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day after the bairn was born, the leddy sat up i' her bed, wi' her fan intill her hand; an' aw her freends cam an' stud roond her, an' drank her health an' the bairn's. Than at the leddy's recovery, there was a graund supper gien that they caw'd the cummerfealls, an' there was a great pyramid o' hens at the tap o' the table, an' anither pyramid o' ducks at the fit, an' a muckle stoup fu' o' posset i' the middle, an' aw kinds o' sweeties doon the sides; an' as sune as ilk ane had eaten their fill, they aw flew till the sweeties, an' fought, an' strave, an' wrastled for them, leddies an' gentlemen an' aw; for the brag was, wha could pocket maist; an' whiles they wad hae the claith aff the table, an' aw thing i' the middle i' the floor, an' the chyres upside doon. Oo! muckle gude diversion, I'se warran, was at the cummerfealls-Than whan they had drank the stoup dry, that ended the ploy. As for the kirsnin, that was aye whar it sude be-i' the hooss o' God; an' aw the kith an' kin bye in full dress, an' a band o' maiden cimmers aw in white; an' a bonny sight it was, as I've heard my mither tell.'

"Mr Douglas, who was now rather tired of the old lady's reminiscences, availed himself of the opportunity of a fresh pinch, to rise and take leave.

"Oo, what's takin ye awa, Archie, in sic a hurry? Sit doon there,' laying her hand upon his arm, an' rest ye, an' tak a glass o' wine an' a bit breed; or may be,' turning to Mary, ye wad rather hae a drap broth to warm ye. What gars ye luck sae blae, bairn? I'm sure it's no cauld; but ye're just like the lave: ye gang aw skiltin aboot the streets half naked, an' than ye maun sit an' birsle yoursels afore the fire at hame.'

"She had now shuffled along to the further end of the room, and opening a press, took out wine, and a platefull of variousshaped articles of bread, which she handed to Mary.

"Hae, bairn-tak a cookie-tak it up what are you fear'd for ?-it'll no bite ye. Here's t'ye, Glenfern, an' your wife, an' your wean, puir tead, it's no had a very chancy ootset, weel a wat.'

"The wine being drank, and the cookies discussed, Mr Douglas made another attempt to withdraw, but in vain.

Canna ye sit still a wee, man, an' let me speer after my auld freens at Glenfern. Hoo's Grizzy, an' Jacky, an' Nicky?-aye workin awa at the pills an' the drogs-he, he! I ne'er swallowed a pill, nor gied a doit for drogs aw my days, an' see an ony o' them'll rin a race wi' me whan they're naur five score.'

"Mr Douglas here paid her some compliments upon her appearance, which were pretty graciously received; and added, that he was the bearer of a letter from his aunt Grizzy, which he would send along with a roebuck and brace of moor-game.

"Gin your roebuck's nae better than

your last, atweel it's no worth the sendin': poor dry fisinless dirt, no worth the chowing; weel a wat, I begrudged my teeth on't. Your muirfowl was na that ill, but they're no worth the carryin; they're dong cheap i' the market enoo, so it's nae great compliment. Gin ye had brought me a leg o' gude mutton, or a cauler sawmont, there would hae been some sense in't; but ye're ane o' the fowk that'll ne'er harry yoursel wi' your presents; it's but the pickle poother they cost you, an' I'se warran ye're thinkin mair o' your ain diversion than o' my stamick, when ye're at the shootin' o' them, puir beasts.'

"Mr Douglas had borne the various indignities levelled against himself and his family with a philosophy that had no parallel in his life before; but to this attack upon his game he was not proof. His colour rose, his eyes flashed fire, and something resembling an oath burst from his lips, as he strode indignantly towards the door.

"His friend, however, was too nimble for him. She stepped before him, and, breaking into a discordant laugh, as she patted him on the back, So I see ye're just the auld man, Archie,-ay ready to tak the strums, an ye dinna get a' thing ye're ain wye. Mony a time I had to fleech ye oot o' the dorts whan ye was a callant. Div ye mind hoo ye was affronted because I set ye doon to a cauld pigeon-pye, an' a tanker o' tippeny, ae night to ye're fowerhoors, afore some leddies he, he, he! Weel a wat, ye're wife maun hae her ain adoos to manage ye, for ye're a camstairy chield, Archie.'

"Mr Douglas still looked as if he was irresolute whether to laugh or be angry.

