Who, silent, watch the bark the coast resign, The pharos lessen, and the mountains fade.

We, indolently happy, watch alone

The wandering airs that o'er the ocean stray, To bring some sad Venetian sonnet's tone

From that lone vessel floating far away.

HUMAN LIFE.

The lark has sung his carol in the sky;

The bees have hummed their noontide lullaby;
Still in the vale the village-bells ring round,
Still in Llewellyn-hall the jests resound;
For now the caudle-cup is circling there,

Now, glad at heart, the gossips breathe their prayer,
And, crowding, stop the cradle to admire
The babe, the sleeping image of his sire.

A few short years-and then these sounds shall hail
The day again, and gladness fill the vale;
So soon the child a youth, the youth a man,
Eager to run the race his fathers ran.

Then the huge ox shall yield the broad sirloin,
The ale, now brewed, in floods of amber shine.
And, basking in the chimney's ample blaze,
'Mid many a tale told of his boyish days,
The nurse shall cry, of all her ills beguiled,
"Twas on these knees he sate so oft and smiled."

And soon again shall music swell the breeze; Soon, issuing forth, shall glitter through the trees Vestures of nuptial white; and hymns be sung, And violets scattered round; and old and young, In every cottage porch with garlands green, Stand still to gaze, and, gazing, bless the scene; While, her dark eyes declining, by his side Moves in her virgin veil the gentle bride.

And once, alas! nor in a distant hour, Another voice shall come from yonder tower: When in dim chambers long black weeds are seen, And weeping's heard where only joy has been; When by his children borne, and from his door Slowly departing to return no more,

He rests in holy earth with them that went before.

And such is Human Life;-so gliding on, It glimmers like a meteor, and is gone! Yet is the tale, brief though it be, as strange, As full methinks of wild and wondrous change, As any that the wandering tribes require, Stretched in the desert round their evening fire; As any sung of old in hall or bower

To minstrel-harps at midnight's witching hour!

ROGERS.

THE GRAY HAIR.

[Alaric Alexander Watts, born in London, 1795; died 5th April, 1864. As the poet of domestic life he is widely known and appreciated. His first collection of poems appeared in 1822, and from that date he became busily occupied in journalism, first as editor of the Leeds Intelligencer, next of the Manchester Courier, and subsequently as the projector of the United Service Gazette, which he edited for ten years. In 1851 a complete collection of his poetical works was issued under the title of Lyrics of the Heart. In 1853 government provided him with a pension of £100 a year.]

Come, let me pluck that silver hair
Which 'mid thy clustering curls I see:
The withering type of time or care

Hath nothing, sure, to do with thee!

Years have not yet impair'd the grace

That charmed me once, that chains me now; And Envy's self, love, cannot trace

One wrinkle on thy placid brow!

Thy features have not lost the bloom
That brighten'd them when first we met;
No!-rays of softest light illume

Thy unambitious beauty yet!

And if the passing clouds of care

Have cast their shadows o'er thy face, They have but left, triumphant, there A holier charm-more witching grace.

And if thy voice hath sunk a tone,

And sounds more sadly than of yore, It hath a sweetness all its own,

Methinks I never mark'd before!

Thus, young and fair, and happy too—
If bliss indeed may here be won-
In spite of all that Care can do;

In spite of all that Time hath done;

Is yon white hair a boon of love,
To thee in mildest mercy given?

A sign, a token from above,

To lead thy thoughts from earth to heaven?

To speak to thee of life's decay;

Of beauty hastening to the tomb; Of hopes that cannot fade away;

Of joys that never lose their bloom?

Or springs the line of timeless snow

With those dark glossy locks entwined, 'Mid Youth's and Beauty's morning glow To emblem thy maturer mind!

It does it does:-then let it stay;

Even Wisdom's self were welcome now; Who'd wish her soberer tints away, When thus they beam from beauty's brow?

The tide, before we left the shore, had risen high on the beach, and was now beginning to

BY HUGH MILLER.

