but few meals-two meals, or perhaps but a single meal. The ancient Persians, the most luxurious people of the world, from whom the Greeks learned all the pompous apparatus of the diningroom and the table, had but one meal-dinner. The Greeks, in their earliest and most simple condition, had, like our good plain country people of Scotland, four meals, corresponding to our breakfast, dinner, four-hours, and supper. As they became opulent, and acquired habits of refined entertainment, from their communications with the monarchs of Lydia and the East, they began, like the luxurious inhabitants of our modern cities, to have but two meals-if, indeed, we may reckon their breakfast a meal, which was, like that of the Romans, but a slender repast. They seem to have sat down to dinner, or rather reclined on their couches, about three o'clock, or a little later perhaps, and to have r tired about twilight, excepting when the party wished to prolong the conversation, or plunge into conviviality. Devongrove, Clackmannanshire, December 18, 1830. beauty, and partly, perhaps, from the particular circumstances under which I first heard it, I mean the "Highland Mary" of Burns. I should like to hear it when I am dying. What a host of indefinable emotions may be summoned into being by a few words and sounds! We read of kings and warriors who won their way to empire and glory through perils, and famine, and the sword; and yet how small is their triumph, and how little are they to be envied, compared with that man who weds the breathings of his own immortal lyre to melody as exalted and divine as its own! Blest!-for ever blest!-art thou in my memory, Robert Burns!-and dear and hallowed in my fancy lives the image of thy gentle Mary; though my eyes never beheld either her or you,-and now both have passed away from this earth like a dream! MUSIC. By Gertrude. WHOEVER loves nature loves music, for each is full of the other; and what the changes of the seasons are to the skies, and hills, and streams, the various tones of melody are to the sympathies, and moods, and affections of the soul. As an almighty and invincible hand can turn in a moment into calm and sunshine the darkest storm of sea and land, so the unseen and mysterious power of music can chase away the deepest shadow from the heart-attuning every chord to divinest harmony. I have seen many summer days that I could compare to nothing but one glorious piece of music. Their commencement in the morning was a wild burst of rapturous joy, as if the voices of a thousand young and radiant spirits sung Pæans to the Goddess of Delight far up among the clouds. The noon was gorgeous and magnificent, but more subdued and tranquil in its grandeur; and then the strain, analogous to the fall of evening,-oh! how gently, how beautifully, it died away to the close!-till a holy sadness came over every heart, and tears stood in every eye! In They say that every thing around us is full of poetry,and how much do we not see daily that breathes of nothing but music! I have heard music in the wintriest night, when I looked at the stars, and there was no sound in the air. It was a low sacred psalm, that spoke of God and prayer, and it sanctified and purified the mind. I have heard music when I gazed on a fair young face, and its tones were soft and silvery, telling of pure feelings and innocent enjoyments. I have heard music when I looked on the furrows of wan and withered age; its chords were strange and melancholy, and they made me weep, for they sounded like the dirge of happiness that had fled for ever! Of all sorts of music, songs are probably the best. songs may be found the perfection both of melody and poetry. As fragrance dwells with the flower, so music and minstrelsy should ever be linked together; and where one is bad, the other should not be degraded by an unequal union. It is painful to see a fine air adapted to silly or inharmonious words, or to hear beautiful and touching verses joined to unmeaning or heartless strains. How often, in these days of refinement, (as they are called,) have we to regret the utter worthlessness of both!-and how refreshing and how ennobling is it for our ears to be taken captive, which they sometimes are, by the unexpected taste and feeling evinced by some enchanting singer-whose very soul seems to come forth from his lips, and whose genius, on a sudden, bathes the hearts of his auditors in a sea of pure and living light! There is one song which I can never listen to withqut tears;-chiefly from its own intrinsic and surpassing THE LONDON DRAMA. Pavilion Parade, Brighton, THOUGH Our last week's critical duties have been very nearly a sinecure, yet, to prepare for the anticipated fatigues of our Christmas campaign, we have deemed it most prudent, as-seeing his Majesty, God bless him! is here also-it certainly is most fashionable, to spend the holydays at Brighton, and catch invigoration, as well as inspiration, from the ocean breeze. Since our last notice, the performances at both theatres have been repetitions of pieces already criticised; and it is therefore merely necessary to say, that " Werner" and Miss Inverarity are nightly increasing in public favour; though all attention is now so completely absorbed in preparations for the pantomimes, that Tragedy and Comedy "hide their diminished heads" before the genius of Harlequinade; and Macready and Miss Kemble are, out of all comparison, inferior to the Clown and Columbine! A few words, therefore, on this all-engrossing subject, must be infinitely superior to any thing else. Unhappily for the originality of the Drury-Lane pantomime, even its very name and fable are both pirated from last year's display at the Pavilion, Whitechapel Road! And "Davy Jones, or Harlequin and Mother Carey's Chickens," having delighted the wonderers of the East, has now travelled to astonish the gazers of the West, though its voyage has had any thing but fair winds hitherto in its progress to this evening's exhibition; the misunderstandings behind the curtain having more than once threatened its shipwreck altogether. In consequence of these, Mr Stanfield's Alpine Diorama has been brushed over in ten days, although, to have received due justice, it should have occupied nearly as many weeks; and the author, as we presume he calls himself, Mr Wm. Barrymore, one day threatened to walk off with the MS., and abandon the season to its fate. Having escaped these and sundry other difficulties, however, to-night it is to be brought out to an admiring public, and all that we are yet able to announce of its attractions is, that its first scene is to be at the bottom of the sea; that it will be redolent of sea-nymphs and mermaids, and is to have two Columbines! The Covent Garden exhibition is to be entitled, "Harlequin Pat and Harlequin Bat, or the Giant's Causeway;" the first five scenes of which are to be broad farce, written by R. B. Peake, and the hero, Trismagistus Mulligan, played by Power. The scenery and mechanism will be much superior to the usual average; and amongst them will be introduced the very palpable joke of our Lord Mayor's Show lost in a fog! The minors are all equally busy as their betters; and Master Joseph Sebastian Grimaldi-like the Vicar of Wakefield, we love to give the whole name" fallen from his high estate" through "villainous company," is to |