"Come, come, sit ye doon there till I speak to this bairn,' said she, as she pulled Mary into an adjoining bed-chamber, which wore the same aspect of chilly neatness as the one they had quitted. Then pulling a huge bunch of keys from her pocket, she opened a drawer, out of which she took a pair of diamond ear-rings. Hae, bairn,' said she, as she stuffed them into Mary's hand; they belanged to your faither's grandmother. She was a gude woman, an' had four-an'-twenty sons an' dochters, an' I wiss ye nae war fortin than just to hae as mony. But mind ye,' with a shake of her bony finger, they maun a' be Scots. Gin I thought ye wad mairry ony pockpuddin', fient haed wad ye hae gotten frae me.-Noo, haud ye're tongue, an' dinna deive me wi' thanks,' almost pushing her into the parlour again; an' sin ye're gaun awa the morn, I'll see nae mair o' ye enoo-so fare ye weel. But, Archie, ye maun come an' tak your breakfast wi' me. I hae muckle to say to you; but ye manna be sae hard upon my baps as ye used to be,' with a facetious grin to her mollified favourite, as they shook hands and parted.

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"Well, how do you like Mrs Mac

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"That is a cruel question, uncle,' anMy gratitude and my taste are at such variance, dis playing her splendid gift, that I know not how to reconcile them.'

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"That is always the case with those whom Mrs Macshake has obliged,' returned Mr Douglas. She does many liberal things, but in so ungracious a manner, that people are never sure whether they are obliged or insulted by her. But the way in which

she receives kindness is still worse. Could

any thing equal her impertinence about my roebuck? Faith, I've a good mind never to enter her door again!'

"Mary could scarcely preserve her gravity at her uncle's indignation, which seemed so disproportioned to the cause. But, to turn the current of his ideas, she remarked, that he had certainly been at pains to select two admirable specimens of her countrywomen for her.

"I don't think I shall soon forget either Mrs Gawffaw or Mrs Macshake,' said she, laughing.

"I hope you won't carry away the impression, that these two lusus naturæ are specimens of Scotchwomen?' said her uncle. The former, indeed, is rather a sort of weed that infests every soil-the latter, to be sure, is an indigenous plant. I question if she would have arrived at such per fection in a more cultivated field, or genial clime. She was born at a time when Scotland was very different from what it is now. Female education was little attended to, even in families of the highest rank; consequently, the ladies of those days possess a raciness in their manners and ideas that we should vainly seek for in this age of cultivation and refinement. Had your time permitted, you could have seen much good society here, superior, perhaps, to what is to be found any where else, as far as mental cultivation is concerned. But you will have leisure for that when you return.'"

Our extracts have run out to such a length, that we must be contented to go over the rest of the story without specimens. On arriving at the seat of Lord Courtland, Mary finds her mother, a heartless unfeeling piece of selfishness, and her sister Adelaide, a beautiful creature, in the fair way to become just such another. Lady Emily Lindore, her cousin, is a fine, high-spirited, frank, and amiable girl, who has long been in love with Mary's brother Edward, a sailor; and from her alone she receives a kind and encouraging reception. The family circle at Beech Park is described with infinite skill, and shews how accurately the author has observed the dull and ob

jectless mode of life adopted by too parasite physician, Dr Redgill, is a very many of our nobility. Above all, the happy sketch, and abounds in touches of a quiet and graphical humour.

The last volume, although it unfolds the amours, and brings about the marriage, of no less than three couples, is by no means so amusing as the first. The loves of Mary Douglas and Colosimple and graceful manner; and this nel Lennox, however, are told in a part of the narrative cannot be read without giving us as favourable an idea of the character, as the whole work must do of the talents, of the author. Marriage the second, in short, is in every respect the very opposite of marriage the first. Marriage the third occurs between Adelaide Douglas and a certain formal dignified Duke of Altamont, and the lady, as might be expected, proves false to him, and elopes with her cousin, young Lord Lindore, in the course of a few months after the wedding. Lady Emily and Edward Douglas form marriage the fourth, and are happy in a calm steady sort of way, as if nothing particular had happened.

ried on through all the book, by means There is an excellent underplot carof Sir Simon M'Laughlan, a dwarfish and hunch-backed baronet, and his spouse, the pink of all rough, rude, dogmatical, snuff-taking, doctoring, intolerable old viragos. But we must not venture to touch upon these rich characters. We are sure our readers will be anxious to read the book, and hope we have succeeded in not spoiling their appetite for it, by giving too full an account of its contents. trust the fair author will not be long silent; and that, when she next comes forth, she will not hesitate to disclose a name, which, whatever it may be, she is in no danger of dishonouring.