[Hugh Miller. born in Cromarty, 12th October, 1802; died in Edinburgh, 24th December, 1856. He was for

some time a stone-mason, and it was whilst working in this capacity that he obtained the impressions and experiences of the science of geology, which afterwards yielded such great results. Next he became clerk in the bank of his native town, and about this time he published a small volume of poems. He became a frequent contributor to the Inverness Courier, and in that journal his important "Letters on the Herring Fishery" were first published. From these letters we quote the following sketch of a night's adventures with the herring fishers. At the period of the Disruption, when the Free Church party established the Witness, a semiweekly newspaper, Mr. Miller was appointed its editor, and continued to hold that post until the date of his melancholy death. Whilst performing all the duties of his editorial post he wrote numerous essays, sketches, and tales; and also produced the works by which his

name will be best known to posterity--The Old Red Sundstone, Footprints of the C.eator, and The Testimony of the Rocks. Sir David Brewster says of him, "With the exception of Burns, the uneducated genius which has done honour to Scotland during the last century has never displayed that mental refinement and classical taste and intellectual energy which mark all the writings of our author" An exhaustive biography of Mr. Miller, by Peter Bayne, has been recently published; and an excellent complete edition of his works has been issued by W. P. Nimmo, Edinburgh.]

In the latter end of August, 1819, I went out to the fishing then prosecuted on Guilliam in a Cromarty boat. The evening was remarkably pleasant. A low breeze from the west scarcely ruffled the surface of the frith, which was varied in every direction by unequal stripes and patches of a dead calmness. The bay of Cromarty, burnished by the rays of the declining sun until it glowed like a sheet of molten fire, lay behind, winding in all its beauty beneath purple hills and jutting headlands; while before stretched the wide extent of the Moray Frith, speckled with fleets of boats which had lately left their several ports, and were now all sailing in one direction. The point to which they were bound was the bank of Guilliam, which, seen from betwixt the Sutors, seemed to verge on the faint blue line of the horizon; and the fleets which had already arrived on it had, to the naked eye, the appearance of a little rough-edged cloud resting on the water. As we advanced, this cloud of boats grew larger and darker; and soon after sunset, when the bank was scarcely a mile distant, it assumed the appearance of a thick leafless wood covering a low brown island.

hundred yards to the south of the fishing ground; and after determining the point from whence the course of the current would drift us direct over the bank, we took down the mast, cleared the hinder part of the boat, and began to cast out the nets. Before the Inlaw appeared in the line of the Gaelic chapel (the landmark by which the southernmost extremity of Guilliam is ascertained), the whole drift was thrown overboard and made fast to the swing. Night came on. The sky assumed a dead and leaden hue. A low dull mist roughened the outline of the distant hills, and in some places blotted them out from the landscape. The faint breeze that had hitherto scarcely been felt now roughened the water, which was of a dark blue colour, approaching to black. sounds which predominated were in unison with the scene. The almost measured dash of the waves against the sides of the boat and the faint rustle of the breeze were incessant; while the low dull moan of the surf breaking on the distant beach, and the short sudden cry of an aquatic fowl of the diving species, occasionally mingled with the sweet though rather monotonous notes of a Gaelic song. "It's ane o' the Gairloch fishermen," said our skipper; "puir folk, they're aye singin' an' thinkin' o' the Hielands."

The

Our boat, as the tides were not powerful, drifted slowly over the bank. The buoys stretched out from the bows in an unbroken line. There was no sign of fish, and the boatmen, after spreading the sail over the beams, laid themselves down on it. The scene was at the time so new to me, and, though of a somewhat melancholy cast, so pleasing, that I stayed up. A singular appearance attracted my notice. "How," said I to one of the boatmen, who a moment before had made me an offer of his greatcoat,-"how do you account for that calm silvery spot on the water, which moves at such a rate in the line of our drift?" He started up. A moment after he called on the others to rise, and then replied: "That moving speck of calm water covers a shoal of herrings. If it advances a hundred yards farther in that direction, we shall have some employment for you." This piece of informa tion made me regard the little patch, which, from the light it caught, and the blackness of the surrounding water, seemed a bright opening in a dark sky, with considerable interest. moved onward with increased velocity. It came in contact with the line of the drift, and

