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Now I am no dissecting, analyzing critic, letting out the soul of poetry by keeking into the joints of its construction. Do not think of me, sitting, staid, erect, suspicious, with great circular spectacles of a hundred magnifying power, glowering at the last outgushing of the poetical heart in never pleased fastidiousness, faughing at every least rebellion of simple Nature against the laws of the unities. I read and write, not to find and expose faults with microscopic vigilance, and set the world all agog for my specimen of what a poem should be. I remember something about glass houses. No, I read for the enjoyment, in all the gentleness of clemency towards him who will thus let me look into his heart. Buried within the stout, yet well-stuffed arms of my elbowchair, and letting every limb choose its own easiest position without thought or oversight from me-no longer in the body, but all mind and heart; I love to go arm in arm with Rob or Allan just where he pleases to lead, and, borrowing his eyes and catching every syllable of his tongue and speaking face, to see what he sees, admire what he admires, and believe what he believes, so long as his spell is on me. Dear reader, there's pleasure, dreamy bliss in such communings. And if your guide but lead you to auld Scotland, and wander with you around her castle ruins, and, grander still, among her scenic sublimities, long will be the wandering stroll, ere the sense of some overpressed, prickling limb will prickle sharp enough to remind you that you are in the flesh by the chimney nook, and not a painless gossamer spirit, emancipated from the laws of gravitation; that is, if your heart is like mine. And I hope it is for the pleasure it may give you by creating scenes the eye hath never seen, and transportng you over any distance of time or space, it matters not which-crossing buoyantly and safely over the fairy arches which a few rich, suggestive words can fling across the chasm that separates the present from the absent.

Have you ever so read, so enjoyed Allan Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd ? I have. I have just laid it down-an old edition, with its quaint engravings, songs, music and all--after, perhaps, the twentieth perusal, more delighted than ever. And now, although you may be slily laughing at me for my simplicity, I don't care--I cannot help being just as garrulous in my admiration, and as earnest in pointing

out to you its beauties, (as I have threatened to do at every reading,) as if you knew nothing at all about them.

Christopher North says of this work of Ramsay, "Theocritus was a pleasant pastoral, and Sicilia sees him among the stars. But all his dear idylls together are not equal in worth to the single Gentle Shepherd." And honest Allan deserves such commendation from his countryman. The characters are honest, artless, truthtful. Their emotions are natural, generous and comely. And yet they are not such perfect beings as to have no originals in this fallen world. There is, among the youthful "dramatis persona," just the bashful coyness and arch coquettishness, and just the proud sensitiveness and peeping jealousy, which has always been displayed in every retired hamlet in Scotland and everywhere else, at

"The age when little loves

Flighted around young hearts like cooing doves." The older personages possess just the right proportions of staidness and parental sympathy, and devout patriotism. Over all is manifest such a natural reverence for God and his truth, and scrupulous observance of the laws of virtue, as I always expect to see in a true picture of Scottish rural life. And then they discourse so naturally, and all in their own sweet Gaelic dialect, that I am loth to have them done.

But it is not my purpose to inflict upon my indulgent reader an eulogium, in the general, upon what he may as yet know nothing of; nor to give a dry critical analysis of the plot, in order to show that it violates none of the laws of the drama. But I do wish to tell you just a tantalizing outline of its simple tale of shepherd love, that you may be enticed to procure the little work, if it do not already grace the shelves of your library.

The scene is laid among the glens, and not far from Edinburgh. The time is just after the restoration of Charles II. One of the Scottish nobility, devoutly attached to the royal cause, had been compelled to flee for safety to the Continent during the troublous times of the Commonwealth. He had but a single child-an infant son, too young to remember the baronial halls of his self-exiled father, and a mother he was never to know, for she was below "the church-yard mold." The fleeing laird, unknowing the upshot of the

then distracted times, and whether a loyal noble's descendant may not be in jeopardy of his life, commits his motherless heir to the nurture of one of his aged and trusty shepherds, to be brought up, and to pass as the adopted son of honest Symon. The character of his protegé's rank is to be kept a sacred secret, and if needful be buried with himself. Years pass away, and the laird grows up, a hearty, free and blithesome shepherd, known to himself and others only as simple Patie, the adopted son of the old cottager. He tends his flock along the hills with his comrade, good Roger, and mingles in the sports upon the green at the day-close, careless of kings and lords, joyous as his own lambkins, and ignorant of his real parentage as his playmates.

But the mischievous bow-and-arrow urchin, who shoots at the heart of gentle and simple alike, has a bolt in his quiver for the young Patie; and it is soon twanged deep into his breast.

At the next cottage in the glen live two lasses the daughter and adopted niece of the old couple, but sisters in heart, and rivals in sweetness, just as the rose rivals the violet. Each seemed the more sweet and lovely in the absence of the other. But when both were together in "the bleachfield," or strolling, hand in hand, along the "flowery holm," none knew which to crown as the superior.

Jenny, the daughter, was innocent and skipping as the fawn on the distant hillside; but Meg, the niece, sweet Meg, was gentle and graceful as the silvery birk that bends so tenderly and attentively to the whispered troubles of the evening zephyrs with every leaf in a flutter of sympathy. Jenny was gladsome as the lark, soaring and singing away into the unclouded lift, yet never losing sight of her grassy nest and unfledged younglings in the bunch of heather. Meg, as gladsome, was more like the feagle on the high cliffs, where but the deadened echo of the moving scenes below comes up to his blue ether heights. Jenny's spirit was like the "trotting burnie," carelessly frolicking along to the chime of its own "sing and din," where the ripple of the springing minnow, or the dash of the bounding deer, are equally lost in a moment. The heart of the gentle Meg was deep and pure and transparent, like the piacid, pebbled pool. No strong emotion had yet stirred its quiet depths, but it could be agitated to the bottom.

