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No. 78.

EDINBURGH, SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 1846.

A CHAPTER ON BORES.

THE bore inquisitive is one of the most teasing persons you can possibly fall in with. All men avoid him, either instinctively or from experience; and yet we defy any one to walk abroad without meeting him. He is everywhere; and were you at night to compare notes with halfa-dozen of your intimate friends, who, as well as yourself, know him, or rather are known of him, all at one period or other of the day, in public square or private lane, in the green meadow or by the sea-shore, have been fated to encounter the bore inquisitive. All regard him as a perfect pest, and yet no one ever dared say so to his face. A bore of this class is generally a middle-aged, respectable-looking man, who limps slightly, uses a cane, and makes slow progress. He is staid, temperate, and rosy-cheeked; he is, moreover, well to do, calm and unruffled in his deportment; and when he comes up to shake hands and to victimise you, you cannot for your life offer resistance. His small, blue, unmeaning eye has a fascinating influence which you can neither describe nor avoid. 'He holds' you with it till he has wrenched and wrung your inmost soul. He asks question after question, and yet never seems to care for your answer. When you are beginning to give him the necessary amount of information on a topic he just seemed anxious to know about, he stops you with a query respecting the age of your grandmother; and while you are returning a somewhat uncertain and hesitating response, he will ask you as suddenly what you regard as likely to be the ultimate fate of the last ministerial measure. But this is not the worst of the matter; the wretch not unfrequently tortures you with questions in reference to affairs connected with your own or the private history of your friends, in a manner so provokingly calm and cool, that though you feel he deserves to be knocked down with the umbrella you are carrying, you cannot avoid standing, and though blushing and perspiring with agonised feeling, endeavour to give him all the information you can stammer out. You are possibly residing at your father's, out of a situation for the present; and you must be pestered with inquiries as to what made you leave your old one. He hears you have been ill-used, and wishes, out of the love he bears you, to get particulars. While you are endeavouring to explain, he cuts you short, by expressing his sorrow to learn that your brother Thomas made such an unexpected failure last week; and when, to gratify his curiosity, you are about to venture a guess as to what he is likely to allow his creditors per pound, he stops your mouth by regretting to hear of the delicate health of your sister Jane, who has been but recently married, and asks whether there is any truth in the report

PRICE 14d.

that her husband is given to the bottle. You are about to reply, but his small, calm eye now espies another victim advancing up the road, and bidding you good day, he crosses over to him, and as you make your escape, you heave a sigh for him who is now caught by the button.'

If, when in company with the bore inquisitive, we are put to the torture from having our own private affairs to explain, we nearly suffer as much when the bore communicative happens to meet us, and detains us to hear a long detail of his own private affairs, telling us a goodly number of things connected with his family and relations, which we indeed knew before, but which we are ashamed to let him know we did, they are so shocking-so utterly unmentionable. Yet there are persons of this class-men who, without an effort and without a blush, tell you family incidents and scenes, which you hear with that suppressed agony that always accompanies communications and recitals to which you know not well how to reply. The man possibly has had a quarrel with his mother-in-law in the morning, and he tells you all, not only about it, but about her, which is necessary for setting his own conduct in as favourable, and hers in as shocking a light as possible. His own wife, whom, however, he professes still to love, is dragged in as not much to blame indeed, but as too simple in allowing such a horrid wretch as her own mother to influence her in the least. One family disclosure then follows another in rapid succession, till the bore communicative runs the complete circle of family news. His sister Mary, who, under a smiling face conceals a shocking temper and a bad heart, is attempting to impose herself upon a certain person who shall be nameless, but wo to the poor man if he is dupe enough to allow her to succeed; but she is just of a piece with his own mother, who, he is sure, has too cordial a hatred of him to permit his father to include him in the will which he understands is to be drawn up next week. You here give an expressive, and, as you would have it, wondering indeed; and that simple word operates with talismanic effect upon the personage we are now describing. He turns upon you an eye of triumph in having it in his power to enlighten your ignorance, when he proposes the question, whether you were not aware that his mother is one of the crossest and most vindictive of all human beings? When you have professed, sorely to the disquiet of your consciencé, an almost total ignorance of a fact notorious as noon, he proceeds to inform you that her ebullitions of rage might be tolerated; but the thing most to be deplored about the woman was her total lack of truth, or indeed moral principle of any kind. You here exhibit more astonishment than ever, when he commences marvelling how anything he has told

