Thine offspring share them. Thou hast trod the land It breathes of thee-and men, through rising tears, Behold the image of thy manhood stand, More noble than a galaxy of peers. And he-his father's bones had quaked, I ween, But that with holier pride his heart-strings bound, Than if his host had king or kaiser been, And star and cross on every bosom round. High strains were pour'd of many a Border spear, While gentle fingers swept a throbbing shell; A manly voice, in manly notes and clear, Of lowly love's deep bliss responded well. The children sang the ballads of their sires: Serene among them sat the hoary knight; And, if dead bards have ears for earthly lyres, The Peasant's shade was near, and drank delight. As through the woods we took our homeward way, Fair shone the moon last night on Eildon Hill; Soft rippled Tweed's broad wave beneath her ray, From gay guitar and violin the silver notes are flowing, And the lovely lute doth speak between the trumpet's lordly blowing; And banners bright from lattice light are waying everywhere, And the tall, tall plume of our cousin's bridegroom floats proudly in the air:Rise up, rise up, Xarifa! lay the golden cushion down; Rise up, come to the window, and gaze with all the town! "Arise, arise, Xarifa. I see Andalla's faceHe bends him to the people with a calm and princely grace: Through all the land of Xeres, and banks of Guadalquivir, Rode bridegroom forth so brave as he, so brave and lovely never! Yon tall plume waving o'er his brow, of purple I mixed with white, guess 'twas wreathed by Zara, whom he will wed to-night: Rise up, rise up, Xarifa! lay the golden cushion down; Rise up, come to the window, and gaze with all the town! "What aileth thee, Xarifa!-what makes thine eyes look down? And in sweet murmurs gush'd the Huntly Why stay ye from the window far, nor gaze rill. Heaven send the guardian genius of the vale Health yet, and strength, and length of honoured days, To cheer the world with many a gallant tale, And hear his children's children chant his lays. Through seas unruffled may the vessel glide, That bears her poet far from Melrose' glen! And may his pulse be steadfast as our pride, When happy breezes waft him back again! THE BRIDAL OF ANDALLA. "Rise up, rise up, Xarifa! lay the golden cushion down; Rise up, come to the window, and gaze with all the town! 1 These translations derive, as I have said, not a little of their excellence from Mr. Lockhart being him self a poet-of fine genius, clear in his conceptions and with all the town? One bonny rosebud she had traced, before the | Hear-hear the trumpet how it swells, and noise drew nigh, That bonny bud a tear effaced, slow dropping from her eye. "No, no!" she sighs; "bid me not rise, nor lay my cushion down, To gaze upon Andalla, with all the gazing town!' "Why rise ye not, Xarifa:-nor lay your cushion down? how the people cry! He stops at Zara's palace-gate-why sit ye still-oh, why?" "At Zara's gate stops Zara's mate! in him shall I discover The dark-eyed youth pledged me his truth, with tears, and was my lover. I will not rise, with weary eyes, nor lay my cushion down, Why gaze ye not, Xarifa! with all the gazing To gaze on false Andalla, with all the gazing town? town!" JANET HAMILTON. BORN 1795 DIED 1873. The Scottish muse found Burns at the plough when turning over the "wee, modest, crimson-tippet flower," and once more she has shown that there is no royal road to poetic fame, for she threw her inspiring mantle" Over MRS. JANET HAMILTON amid the greatest poverty and under the most unfavourable circumstances. Janet Thomson was born in the village of Corshill, parish of Shotts, Lanark shire, October 12, 1795, and on her mother's side was a descendant of the Covenanter John Whitelaw, who was executed at Edinburgh in 1683 for his share in the battle of Bothwell Bridge. At the age of fourteen she married John Hamilton, a young man who worked with her father at the trade of shoe-making. Although before the age of nineteen she had composed a few religious pieces, Mrs. Hamilton was fifty before she learned to write, and fifty-five before she again attempted poetical composition. She made her first appearance as a writer of verses in Cassell's Working-man's Friend. In 1863 she published a volume of Poems and Songs; in 1865 Poems and Sketches appeared; three years later Poems and Ballads was issued; and in 1871 she increased her fame by bringing out a fourth volume, being in part a reprint of her former collections of poetical and prose sketches. work is a portrait of the venerable poetess, who, though poor, old, and blind, seems to have bated no jot of either poetic heart or hope. Early on Thursday, October 27, 1873, the day of her death, Mrs. Hamilton made reference to a proposed testimonial in happy and cheery tones, evidently gratified by the interest being taken in her