We

A FEW THOUGHTS ON PUBLIC FEELING.

WHO has not heard the old story about the sturdy gentleman who was persuaded, by a trick of his acquaintances, into a firm belief that he was the victim of a galloping consumption? at every corner he was met by some new member of the wicked confederacy, and saluted with anxious inquiries after his health, and doleful condolings

on the obvious decline of his vigour. One or two might be mistaken, but "vox populi, vox Dei," said the dupe to himself; so he went home in sorrow, and despondency and drugs soon made him a more pitiable object than even his persecutors had represented him to be.

We shrewdly suspect that the domestic enemies of the peace of England, are adopting a mode of attack not very dissimilar to this. They embody their true wishes in the shape of false statements; and hope, by the unceasing administration of cautions, condolences, and recipes, to persuade us, both that our country is in a state of disease, and that they themselves, as they have been the first to discover, so they are also the most likely persons to cure her maladies. Does any one modestly express his hesitation about believing their alarming story? they assure him that they cannot be mistaken, that their diagnosis is their forte, and that it is no great wonder an unexperienced individual like himself should be deceived by symptoms of vigour which they know to be superficial and insignificant. Does some man of firmer nerves express not only his disbelief of their statement, but his suspicion of their candour, and his contempt of their skill? the cunning empirics turn upon the heel, and whisper to all they meet, that the bold sceptic is a hypocritical and designing knave, who speaks peace while there is no peace," and is willing to extenuate the virulence of the disease, in order that he may profit in private by the hypochondriacal facility of the deceived and flattered, although drooping and desperate patient.

66

One of the most fatal symptoms of political decay which these quacks of party affect to descry and to deplore, is a want of confidence in the government among the majority of the people. According to them, the inhabitants of England have lost that habitual veneration for the legal authorities of their country, which formed so distinguishing a characteristic in the spirit of their fathers. The House of Commons, they assert, is no longer regarded by us as the fair and honourable representation of the wishes and the wisdom of the people; the Peers have descended from their old dignity of independence, and are alternately the masters and the slaves of a corrupt

ing and unprincipled ministry; but above all, the monarchical part of the establishment has fallen from its high estate." Royalty has become a cipher and a pageant. It is courted without love, and obeyed without devotion.-The spring of constitutional attachment has been loosened; and the motions of the great machine are becoming every day more languid. Opinion, the main support of every government, and the only effectual one of a free government, has become changed. Our love of our institutions, and our pride in their excellence, were once great, and could not have been lessened, except these institutions had become corrupted, and that excellence obscured. The luminary of British freedom,-if we are to trust the report of these wise Chaldeans, "Looks through the horizontal misty air, Shorn of his beams, or, from behind the moon, In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change, Perplexes monarchs."

We think it would not be a very difficult matter to expose to Englishmen the futility of all these melancholy statements and dismal expectations, as well as the malignant hearts or stupid heads, of those by whom they have been most boldly and most extensively promulgated. The tricks are old, and favourite ones with those whose inter

est it is to arrogate the praises of extraordinary sincerity and discernment.

Μαντι κακων, ἐ πωποτε μοι το κρηγεον είπας. Αιεί τοι τα κακ' εςι φίλα φρεσι μαντευεσθαι. Εσθλον δ' ἐδε τι πω ειπας επος εδ' ετέλεσσας.

appears

that

false and treacherous oracles have But we are sorry to find that these found their way to the minds of foreigners, who have fewer means in their power, either of detecting their inherent absurdities, or of estimating the character of those who utter them. the soundness of our national feeling, Even abroad, however, it principle, and attachment, is asserted and maintained by those who know us best, and are therefore most entitled to speak of us. The following extract from a letter, written a few weeks ago, by the BARON VON LAUERWINKEL, will, we are sure, be acceptable to all our readers.

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the public feeling of the people of England towards their government has been changed. In every country, the violence of the spirit of faction, and the grossness of those absurdities which party men utter for their own purposes, bear an exact proportion to the freedom, and therefore to the excellence, of its government and constitution. The very calumnies to which you have been a listener, carry their own refutation upon their front. What they tell you of the English is true of the Prussians, the Bavarians, and the Wirtembergers, but who among them dares to make use of such language as you have heard from the discontented and disaffected subjects of Britain ?