you about his mother should excite your surprise, for, 'Consider,' says he, the family she is come off.' Immediately you do, with a kind of shudder, remember a cluster of Uncle Johns and Aunt Betsies, who, though certainly akin to the bore, are no better than they should be. This, however, he does not observe, for he immediately begins treating you to the reasons which influenced his father in making such an unhappy choice of a partner for life. And promising to let you know, the next time you chance to meet him, how he has done the whole wretched set of relatives who are plotting his ruin, he at length permits you to depart. Bores communicative are to be shunned as companionsshunned, aye, as you would avoid your worst enemy. They will ensnare you unless you are all the more guarded. Constantly talking of themselves and their persecutions and grievances, they will, on some unlucky occasion, very likely draw you in to sympathise with them, and will get you to speak unfavourably of individuals whom you esteem, and whom it is your interest to please. Never do this, ye who wish to be on good terms with the world. The bore, if you do, will inform the next person he meets, in reference to the abused individual, that you think exactly as he does. This may reach the ear of one of your best friends, and the most disagreeable of consequences may be the result.

Nothing can be more amusing than to witness an interview between the bore inquisitive and the bore communicative. You would imagine that the former, in meeting the latter, had just encountered his man. No such thing. The bore inquisitive delights to put his victims to the torture by extracting news from them which they are reluctant to communicate, but when an individual cheerfully volunteers information, he flies off at a tangent, and at once gives him 'good day.' The two therefore never, when they meet, do more than shake hands. They have a cordial contempt and even hatred of each other. This, as we have said, may seem singular, but such is the fact, though the philosophy of the thing we are unable to explain.

There is another bore in society, and he must not pass unnoticed. You do not often meet him. He does not, like the bores inquisitive and communicative, encounter you at the corner of every street, or in every quiet, secluded lane you may have selected for a meditative walk. You are not forced nolens volens to stand as in the other two cases, though on your way to a dinner-party, either to hear or to give information, should you actually chance to encounter him; on the contrary, you may, for a long while, pass him repeatedly, and all that occurs is a simple bow of mutual recognition. At last, however, on some unlucky occasion, you chance to stumble upon him just at his own threshold, and as if all his fondness and affection for you had, until that hour, lain unrevealed in the deepest recesses of his bosom, he comes up to you with a happy smile on his countenance, and extending his own, grasps the hand you give him in the excess of your wonderment with a hearty squeeze. Having set the man down in your thoughts for a stiff and formal blockhead, you feel considerably surprised at all this; but before you can arrange your ideas, he invites you in to see his wife, or mother, or sister, just as it may happen, and there you are at once in the parlour of a person with whom you never exchanged above ten sentences in your life before, shaking hands with every one you are introduced to, and finding yourself told to be quite at

home..