affairs by a number of wealthy friends and admirers; and during the afternoon of the same day her blindness had passed away. She entered into the light of that sinless land of which she had so often and so sweetly sung. Her remains were honoured with a public funeral, at which some five hundred persons were present, including all the clergymen of the place. Janet Hamilton, the daughter, wife, and mother of working men, all struggling with the vicissitudes of life, received her education at a shoe-maker's hearth, her only teacher being a hard-working mother, who, while she plied the spinning-wheel, taught her daughter by her side to read the Bible, the only education that either ever received. She furnishes the world with another example of success in the pursuit of knowledge under the greatest difficulties. Her handwriting, viewed at arm's length, seems something akin to Greek manuscript written with a very blunt pen. She composed some good English verses, but it is to her Scottish poems that she owes her fame Prefixed to the as more than a local writer. In the introduction to her last volume Dr. Alexander Wallace says "It is remarkable that she has never seen a mountain, nor the sea, nor any river but easy to understand how the Coatbridge poetess the Clyde, the Falls of which she never visited, | wilding flowers' covered with slag." It is not and she has never been the distance of twenty miles from her dwelling. Her region of song, so far as scenery is concerned, has been very limited. It may be comprised in the glen of the Calder and the bosky dells and breckan-covered banks of her favourite stream, the Luggie (poor David Gray's Luggie), before it was polluted with the refuse of the furnaces, and its 'sweet certainly one of the most remarkable Scottish singers of the present century-could have lived to such a comparatively great age before her poetic genius was evinced, and it is hard to say what she might have accomplished "had she enjoyed the early advantages of a Joanna Baillie or Lady Nairne. THE SKYLARK-CAGED AND FREE. Sweet minstrel of the summer dawn, Shake the bright dew-drops from thy breast, Not warbling at thine own sweet will, I heard thee, and my heart was stirred, Where smoke and sulphurous gases meet; Thy joyous song: as void of sorrow As when, to bid the sun good morrow, Thou sung, and soar'dst o'er mead and wold. My heart hath strangely, deeply moved. Steals o'er my senses, and I seem The joyous girl that knew no care, When fields were green, and skies were fair; That, mounting, "sings at heaven's gate," hark! These rapturous notes are all his own; Sweet captive, though thy fate be mine, GRAN FAITHER AT CAM'SLANG. He donn'd his bannet braid and blue, His hame-spun suit o' hodden gray, His blue boot-hose drew o'er his knees, An' teuk the gate at skreigh o' day. His Bible had he in his pouch, O' scones an' cheese a guidly whang; An' staff in haun', he's off to see, The godly wark at auld Cam'slang. "The lingerin' star that greets the morn He trampit on ower muir an' moss For thritty miles an' mair, I ween, He lodged him in a hamely hoose, Syne dauner'd oot intil the nicht; The mune was down, the win's were lown, But a' the lift wi' stars was bricht. Nae soon' o' youngsters oot at e'en, Nae voice o' whisp'ring lovers there; He heard nae soun' but that o' praiseHe heard nae voice but that o' prayer. By ilka bush o' whin or broom, By lown dyke back or braeside green, Folk greetin', prayin', praisin' there, A' sittin', kneelin', roun' war seen. Ile teuk the bannet aff his heid, An' liftit up to heaven his e'e; Wi' solemn awe, an' holy fear, His heart was fu' as fu' could be. He kneel'd ahint a boortree bush, Whaur but the e'e o' God could see, Whaur but the ear o' God could hearAn' pray'd baith lang and fervently. Neist day, frae a' the kintra roun', He thocht to sit within the kirk He rather wad than sit ootbye, Sae in he gaed, an' there he sat Till stars were blinkin' in the sky. Nae cries he heard, nae fits he saw, The dews were fa'in on the yirth- On Monday-hame he bou'd to gang; And a' his days he ne'er forgat That Sabbath-day at auld Cam'slang. It said that mony hunner souls, What time the wark was at Cam'slang, War turn'd to God, an' a' their days Had leev'd an' gane as saints shoud gang. THOMAS CARLYLE. THOMAS CARLYLE, the censor of the age," who has rather tried than exercised his powers as a poet, belongs to the common people, and like his countryman Robert Burns comes from the better class of the Scottish peasantry. He was born at Ecclefechan, near Annan in Dumfriesshire, December 4, 1795, and so has lived to complete fourscore years. Proud of his birth, at once popular and noble, he could say of himself what in one of his works he says of Burns and Diderot, two plebeians like himself-"How many kings, how many princes are there, not so well born!" In Sartor