geny ? And are the imps flunkies down below in a place that shall be nameless-I beg your pardon, honest people-sit down there-lie down thereand let us break bread and taste salt together, with a previous grace; and then old Christopher North is safe, were you Sin and Satan.

Only two poor beggar bodies, in duds and with wallets, trudging their ways homewards to some hovel or another, on a bit neuk by the road-side! Man and wife they indeed are-that is easy enough to see-and it is no less so to see that they are both of them hungry and thirsty exceedingly, and faint therewithal, especially the woman, who has a couple of brats tucked up, with their dirty sleeping faces-dirty, but not disgusting-hanging out cheek by jowl, in a bag-like fold of her gown, between her shoulders. The wearied creatures sit down thankfully on the turf beside me, and say little or nothing-fatigue not being loquacious. They take the bread and cheese, with a word and a look to me, and more than a word and a look to heaven; and forthwith, after two or three moderate mouthfuls, begin eating away like fighting-cocks rather than Christians. Never saw I ancient couple chew cheese with more effective jaws. The half of the quartern, (ourselves will account for the other,) like an old song, is handed down by oral tradition. Catch any miserable diseased beggar, male or female, refusing a caulker. We shall not, however, make them both drunk, although a little thing would do it after their twenty-mile tramp since they rose from the straw. Just enough, and no more, to cheer their hearts and comfort their bones. But one of the brats has awoke, and by pulling the nose of the other has brought it into a similar predicament; so, sorry as we are to break up the party, we must make ourselves scarce, and set ourselves out for serious fishing. In spite of the laws against vagrant mendicity, the benefaction of a few halfpence unwarranted won't do much harm to the state. But let me remember-they asked for nothingtherefore, open your fist, Watty Wallets, for a crown-piece; but promise not to buy a gill till you get to your own clachan.

Now, let us fill the maw of the craving pannier. The large golden trouts love the unsullied streams near the pa

rent-spring. A gross mistake to think they inhabit only the Palace of the Waterfall. There, we have hooked the Hermit of Erickstane! No sharp-edged rock to cut the gossamere-no twisted roots to entangle-no fallen log-tree under which the Solitary may plunge in despair-no wool-gathering briars on the brink to impede the landingno ledge for him to rush madly over, like a harpooned whale, carrying away the end-line, and leaving the cheated rod in our helpless hand! But low green banks without a shrub, or a rush, or a bracken, edged with the fine pounce-like silver sand ! Who would have thought that a fish who had passed a long life of meditation in a pastoral district, would have thus unwieldily struggled against destiny! The inextricable midge-fly is in his tongue-and the invisible filament of fate draws him from his native element to a dry death. It was so set down in the Doomsday-book of the Naiad long before he was spawned, He belonged to Christopher North in the roe of his first ancestor, and the predestined hour is come. Voluntarily at last has he sailed towards the land, his back-fins above the shallowing water, indicative of his magnitude, and lies not dead, for he gasps widely

but motionless, except in the mouth and gills, while another half-pounder dangles unheeded at the tail-fly, dwindled into a minnow beside the Triton.

Look on the blush-rose, as in fullblown pride she salutes the morning— but know, while you are gazing, that before the meridian sunshine, her glory will be somewhat dim-at evening, a faded and unrejoicing thing-a ball without balm and without beauty, that you would not care to scatter into tarnished leaves beneath your feet. Look at the rainbow affronting Phoebus, having borrowed from the god that many-coloured rim, which even cold-hearted science, while it scrutinizes, adores-turn away your eyes but for a moment, and it has left the sky. So in half an hour would it be with that glorious fish, now bespangled with stars. What hero ever wore such grand crosses as these ?What ribboned orders so effulgent? But let him lie on the sand there, and in the sunshine, just while we fish halfa-dozen pools, and he will barken into bedimmed and shrivelled scaliness,

worthy but the admiration of the cook-maid, when about to gut him on the kitchen dresser! So without compunction, in with him (if he will go) into the pannier, head and tail relentlessly curved together,-for such and so unlovely is death.

Man is by nature a beast of prey. So said old Hobbes-and what angler can deny it? Isaac Walton himself was a murderer. If the ghosts of all the pikes he had ever trolled had taken upon them to send constant deputations "to draw his curtains at the dead of night," not one of them all had ever been called upon a second time upon that service. By the way, a pike would make a horrid ghost. What cadaverous jaw and jowl! What a bony spectre, where not one single bone of all those thinner than a hair, up to the horse-like spine, was deficient in the threatening skeleton! To frighten you more deadly, perhaps an artificial mouse in his mouth, with ogglomerated hooks, and the twisted brass chain that in his tortured hour he strove in vain to snap asunder. What think you of a yard-long eel, not only haunting your bed, but evolving his lean length from below your bolster, and worm-like crawling down your back, cold as ice, and hard as iron, jagged too as the wheel of a watch, and emitting a faint hiss like that of a serpent? The very spinning minnows would thus have their revenge, for they would come in shoals among your sheets, and bury you alive under bushels of small anatomies. And then, oh the Bait you so purged in mossbags, and impaled through all their writhing knots from head to tail, (never, never were we guilty of such enormity,) with all the careless cruelty of a practised executioner! But they have no need to become ghosts before they can enjoy their retaliation; for whatever geologists aver to the contrary, down they glide with ease through the pory earth, or mine their way without much difficulty, "labor ipse voluptas," through the stiff clay, till they reach your coffin at last-and free from all sumptuary laws is then their coiling revelry in the very core of your heart.