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The long summer days, bright sun-glints through the trees, and moon-bright evenings on the green, had ripened the hearts of these bonny lassies. And, as is most natural and proper, the gentle shepherd and his friend Roger fall in love with Meggy and Jenny. While the father is skulking in foreign parts, the flame is burning brighter and inextinguishable between his happy son and Meg, the foundling niece of Habbie's How.

As the ancient régime is now restored, and gentility again lifts its head from concealment in his native land, the absent laird seizes the glad moment to leave his privacy, revisit his hereditary estates, and, if it may be, spend his remaining years in the halls of his fathers. That he may test for himself the fidelity of his old cottager, to whom he had committed his infant heir, he dons the guise of a "spae-man" or fortune-teller, and joins a feast holden in the glen in joy for the news of his expected return. The secret has been most safely kept, but not so safely, he finds and might have known, the heart of the young shepherd laird.

The old knight reveals himself, and in the true spirit of aristocracy be forbids, gently indeed, the prospective alliance. He determines to send his son on a continenal tour, as Patie says, "to learn to dance, and twa or three ither monkey tricks;" but really with the hope of erasing Meg from his thoughts, as the father believes in his old, hard heart will be easily done.

The young lovers meet "at the sad, the trysting hour," and in the frankness and tenderness of nature's heart, plight their vows never to be another's, and to wait some favorable, relenting moment when they can be one.

But it's a long night that is not followed by the morning, and just as

"The scant approaching light Stands equal 'twixt the morning and the night,"

a poor hind, frightened half to death by fancied ghosts and witches, rushes to the laird for vengeance upon the old hag that has so scared him. With indulgent heart his honor summons the parties to appear immediately before him, that this "hobbleshew" may be unravelled, and every injury redressed. All the simple cottagers, old and young, are of course called together, or invited to see their old master, and help unfold the perplexities of the affrighted Bawldie. While the examination is progress

IT was the afternoon of a summer day, and though detained till a late hour by company, we were attracted towards the post-office. That place, indeed, by periodical fits, is a potent magnet. Horses being at hand, and we the adopted daughters of the wilderness-having learned to do without beaux when we can't get them-attended each other thither, late as was the hour. Most of the road lies through a pleasant woodland, and there seems a rivalship between the birds and the flowers, each contending for the honor of being most captivating along the way. They say it is but three miles; but they remind me of the painter in our town, who, for the comfort of the weary traveller, as he affirmed, made the guide-board say one mile to the village, which was at least a mile and a half distant. To me, it is just five miles to that office, and I cannot make it less. It is a short half mile to the first house; and a short mile from that to some uninhabited cabins beyond; then, a long mile to the creek, and thence two long ones to the river ford, or ferry-but especially to the ferry; then through the river, up that steep winding path, over that hill of loose rocks, up its neighbor, and away through all those twistings and turnings-and it is a long half mile to the house; long enough to make up the first short one. It may be that my estimate savors a little of haste to be revelling in the contents of the sanctum which keeps our treasures so safely; but then, one can dream out and peruse half-a-dozen long letters while a messenger is gone for them. Yes, it is five miles, whether I go or send ; and that office ought to be moved, postmaster and all. We should be sorry indeed to part with so faithful and obliging an official in that department; though we sometimes playfully threaten to report against him when he sends us empty away. Still, he bears patiently with such childishness, philosophizing, I suppose, that disappointment. spoken out is not laid away to sour the temper and corrode the heart; and he evidently sym

pathizes in the joy he wakens when he can fill our hands from that snug closet.

The sun had set; and having exchanged missives at the office, we departed homeward without alighting. "If we were only across the river-it is so late," said my friend. "Yet it is only a brook now. Who would think fear or danger could ever lurk in this current ?" I replied. "I only dread that it should detain us a little." Our twilight ride was agreeable, though we did not banish from our thoughts the possibility of meeting some reckless spirit, "half seas over," as the sailors say. We reached home without accident. "Is the river up?" said the gentleman who met us at the door. "I think I could walk across it dryshod with a little care," I replied. "What roaring is that then?" We listened, and scarcely knowing whether to credit our eyes or ears, we could not answer for the wild music we heard.

Visitants from beyond its banks tarried among us next night, and had found it unfordable. Our first intelligence from the post-office was, that a member of the family being at the door about half-an-hour after we left, hearing and knowing the sudden rush of waters, warned the ferryman, who reached his boat, a short distance from the house, just in season to secure it. There had been no rain in our vicinity. The clouds must have poured their abundance on the mountains, where are the sources of this and its tributary streams. Had we left home as early as we intended, and had this event been as much earlier in the evening, there is no knowing what might have been our fate, for it was our purpose to tarry a little at the house.

An instance once occurred of a person attempting to ford, going too far to retreat before he saw the danger from the torrent coming furiously toward him, climbing a tree upon the island, just above the ford, and next day being rescued by his friends, who had from the shore witnessed his peril.

LUNETTE.