Ah, poor fly! you little know the texture of the web to which the spider is fast getting you-a web from which there is no present extrication, and out of which you can only escape with life; yet, for a few minutes things go on in a manner not so far amiss. There is rather too much bustle and fuss to be sure, too many demands for presskeys, too much ado made about sundry refreshments, of which the house chances at present to be minus. At last you see all things put down, and you are offered your choice of a considerable variety of liquids and sweet cakes. You break a piece of shortbread, and help yourself to what, after drinking, you are pleased to call excellent sherry, but are told it was shrub you took, which makes you blush slightly; but, no matter, your wretchedness has yet to begin. Insisting that you spend the afternoon with him, and have an early tea, the bore exhibitive shows you his drawing-room, where, after pulling up the blinds, you are treated to a prospect rural and romantic, and are words magnificent and sublime have scarcely fied from requested to tell whether you ever witnessed a better. The your lips, when a voice from a small closet in the opposite side summons you away: your friend left you though you did not perceive it when you first began to admire the view inland; and now you step across to the closet, and are desired to witness a still finer sea view from the opposite side. You are just about to commit the folly of expressing your rapture a second time, when, fortunately for your poor conscience, the voice of kindness, from the centre of the drawing-room, calls you away for the purpose of making you attempt to guess whose likeness the portrait right before you might have been meant for. You have scarcely stammered out your surprise at the marked resemblance it bears to your tormentor himself, when he places before you on the table two boards, one a backgammon and the other a chess, and while you are admiring these, he opens his sister's piano, to which you instantly advance. While you are making it sound, you are asked if you love music, and before he has heard your answer, he takes from the mantelpiece a German flute belonging to himself, and after making it discourse a few melodious notes, thrusts it into your hand, and asks if you can guess the kind of wood out of which it has been constructed. He then has you into his own room, a stair farther up, where he keeps his books, his antiques, his everything. He pushes a volume of history into your hands, but you have hardly got time to examine the titlepage, when he is at you again with a volume of Childe volume of sermons, by an eminent modern divine, is next Harold, asking, of course, whether you admire Byron; a exhibited; and after you have set down the other two volumes, and are admiring this, you are desired to inspect a small volume of Buchanan's Psalms, the first, he believes, ever printed in Scotland. This information, of course, calls forth your extreme wonder; and you are then asked to look narrowly at a piece of gold coin he had just extracted from the drawer of his writing-desk, and attempt deciphering its date. While you are expressing your ignoance, another, and another, and yet another, are exhibited, and suitable information granted, which, however, you have no leisure to digest; for, next requesting to know your opinion of phrenology, the model of a murderer's head is placed before you, and as you are examining 23 or 24, he brings out of a recess two pieces of spar and a lump of granite, and after something has been said about primary and secondary formations, chemical instruments are dragged out. In short, you are thus nearly tired to death, when, sinking back into a chair, you complain of headache, which, however, you hope tea will remove. You next find yourself in the bore's garden, and here you are required to admire a bed of dahlias in full blow, which you would no doubt attempt doing were time allowed; but no next his carrots, and then his cherry-trees. You are now such thing, for he calls upon you to see his onions, and severely fatigued; but, delightful summons, the servant girl descends the gravel walk announcing tea. His sister

is rather pretty, and as a recompense for the fatigues of your previous campaign, you would fain be allowed leisure to admire her fine features while she is filling out the delightful beverage. Vain wish! the bore is again at you with the Times newspaper, showing you a paragraph, which he requests you to read aloud; during tea, the same thing is repeated; you have Blackwood or Tait put into your hands, or it may be Hogg's Weekly Instructor or the last number of Punch. The room is warm, the tea is hot, you perspire from head to foot, and never feel so happy as when, extricated from the fowler's snare, at last you find yourself in the open air, alone, and no one to bore you.

THE LIFE AND POETRY OF GEORGE BUCHANAN.

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THE fate of men of talent and learning in old times was singular enough in many respects, but in nothing so remarkable as in regard of the strange repute which their accomplishments created for them in life, and entailed posthumously upon their memory. Whoever stood eminent above the vulgar in point of acquirements, was popularly set down either as a wizard or as a fool and jester. It was the fortune of Friar Bacon, for example, of Sir Michael Scott, and of Thomas the Rhymer, to be ranked in the former class, while George Buchanan, for two centuries after his death, actually went among the common people of Scotland under the denomination of the king's fool,' and was seriously believed by them to have held that honourable office. Few persons who can remember the flying sheets sold by the hawkers only a quarter of a century ago, will fail to recollect one collection of silly and obscene anecdotes to which the name of George Buchanan was appended. Several reasons may be assigned for the utter ignorance of the true character of this eminent individual—one of the first scholars of his own or any other age-which so long prevailed among the generality of his countrymen. The leading one, however, undoubtedly is, that he composed his works, with trifling exceptions, in the Latin tongue, impelled thereto by the fact of its being the common language of the learned over the whole civilised world, and also by the rude and unformed condition of the vernacular speech of his own land. It is somewhat unfortunate for the fame of Buchanan, that, just as the many have grown more capable of appreciating the productions of genius, the taste for the language of Rome should have fallen into comparative decay. But the name of such a man should not willingly be let die;' and we purpose here to call him to the remembrance of our readers, by sketching his history briefly, and presenting a few translated specimens of his poetry.