It

three of the buoys immediately sunk. A few minutes were suffered to elapse, and we then commenced hauling. The two strongest of the crew, as is usual, were stationed at the cork, the two others at the ground baulk. My assistance, which I readily tendered, was pronounced unnecessary, so I hung over the gunwale watch ing the nets as they approached the side of the boat. The three first, from the phosphoric light of the water, appeared as if bursting into flames of a pale green colour. The fourth was still brighter, and glittered through the waves while it was yet several fathoms away, reminding me of an intensely bright sheet of the aurora borealis. As it approached the side, the pale green of the phosphoric matter appeared as if mingled with large flakes of snow. It contained a body of fish. "A white horse! a white horse!" exclaimed one of the men at the cork baulk; "lend us a haul." I immediately sprung aft, laid hold on the rope, and commenced hauling. In somewhat less than half an hour we had all the nets on board, and rather more than twelve barrels of herrings.

The night had now become so dark, that we could scarcely discern the boats which lay within gunshot of our own; and we had no means of ascertaining the position of the bank except by sounding. The lead was cast, and soon after the nets shot a second time. The skipper's bottle was next produced, and a dram of whisky sent round in a tin measure containing nearly a gill. We then folded down the sail, which had been rolled up to make way for the herrings, and were soon fast asleep.

Ten years have elapsed since I laid myself down on this couch, and I was not then so accustomed to a rough bed as I am now, when I can look back on my wanderings as a journeyman mason over a considerable part of both the Lowlands and Highlands of Scotland. About midnight I awoke quite chill, and all over sore with the hard beams and sharp rivets of the boat. Well, thought I, this is the tax I pay for my curiosity. I rose and crept softly over the sail to the bows, where I stood, and where, in the singular beauty of the scene, which was of a character as different from that I had lately witnessed as is possible to conceive, I soon lost all sense of every feeling that was not pleasure. The breeze had died into a perfect calm. The heavens were glowing with stars, and the sea, from the smoothness of the surface, appeared a second sky, as bright and starry as the other, but with this difference, that all its stars appeared comets. There seemed no line of division at the horizon, which rendered the illusion more striking. The

I

distant hills appeared a chain of dark thundery clouds sleeping in the heavens. In short, the scene was one of the strangest I ever witnessed; and the thoughts and imaginations which it suggested were of a character as singular. looked at the boat as it appeared in the dim light of midnight, a dark irregularly-shaped mass; I gazed on the sky of stars above, and the sky of comets below, and imagined myself in the centre of space, far removed from the earth and every other world,-—the solitary inhabitant of a planetary fragment. This allusion, too romantic to be lasting, was dissipated by an incident which convinced me that I had not yet left the world. A crew of southshore fishermen, either by accident or design, had shot their nets right across those of another boat, and, in disentangling them, a quarrel ensued. Our boat lay more than half a mile from the scene of contention, but I could hear without being particularly attentive that on the one side there were terrible threats of violence immediate and bloody, and on the other, threats of the still more terrible pains and penalties of the law. In a few minutes, however, the entangled nets were freed, and the roar of altercation gradually sunk into a silence as dead as that which had preceded it.

An hour before sunrise, I was somewhat disheartened to find the view on every side bounded by a dense low bank of fog, which hung over the water, while the central firmament remained blue and cloudless. The neighbouring boats appeared through the mist huge misshapen things, manned by giants. We commenced hauling, and found in one of the nets a small rock-cod and a half-starved whiting, which proved the whole of our draught. I was informed by the fishermen, that even when the shoal is thickest on the Guilliam, so close does it keep by the bank, that not a solitary herring is to be caught a gunshot from the edge on either side.

We rowed up to the other boats, few of whom had been more successful in their last haul than ourselves, and none equally so in their first. The mist prevented us from ascertaining, by known landmarks, the position of the bank, which we at length discovered in a manner that displayed much of the peculiar art of the fisherman. The depth of the water, and the nature of the bottom, showed us that it lay to the south. A faint tremulous heave of the sea, which was still calm, was the only remaining vestige of the gale which had blown from the west in the early part of the night, and this heave, together with the current, which at this stage of the flood runs in a south western direc