Resartus he tells us of the impressions of his childhood, and the influence which those impressions, such as places, landscapes, and surrounding scenery, made upon his mind. The cattle-fairs to which his father sometimes took him, the apparition of the mail-coach passing twice a day through the village, seeming to him some strolling world, coming from he knew not where, and going he knew not whither all this he describes with a freshness and vivacity which clearly indicate that they are the ineffaceable impressions of childhood. Besides this education Carlyle received another at the high-school of Annan, where he acquired the rudiments of his scholastic training. Here he had for a schoolfellow Edward Irving, | found a deep under-current of affection for his the distinguished orator and divine, whom Carlyle afterwards nobly delineated. It was the ambition of his parents to see Thomas "wag his pow in a poopit," and he was accordingly, after the necessary preparation, sent to the University of Edinburgh, where his life was one of comparative poverty and privation. After having graduated, he was for several years tutor in a gentleman's family. He could not like this office-in many, and indeed most families, one of dependence and drudgery, unbefitting a strong hearted, self-reliant man, and accordingly he abandoned it, launching out in 1823 on the career of a man of letters-a calling which he has so well described as "an anarchic, nomadic, and entirely aerial and ill-conditioned profession." His first efforts were published in a country paper; then came translations of Legendre's Geometry and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, followed by his Life of Schiller, which led to a lengthened correspondence between him and Goethe. Then appeared some of his finest essays, and Sartor Resartus, which was published in Fraser's Magazine. His brilliant articles on "Burns," 'Characteristics," and "Signs of the Times," contributed to the Edinburgh Review, marked the advent of a man of genius. Finding the inconvenience of residing among the moors of Dumfriesshire, he decided to remove to London, the great centre of books, of learning, and intellectual movement. Here he has since resided at Cheyne Row, Chelsea, producing his French Revolution, Past and Present, Oliver Cromwell, and many other valuable contributions to literature, including his remarkable Life of Frederick the Great. His latest work, The Early Kings of Norway, appeared in 1874. In November, 1865, Carlyle was elected to the rectorship of the Edinburgh University, which, in spite of his stoicism, real or assumed, must have sent a thrill of pleasure to his heart. Throughout many of his works there is to be native land, and although so many years absent from her heathery hills, he has not forgotten Scotland, nor has Scotland forgotten her gifted son. If one thing more than another could gratify him in his declining years, it must have been this public recognition of his services to literature, and of his talents as a teacher of men, by his native land. | In After a happy married life of forty years Mr. Carlyle, who is childless, lost his wife. The epitaph he placed on her tombstone is one of the most eloquent and loving memorials ever penned. Since her death his household has been presided over by his niece, Mary Carlyle Aitken, who in 1874 gave to the world an admirable collection of Scottish song. 1872 the great writer was called to mourn the death of his eldest brother, John Carlyle, who died in Canada, at the age of eighty-one. Another brother, the translator of Dante, resides at Dumfries, which is also the residence of their sister, Mrs. Aitken, to whom the philosopher makes an annual visit after the close of the London season. On his eightieth birthday Carlyle received from various quarters of the globe, far and near, congratulatory addresses, epistles, and gifts, commemorative of the completion of fourscore years. The opinions of Carlyle's youth are not in all cases the opinions of his old age. In early life he had some claim to the title of a poet, as the following pieces will testify, but in 1870 he wrote a characteristic letter in which he gives it as his mature opinion that the writing of verse, in this age at least, is an unworthy occupation for a man of ability. It is by no means impossible that the " Philosopher of Chelsea” may be indebted to some of the poets whom in his curious letter he beseeches not to write except in prose, for embalming in deathless strophes his own craggy and majestic character, and transmitting through the magic of rhyme his name and fame to the remotest generations of mankind. TRAGEDY OF THE NIGHT-MOTH. MAGNA AUSUS. 'Tis placid midnight, stars are keeping Their meek and silent course in heaven; Save pale recluse, for knowledge seeking, All mortal things to sleep are given. |