George Buchanan was born in the year 1506, in the parish of Killearn, situated in that portion of the ancient district of Lennox which lies in Stirlingshire. The small clan of Buchanan has long occupied that locality, their chief being Buchanan of Arnprior, once so potent in his own little region, as to be termed the 'King of Kippen.' The branch from which the subject of our notice sprung was that of Drummikill, of which house his father was second son, his mother being Agnes Heriot, of the family of Trabroun, in East Lothian. In the old farm-house of Middleowen, on the Blane water, of which some portions yet remain in a newer dwelling, George, the third of five sons, was born. The death of his father threw the family into an embarrassed state, but, by the generous care of a maternal uncle, the future scholar received the elements of a good education at Dumbarton, and was sent subsequently to complete his studies at Paris. Though but fourteen years of age, he

The comparative smallness of the clan Buchanan has caused the peculiar family features of the race to be preserved strikingly among all who yet bear the name in Scotland. It forms a marked instance of what is also plainly observable in the cases of some other lesser tribes or families. The long face, pointed chin, bold strong nose, and straight brow of the portraits of George Buchanan, are exactly the features recognisable in those of his name at this day. We here but give a hint to curious inquirers, on which they may speculate interestingly, we imagine.

soon began to distinguish himself there by his talents for the composition of Latin verses. His uncle died, however, after two years had been spent at the Parisian university,. and Buchanan was forced to return home by poverty and ill health. On his recovery, he attempted to find a new path to fortune by joining the Duke of Albany's French auxiliaries in the expedition against England in 1523. That campaign proving completely abortive, he resumed his favourite studies in the capacity of a pauper exhibitioner at St Andrews, where he obtained the degree of bachelor of arts. John Mair, a doctor of the Sorbonne, was a leading professor at that time in the Scottish college, but he taught a sophistical logic by no means pleasing to his clear-headed pupil, who accordingly vented on him some juvenile epigrams, not of very great merit though sufficiently severe. For example, when Mair published a book, and prefixed to it a pun on his own Latinised name of Major,' calling himself in the title, with affected modesty, Major (greater) by cognomen only,' Buchanan gave forth the epigram which we here roughly translate. The Cretans, it may be observed, were the most noted liars of antiquity:

"When, reading Major (great by name alone),
You find in all his book no sane page shown,
Muse not when you the title's truth descry-
The very Cretans did not always lie.'

Returning to France, then the principal seat of polite learning, Buchanan took the degree of master of arts in the Parisian university in 1529, and continued struggling to maintain himself by private teaching till 1531, when he was nominated to a professorship in the college of St Barbe. This was a poor position, however, and he was glad to accept soon afterwards the office of tutor to Gilbert Kennedy, Earl of Cassillis, with whom he returned to Scotland in 1537. The principles of the Reformation then formed the great topic of discussion and agitation in the European world, and Buchanan became one of their most zealous advocates. While John Knox swayed the minds of the common people by his antimonastic invectives in their own homely mother-tongue, Buchanan addressed himself to the more educated classes, and endeavoured to disabuse their minds in reference to the then new doctrines. We know not, indeed, if the part performed by him was not the most important in that age, when so much of the feudal subserviency of the many to the few still characterised the social condition of the countries of Europe. Be this as it may, it was at the request of James V., whose natural son had been placed under his tutorage, that the subject of our memoir produced successive satires on the Romish priesthood, the last of them being 'the Franciscan,' a piece unequalled for terrible yet truthful severity, as well as perfect Latinity, since the days of Juvenal and Persius. It so unmercifully exposed the general conduct of the monks, that the half-converted king himself could not save the author from the rage of Cardinal Beaton and the clerical brotherhood. He was imprisoned, but contrived to escape to England. Protected in London for a time by Sir John Rainsford, he at last found a better refuge at Bordeaux, Paris being rendered unsafe by the appointment of Cardinal Beaton as ambassador there. At Bordeaux, his now known and proven learning obtained for him the chair of humanity in the new college of Guienne, and he lived there admired and respected for a number of years, though still an object of hostility to the Romish priesthood of Scotland.

Buchanan wrote at this period his two original Latin tragedies of the Baptist,' and 'Jephthah,' and composed versions besides, in the same tongue, of the Medea' and │Alcestis' of Euripides. The exquisite scholarship evinced in these productions was not their sole or principal merit. By producing them he accomplished one phase of the Reformation, affecting deeply the instruction of youth in schools. His labours served to banish those mysteries which the pupils were wont to enact periodically, and to substitute for them his own sound and healthy dramas. 'Jephthah' is a piece full of tender sentiment and ardent passion, while the 'Baptist' contains a new and stern de

nunciation of clerical bigotry and hypocrisy, as well as of regal tyranny.