A pleasant superstition this for an Elderly Gentleman angling his way down the Tweed. However, to prolong the lives of a few thousand of those dancing ephemera to the close of a vernal day,

let us put to death a brace of flyflappers in this pool. There was a rise by an elephant. Poo-poo-merely a par! Had we not hooked the imp, we should have told a story, for years to come, of the lost prodigy. 'Tis just the same in coursing. Every leveret that escapes the greyhounds by darting into a drain, or squatting in a ditch, is declared to have been as big as the Witch of Endor. It was so too with the American sea-serpent, that lay floating many a rood, each coil of his body being like a cask, till a schooner ran him down, and the poor devil was not ten feet long from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail. So with a tiger that devours villages. When you come to stuff his skin, he is among the least in a museum. So with the eagle twelve feet from wing-tip to wing-tip. Come upon him when gorged, and before he can flap himself into the ether, dash out his brains with a club, and the distance is but seven feet four. So with a fire in a romote part of the city, burning a whole street or square. Follow a fireman, and you see a beggarly blaze in a tailor's garret. So with earthquake toppling down, in a newspaper, a distant metropolis with all its towers and temples. Had you been present, with a late number of the Edinburgh Review in your hand, the shock had never waked you from your dose of Political Economy.

'Waly, waly down the bank-and waly down the brae," and what, by chucking out the small fry, two at a time, and humouring the large ones into land-lubbers, our pannier is about two-thirds full, and has for some hour or so past felt heavy, and not without friction, on the shoulder. Are we indeed upwards of three-score? Why should not we yet marry? Not "a wee thing just come frae her mammy," but a buxom nymph of a certain age, well read in Mrs Rundel, and who could even cut out and put together, at her leisure hours, breeches for our future Tommys. More unfeasible schemes have been put into execution and all that Buchanan Lodge desiderates is the soft fall of a kid shoe, and the rustle of a silk petticoat. Fair reader ! thou art the very woman-hide thy blushes behind the Magazine, and sleep with it to-night beneath thy pillow, for the sake of thy devoted Christopher.

Gay, gamesome streamlet, that comes dancing into the Tweed from TallaLinns, let me follow up thy murmurs for a mile or so, and by way of a finale, take a bathe in the Silver Pool, so named by shepherds for its perpetual pellucidity. We must not, however, like Alexander in the Cydnus, plunge in without waiting for a cooler. Alexander, however, did not wear flannel next his skin, as we have done from the year Eighty, or he had escaped his fever. That long narrow gulley is an admirable air-bath. Indeed, every green chasm among the braes, has a breeze as well as a rill of its own, and as you pass along up the main valley, itself but narrow, every hundred yards or two, some unseen air-nymph, waggishly disposed, gives you a refreshing flirt of her fan. Bless us, what sounds are these mixing with the murmurs of the Silver Pool? Voices and laughter, and the splashing of water! Diana and her nymphs bathing, by all that is beautiful! It is fortunate for us that no pack of hounds is kept in this neighbourhood, otherwise we might fear the fate of Acteon. Here let us take up a position behind this large stone-the Screen-scene in a new School for Scandal. Sweet creatures-not one of them more than eighteen The Scotch are a fair-skinned people-that is obvious-and it is quite a mistake to imagine that rural labour necessarily spoils the female form. It is devoutly to be hoped that these merry mermaids will not drown themselves, pulling and hauling each other about so deliriously; and now and then all invisible together below the water, except by the yellow gleam that changes the Silver Pool into the Pool of Gold. "Ye five cruel wretches, are you absolutely going to hold that dark-tressed shrieker under the too high and too heavy shower-bath of the water-fall? Let go your hold, or I will dart down upon you, and rescue the fair child from jeopardy."

The yell is in our ears yet that replied to our extorted ejaculation. You may have seen the effect produced upon half a dozen wild-ducks sportively dallying on their own small moorland tarn, by a sudden discharge of slugs or swan-shot. One of them plumps out of sight in a moment, and makes no sign. Another gives an awkward dive, preceded by a flourish of her tail, but cannot keep her poor wounded

self from coming up to the surface. Here one lies floating quite dead among the water-lilies-and there another goes whizzing and whirring and whirling in the strangest antics, while the feathers are floating about in all directions. The other couple fly off quacking with outstretched necks and drooping sterns, and effect their escape to a distant fen.

