ly not have led to the selection of La Devocion de la Cruz, as the most pleasing specimen of Calderon's tragic powers; but in the hope that our article upon the more comic Famosa Comedia of Agradecer y no Amar, might have somewhat predisposed our readers in favour of our author, we were content to submit our private opinion to that of the great majority of Spanish scholars, who consider this piece first of Spanish dramatists. We are, as one of the best productions of the however, chiefly influenced to this act of deference, by our wish to present to the British public, if a less attractive, a more interesting, because a more important picture;-one exhibiting the portraiture rather of a nation than of an individual. In no country aspiring to literary fame, we apprehend, except the Peninsula, could a genius lofty and powerful as Calderon's, have been lowered by the alloy of such an absolute distortion of intellect, and perversion of the moral sense. Of the impiously familiar introduction of sacred names and topics, we have softened away as much as was compatible with the nature of the subject. We did so more because we could not help it, than from any preconceived intention; but we have left, we fancy, quite sufficient to pain every serious mind; and finally, we must confess, that we have rarely met with aught more impressive, as a political and moral lesson, or more humiliating to the pride of human reason, than this Olla podrida of high talent, brilliant imagination, bigotry, superstition, vice, and downright absurdity.

the life, which I declare mine to be, will always be prized by the truly wise, as forming so many pictures of the diversified scenery of existence. And as to the charge of pedantry, I appeal to you, O ye sons of the Ferula! whether it be possible for a mind intimately imbued, and constantly conversant with, the language and phrases of ancient lore, to produce anything whatsoever which will not be tinged with the divine ambrosia, the heavensent manna of the classics?

I have often had reason to congratulate myself on being more fortunate than Homer; for whereas seven cities contended for the honour of his birthplace, and posterity has not yet been able to decide between them, I can place it beyond all doubt that I first drew breath in the beautiful and romantic parish of Knockbrae. I regret exceed ingly, that owing to the dilatoriness of our blacksmith, John Anvil, in not repairing an old quadrant of mine, which has lain in his smithy-window for two years, among a heap of old keys and superannuated horse-shoes, I shall not be able to give the exact latitude and longitude of the parish with that degree of geographical precision which I could wish. Suffice it, for the present, to say, that it is situate in a remote and hilly part of Scotland-on all sides it is bounded and hemmed in by bold, heath-covered, rocky, and precipitous mountains. The parish, as regards population, is by no means large, and affording no great incitements to the luxurious pomp of the great, or the schemes of the ambitious: the greater portion of the inhabitants are of the humbler orders of society. Towards the extremities of its circumference, the ground is wild, bleak, barren, and incapable of cultivation, with here and there a few scattered and lonely habitations, where the frugal natives earn a scanty and precarious subsistence by the pasturage of a few sheep, &c. ; but sweeping through the middle of the parish winds a beautiful and romantic river, rolling on through deep chasins and precipitous, though smooth-worn, rocky fragments, the incessant and persevering effect of many ages. Its steep and overhanging banks are thickly wooded with a beautiful verdure; the birch, the mountain-ash, and the quivering aspen shooting out, as by miracle, from the craggy rocks in singular tortuosity, unite their boughs

from the opposite banks, and thus exclude the light of the sun, and the gaze of man, from the fishes which sport below. In a rich valley of alluvial soil, and on the banks of the Darber, a tributary stream which mingles its waters with those of the Blackwater, stands the kirk of Knockbrae, and at a short distance below, the modest mansion' of the parish minister.

The back part of the manse looks down on the first mentioned stream, which flows here with great rapidity, and acquiring force by its gradual descent, it at length dashes with impetuosity against the sharp-pointed rocks which would vainly seem to oppose it. From the church you may hear the hollow sound of these conflicting waters, which, to a poetical imagination, might seem as the unearthly laugh of the spirit that misleads the steps of the wanderer during the moonless night. To the man of God, it no doubt suggests a more rational train of thought; to him it is the music of nature, that attunes his soul to heavenly musings and devout contemplation; it harmonizes with the more gentle workings of his mind, and tends to raise his thoughts above the toil and trouble' of the restless scenes of humanity. At a very short distance from the church and manse stood the still humbler mansion of my venerable and respected parents-Peace be to their spirits! With the humble accommodation of a but and a ben, and the dilapidated adjuncts of a barn, and accommodations for two cows, and a couple of steeds, which laboured a small croft, did the worthy couple rear up me, their only son, to the years of discretion and manhood. Whether it was, that the minister and dominie, being the two greatest men in the parish, and of course, in the eyes of my parents, the two greatest men on earth, and of consequence their situations the most enviable as a future profession for their darling son; or whether my early precocity of genius-for, at the age of four years, I had completely mastered the Shorter Catechism, and had begun to scrawl an alphabet on the walls with a piece of cinder-gave them indications of my future celebrity in erudite learning, cannot now, by reason of their lamented decease, be accurately ascertained; but so it was, that in the intervals of tending the sheep, and driving the horses in the