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In 1547 we find Buchanan at Paris, acting as regent in the college of Cardinal le Maire. Here he enjoyed the friendship of the eminent scholars Turnebus and Muretus, as he had before done of the two Scaligers. An invitation to accept the principalship of a new university at Coimbra, in Portugal, seemed to promise the Scottish scholar a higher and stabler position than he had ever yet enjoyed, and he removed thither accordingly. But the death of his main protector at the court of John III. exposed him anew to the assaults of the clergy, and, after being catechised, confined, and tormented by them for a year and a half, during which time he composed his beautiful version of the Psalms of David, he was glad to escape to England. From that country he recrossed the channel to France, where he was more secure, and most highly esteemed. For a number of years thereafter he was attached to the family of Marshal de Brissac, whose son's education he superintended, producing at the same time his long philosophical poem De Sphæra' (upon the universe). When the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots came to France to wed the Dauphin, the poet wrote their Epithalamium, and, on the return of the prematurely widowed princess to her own country, she seems to have invited him to accompany her as assistant in her classical studies. She subsequently gave to him the temporalities of Crossraguel Abbey for his maintenance, to which provision the Earl of Moray added the Principalship of St Leonard's College, St Andrews. Warmly countenanced by Moray, Morton, and the strong party of reformed nobles generally, Buchanan could now publish his collective satires on priesteraft without much fear, though he lost the queen's favour thereby. He also became eminent as a member of the General Assembly, and sat in 1567 as moderator of that body. When Mary fell into dissensions with her subjects, and at last fled to England, Buchanan took the side of the Earl of Moray, and drew up a paper called a 'Detection' of the royal doings, for which he has been greatly censured by the defenders of the queen. At a later period, when James VI. became ripe for receiving his education, Buchanan was called to the high office of his principal teacher. That he succeeded in imbuing his pupil with an extensive knowledge of letters, is a fact known to all the world, and that he at least did his utmost to keep him free from the faults incidental to his high position, or to which he was constitutionally prone, is also universally admitted. For the special use of James, he wrote his tract De jure regni,' a piece inspired by the noblest spirit of constitutional freedom. But the king preferred the flattering counsels of the under-tutor, Young, to the sound lessons of his head-preceptor, whom indeed he latterly hated with a bitter hatred. The latter years of the life of Buchanan were expended on his History of Scotland, and here again he spoke what he certainly believed to be the truth respecting Queen Mary. James Melville tells us in his Diary that he and others, on seeing the sheets of the work at press, remonstrated with the now aged author on the danger of exciting the king's anger. Tell me, man,' said the historian, 'if I have spoken the truth?' 'Yes, sir, I think so,' was the reply of the party addressed. Then I will bide his feud, and all his kin's,' retorted Buchanan. He was at this time very ill in health, and died about a twelvemonth afterwards, on the 28th September, 1582, at the age of seventy-six. Before that event, King James did attempt to make him retract portions of his history, but he resisted all solicitations of the kind; and he is traditionally said to have been at last so far fretted as to bid the royal agent inform the monarch that no threats could affect him, as 'he was going to a place where few kings could come.'

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The History of Scotland by Buchanan is too well known to require especial notice here. It may suffice to say, that he certainly performed a great service in culling timeously from native records, now long lost, as fair a narrative as he could of our early and obscure annals, while his account of the times nearer his own must ever be the standard chronicle of the national story. The principal poetical

works of Buchanan have been named incidentally in passing. They comprise the Versions of the Psalms, and the two tragedies of Euripides, the original dramas of the Baptist and Jephthah, the satire of the Franciscan, the poem De Sphæra, and several books of minor satires, elegies, epigrams, and miscellaneous pieces. The reader of course understands all these to be composed in the Latin tongue, of which, it may be said with confidence, no greater master has ever appeared since it became a dead language. Among the miscellaneous pieces, one short poem on May has long been a favourite with scholars, and has been rendered into English by Archdeacon Wrangham and others. The following is an attempt to render it literally in nearly the same measure as the original-a measure which Collins and Henry Kirke White used most effectively, though rhyme be not employed :—

THE FIRST OF MAY.

'Hail! morning vowed to immemorial joys,
First child of May 1 sacred to mirthful sports,
To wine, and jest, and song,
And to the clioral dance!

Hail! thou delight and honour of the year,
Unfailing ever in thy sweet return;

Flower of the youth of time,
That soon again grows old!