Even so was it now in the Silver Pool. The image occurred to us at the time; but it has since brightened into a more perfect similitude. Unluckily for us, the two who made their instantaneous escape from the Pool, not knowing in their alarm whence had come the voice, came in their scrambling flight up the rocks, due North. We involuntarily cried out-"Ye ho! Ye ho!" wishing, half in love, half in fear, to arrest the fair pilgrims' progress, when, flinging 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 basin 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. By and 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 specs-gang awa wi' you-and let a set a puir naked lassies get 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, conscions, 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 bonnie 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?"—Oo ay, Mr North-Oo ay, sir-but oh! gang your wa's, for Tibbie's just chockin owre by yonner aneath the water-pyet's nest and Christy's drank a gallon at the least, and maun be sair swalled. Oh! gang your wa's, my bonnie 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 longsought Naiad of the Silver Pool of Talla.

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 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 has 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 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 warmed bosom again blends with the fragrance of the 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 Cotter'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 kirk-yard, 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-all but one dish which is warm, a few Tweed trouts of his own catching-and having laid aside his Saturday's merriment with his green velvet jacket and jane trowsers, 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 past a Sabbath evening in the Manse of a Scottish Minister.

FRANZ GRILLPARZER'S DestinyTragedy-to adopt the appellation bestowed by the founders of the New German School upon their dramatic creation-DIE AHNFRAU, or female ancestor, with all its horrors, wildness, lyrics, and poetical beauty, has long been known to the readers of this Magazine. But there is another Tragedy of the same Author's, which, although from the extreme simplicity of its fable it cannot be called of the English School, is nevertheless of a character more congenial to English feelings. It is SAPPHO; and of this piece we now propose to offer some account, and copious extracts. SAPPHO is written in very harmonious blank-verse, and, as it is a later production than DIE AHNFRAU, we would fain indulge a hope that the Bard's riper judgment has decided him to abandon the lyrical style for one so much better adapted to the lofty or pathetic breathings of Melpomene. We have only further to wish that he would give us a Tragedy, in which the quantity of incident might find a medium, between the horrors crowded into the first, and the actual barrenness of events distinguishing the play we are about to review. In the present instance, indeed, the choice of the subject necessarily determined the nature of the composition; since no one, possessed of real poetical feeling, could think of obtruding the bustle of intrigue, or perplexed adventures, upon the sorrows of the love-lorn, the forsaken Sappho. The choice of the subject equally necessitated the violation of moral propriety inevitable in a piece awakening our sympathies in favour of a passion neither sanctioned, nor intended to be sanctioned, by marriage, nor yet qualified by remorse. Whether subjects

so circumstanced are or are not decidedly objectionable, is a question into which we do not here mean to enter; but it is a curious fact, that such old classical intrigues, of which we have read in childhood without any reference to the unlawfulness of the proceedings, excite in after life scarcely any feeling analogous to the strong sense

of offended decency which would revolt at the representation of a modern love so wholly unencumbered by "human ties."-But to return from ethics to criticism. The whole interest of the drama before us turns upon the depth and intensity of Sappho's absorbing passion, and upon the management of Phaon's infidelity. Its chief beauties are the just conception and delineation of character, the admirable portraiture of the workings of the human heart,-exhibited alike in the feminine tenderness and delicacy, the creative imagination, and the lofty self-consciousness, intermingled amidst the wildest bursts of Sappho's love, jealousy, and despair, as in Phaon's originally mad and dazzled admiration of the celebrated Poetess, his growing uneasiness in the course of their intimacy, under the sense of her immeasurable superiority, and his preference of a mere childish and insignificant slave--and lastly, the rich vein of poetry adorning and vivifying the whole.

The scene is laid in Lesbos, in Sappho's garden upon the sea-shore. Its decorations are described with a minuteness which we shall not copy, the only material one being an altar dedicated to Venus, or rather to Aphrodite, for in speaking of a German work, we must needs follow the fashion now prevalent in Germany, of giving to the deities of classical Mythology their Greek instead of their Latin names, more especially when treating old Grecian subjects.

The Tragedy opens with the rapturous joy of Sappho's slaves, who are preparing to receive their mistress upon her triumphant return from the Olympic Games, where she has ob tained the laurel wreath of victory in the poetic contest. The crowned Poetess presently makes her appearance in a magnificent chariot, in which she is accompanied by Phaon. She is attended by multitudes of Lesbians, celebrating, almost as enthusiastically as her slaves, the success and the arrival of their illustrious country-woman. Sappho courteously thanks her friends for their good will; presents Phaon