plough, I was consigned to the charge of my worthy predecessor Mr Thumpbottom, of whom I will frequently have occasion to speak, with the hope that I might one day at least fill his place, and perhaps aspire to the summum bonum, the very pinnacle of greatness in my father's eyes, viz. the pulpit of Mr Langtext. Under the classical care and salutary discipline of Thumpbottom, then, my mind gradually expanded, my appetite for learning increased, and my mental digestion became more steady, firm, and persevering. Little did I think, while I admired the deep and awful erudition, and coured and trembled under the frown or uplifted birch of that renowned pedagogue, that I would one day triumph in the conscious power of superiority myself, and in that very school which hath re-echoed my wailings, witnessed my tears, and supported my tottering knees, shaking under the correcting scourge of idleness and ignorance, that I should in my turn wield the rod of power, and raise in vengeance the redressing arm!

"Sed tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis."

So wonderful was my proficiency at school, that in the course of a few years I had exhausted the whole stock of my worthy preceptor's information, and had literally drained him dry. Many may be disposed to suggest that perhaps this was no difficult task, and, after all, that my acquisitions might have been but very moderate.

It is

not for me to speak on so delicate a matter. Suffice it to say, Mr Thumpbottom, as will afterwards be more fully shown, was an enthusiastic admirer of "The Mighty Mair;" his Latin introduction, he said, was a perfect and splendid monument of human ingenuity. In it he took care I should be thoroughly versed; and with the help of translations, I got a tolerable smattering of the classical historians and poets. How shall I forget those attic nights under our humble roof, when the dominie, over a dish of sowins and milk, would descant so eloquently on the glories of the age of Maecenas, the importance of classic lore, and the wonderful talents of "the Mighty Mair!" while all the time my parents listened with intense and mute wonder, swallowed the long-sounding names with a voracious greediness, and

thought in their hearts that the pedagogue was the most astonishing man alive. He had been at college, too, and told of learned professors robed in black gowns, who spoke Hebrew, Greek, and Chaldeeof Janitors, clothed in purple, who bore before them maces of silver, like the princes of the earth;-then the many feats and labours of the collegians, the toils and rewards of learning, and the honours and renown which it brings. It is not to be wondered at, that hearing all these fine things, and being assured that without a college education my further progress would be barred, and my prospects limited, it should be resolved between the worthy couple, that, if at all practicable, I should go to the university. Accordingly, at the appointed time, having been equipped in one of the minister's old black coats, furbished up for the occasion, and furnished by the same worthy man with the loan of an old Greek Homer and Lexicon, to which was kindly added by the dominie a Greek grammar, which, from the dog-leaves, and various names on the title-page, seemed to have come through a variety of proprietors; moreover, having obtained the luxury of a pair of shoes and two spare shirts, tied up in a bundle, I set out one morning (after having spent the evening before with the parson and dominie, receiving their instructions and admonitions) for that renowned seat of learning and science, the Marischall College, Aberdeen. "The world was all before me," and the road, to me unknown, was for a time dreary and fatiguing; but meeting in the course of my journey with many other students bending the same way, and all like myself trudging it on foot, perhaps for hundreds of miles -for coaching was not introduced in those days-I entered into friendly talk with them, and many being more experienced than myself, they soothed my languor, encouraged my hopes, and diverted my mind by the variety of their anecdote. Tired to death with the long and rugged roads, and my toes bursting their cearments, and peeping through my worn-out shoes, we arrived at the venerable seat of learning, my long-wished-for goal, and the object of my enthusiastic reverence. I stood a candidate for one of the annual bursaries, and never general more exulted in the success of