When the mild temperance of Spring erewhile
Cheered new-born nature, and the primal age,
Spontaneously good,

Shone bright with yellow ore:

Such harmony as thine through all the months
Ran lastingly; warm breezes soothed the lands;
And then gave they forth fruits
Where seeds were never sown.

The like amenitude of clime as thine
Perpetual broods above the Happy Isles,

Where none know painful age,

Nor querulous disease.

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We would fain give a specimen of those grave and severe
poetical pieces, to which we have alluded as exerting no
slight influence in furthering the cause of the Reformation;
but that would be a difficult task, since a single brick can
give but a lame idea of a great building. However, one
short poem, on the subject of shrines and images, may give
some notion of the tone and cast of Buchanan's polemical
verse.
An image is supposed to address a pilgrim come
to worship before it in the subjoined strain :-

'Say, pilgrim wandering over lands and waves,
What seekest here? What cause thy travel craves?
No shrined divinity by me is claimed;
Of wasted wood and stone my form is framed;
A thing that gives to worms and insects birth,
Vile before heaven, a mockery to earth.
Celestial power no mean abodes contain,
Nor piles of stone upreared by hands of men.
That spirit which sea, earth, and air hold not,
Can be imprisoned in no single spot.

To find out Christ, search thou the secret soul,
And deeply muse on each prophetic scroll;
View the great globe which is thine own abode-
That is the fane, the sanctuary of God!
But whoso joys to kiss mere wood alone,
And spreads rich colours on material stone,
Falls justly, since alive he worships dust,
And places on inanimate things his trust.
If paintings please thee, paint no carious tree,
But tinge thy mind with white simplicity.
Thus shalt thou find at home what all thy toil,
In roaming earth, but makes thee lose the while.
There is a number of Buchanan's minor poetical pieces
in which considerable grossness, it must be admitted, is
discoverable. But while we must take into account that
no single writer of his age, in any language, is entirely
free from the same unfortunate characteristic, for the ma-
jority of the poems alluded to the same apology may be
made, which Mr Gifford has so eloquently advanced in the
case of Juvenal- When I find that his views are to render
depravity loathsome, that every thing which can alarm and

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disgust is directed at her in his terrible page, I forget the grossness of the execution in the excellence of the design.' We must now close this notice of the most eminent of Scottish scholars, and shall do so with another specimen of his verses, choosing for the purpose an Epicedium or Monody on the great founder of the church system of Scotland, John Calvin, written immediately after his decease:

'If one there be who deems that human souls
Live not beyond the grave, or who so acts,
Believing otherwise, as to have hell
And its eternal pains before his eyes,
He rightly may lament in life his fate,

May dread the tomb, and wake the wail of friends.
By death grown envious of thy high designs,
Thou, Calvin, should'st call forth no weak regrets,
No idle tears, no vain funereal shows.

Freed now from cares, and from the bonds of earth,
Thou holdest heaven, and closely dost enjoy
The God by thee in spirit worshipped long;
Pure light in purest light thou dost behold,
And, filled with the infused divinity,
Tastest eternal life without alloy-

Which sorrow never taints, nor hope exalts
To empty joy, nor any fears assail,

Nor pains which vex the flesh-imprisoned soul.
This day which rescued thee from bitter cares
I well may call thy natal day, in which
Thou to thy home returnest, borne aloft,
And after the despites of banishment,
With spirit fearful of no second death,
Raised above fortune, enterest lengthened life.
For as in all the sections of the frame,
When soul is there, motion and life exist,
And vigour permeates each agile limb;
And as, that soul once gone, it moveless lies,
The putrid fabric of a mass of clay;
So of the spirit God the spirit is,

Whom wanting, it is plunged in deepest gloom,
And, easily deceived by empty seeming,
Clasps but the shadowy forms of good and ill.
But when the influence divine is there,
The darkness flies, with all illusive shows;
And the eternal naked front of truth

'Displays itself in day, which never eve
Can shroud at bidding of importunate night.
Though thus in port received, 'mid heaven's applause,
And resting placidly in grateful calm,
Invidious death could yet not wholly reave
Calvin from earth. Eternal monuments
Of thy high genius shall remain, and when
The torch of envy languishes betimes,
On every shore where pure religion shines,
Thy fame shall spread and flourish evermore.'

If we were called on to assign to George Buchanan his place in the roll of Scottish men of genius, we know not that we would name before him any others than Burns and Scott.

NOTES ON LONDON AND THE LONDONERS, BY A FRENCHMAN.

In the year 1765, M. Grosley, a native of France, visited London, in which city he remained for several months,

and has left his observations on the manners and customs of the metropolitan population in three small volumes. In looking over these, we find records of the past so nearly resembling the characteristics of the present day, that at first we are surprised at the small amount of change that has really taken place. At the date of the traveller's visit, the French nation were considered as the 'natural enemies' of England. If an unfortunate Parisian appeared in the streets of London, he was regarded as a fair object for the abuse of the lower orders. An advance of eighty years, however, thirty of which have been spent in profound peace with our continental neighbours, has done much to remove those symptoms of national antipathy; the most outré Frenchman may now traverse the metropolis from day to day without exciting greater notice than he would in his own native city. The porters, sailors, chairmen, and the day-workmen scattered in the streets,' says the writer above referred to, are the most insolent rabble that could be found in any country unprovided with law or police. The French, upon whom their coarseness is principally discharged, would do wrong to complain, since the well-disposed portion of the population are not exempt from it. Ask the way to a street; if it be to the right, they point to the left, or send you

from hand to hand among their comrades. These attentions are seasoned with the most brutal insults. To be assailed with such, it is not necessary to enter into conversation; you have only to pass within hearing. My French appearance, notwithstanding the simplicity of my dress, drew upon me, at the corner of every street, whole litanies of abuse, mingled with the epithet French dog. Any answer would be sure to produce a fight, a result to which my curiosty did not extend. The late Marshal Saxe had an affair with a scavenger, which he finished with a dexterity applauded by all the spectators: he permitted his man to approach, when, seizing him by the nape of the neck, he tossed him into the air in such a manner, that in his descent he fell into the middle of his cart, filled to the brim with liquid mud.

The day after my arrival in London, my servant learned, by painful experience, what the rabble could attempt against the French or those of foreign appearance. He had followed the crowd to Tyburn, where three rogues, two of whom were father and son, were hanged. The business over, as he was returning by Oxford Street with the stragglers of the numerous mob who had witnessed the execution, he was set upon by two or three scoundrels, and speedily surrounded. Sir Jaquett (Jack Ketch), finisher of the law, himself took part in the mischief, and entering the circle, he slapped the poor fellow's shoulder, while the others began to pull him about by the skirts of his coat and his queue, when, by good fortune, three grenadiers of the French Guards, who had deserted and crossed the sea to London, and were drinking in a tavern near the spot, armed themselves with whatever weapons chance threw in their way, made a rush at the mob, rescued their countryman, and escorted him to my lodging.'

As a set-off to this coarse and unmannerly rudeness, the polite and prepossessing manners of the respectable people and tradesmen are favourably noticed. 'However hurried any decent man may appear whom you meet, he stops at the first inquiry, answers you, and frequently, turns out of his way to point out what you are inquiring for, or puts you under the guidance of some person who appears to be going in the direction you wish. A gentleman one day placed me under the care of a young and good-looking governess, who was going home with a pretty infant in her arms. My walk, which was tolerably long, was very agreeable, as I gave my arm to my guide, and we conversed as well as two persons could, neither of whom understands a word of what the other says. I frequently held similar conversations, in which, notwithstanding the efforts made to understand me, and mine to be understood, I could never succeed; then, shaking the hand of my interlocutor, I said, with a laugh, 'Tower of Babel;' he laughed too, and we separated.

This manner of taking your friend by the hand and shaking it with a violence that threatens dislocation of the shoulder, is one of the great tokens of friendship which the English offer to one another when they meet, in perfect gravity, the countenance expressing nothing, while their whole soul passes into the agitated arm. This holds place of the embraces and bows of France. The English seem to have taken the regulations of their visages from those prescribed by the Emperor Alexander Severus to those who approached him.'

The following picture of London life is exceedingly graphic and truthful, and, with scarcely an iota of change, would answer as well now as it did eighty years ago: 'The life of merchants and bankers, in spite of the cares and details attendant on their commerce, to which no object of speculation is unknown, is the same as that of the gentlemen of the bar, physicians, and tradesmen. They rise rather late in the morning, and pass an hour in drinking tea with their families. Towards ten o'clock they go to the coffeehouse, where they pass another hour; after which they return home, and receive visits of business. At two o'clock

* Most readers will recollect Roderick Random's experience of this practical fun.

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