"You have never been in England; I am satisfied that a few weeks' residence among the people of that blessed island, would effectually dispel all the foolish notions which you have communicated to me. I have studied their history and their literature, and I have visited and contemplated their modes of life; and I see no reason to suspect that the unity of their national sentiments has been shaken, even by the most violent of those convulsions which have reached the centre-spirit of the continental nations. The party which is out of power is always ready to revile that which is in; and a government, such as that of England, can never be exposed to a more severe reproach, than that of having forfeited, in any measure, the attachment of its subjects. Be assured, that the tales which you have heard are merely idle mists, called up by party-conjurors, to blind the eyes of those whom it is their interest to deceive. They serve the petty purpose for which they were created, pass away, and are forgotten; to be succeeded, in due season, by other tricks equally contemptible, and equally transitory. Such things make no impression on the general mind of the nation. The simple dupes of faction believe, indeed, that the darkness which veils their own optics is an universal darkness; but, in truth, it is "a cloud no bigger than a man's hand;" and beyond the petty circle in which they are confined and agitated by the jugglings of an impure sorcery, the face of nature is as fair, and the ether as serene as ever. The voice of the people of England is still unbroken and the same. They have submitted to many privations, they have made

many sacrifices; but they know that the objects for which they were contending were worthy of all that they could do or suffer. They have neither been unduly depressed by their misfortunes, nor indecently elated by their successes; for both the misfortune and the success was the lot of all; and every feeling, whether of sorrow or of joy, is calmed, and consecrated, and sublimed, by being the feeling of a nation. The wise and meditative English are not easily to be persuaded that they owe no gratitude to those principles of administration, which brought the sacred ark of their freedom, entire and triumphant, out of those billows of democratic or despotic rage, which overwhelmed the more gaudy, but less substantial, vessels of their neighbours. They are not to be told by those who shrunk during the tempest, that the pilots, who were unmoved either by danger or by obloquy, have founded for themselves no claim to the respect of those whom they saved. In the midst of their proudest exultation, they remember that their struggle was made, not for acquisition, but for preservation; and they sit down at the termination of the conflict, satisfied abundantly to be the same that they had been. So secure is their position, that they have no occasion either to be jealous of those who have guided, or fearful of those who would have betrayed, them. They feel that virtue and religion are still alive within them; and they have no reason or inclination to suspect that their patriotism has become extinct. They entertained no foolish or extravagant hopes, and they do not complain because they have not been disappointed. They still preserve the same tone which their fathers bequeathed to them, and which, they doubt not, they shall transmit to their children. As the Athenians said manfully in their sorrow, the English are content to say, calmly, and with better reason, in their triumph, 'Our form of government is not devised after foreign fashions: it is such, that we are rather imitated by others than emulous of them. In private affairs, justice is rendered to every man according to the laws. And as for public honours, these are obtained mostly by virtue and reputation, not by the mere adoption of a party: neither is any man so poor, that his obscurity of station cuts him off from the

possibility of making himself useful to his country."*

"In a country enlightened and refined to such a pitch as that which has been attained by England, the nature of the habitual feelings and dispositions of the people may be gathered, with almost unfailing certainty, from the pages of their popular poets. The present age of English poetry is a rich and brilliant one. It boasts, at this moment, of at least three great masters, each intensely original, and two of them eminently national. What is the voice of these interpreters of the thoughts of their countrymen? Does Scott minister to the sickly cravings of change, or the cowardly fears of decay? His works have nourished the high spirit of chivalry and honour, and stimulated and refreshed the martial ardour of British bosoms. He has been, like the nation to which he speaks, unmoved and unshaken amidst I the vicissitudes of the times. His voice has been like the music of a rich rejoicing trumpet, cheering, and animating, and ennobling the souls of men-loud and invigorating in the hour of danger-soft, airy, and delightful in the season of repose. They who embalm, within their memories and their hearts, the echoes of such a voice as this, can they be a set of doleful, desponding, trembling, unsatisfied, unhappy changelings? The supposition is monstrous and absurd.Wordsworth is a poet of profounder sentiment; his delight has been in solitude, and he has therefore spoken less to the ordinary passions of active men. His familiarity has, indeed, been "Not with the mean and vulgar works of

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declamations of demagogues, the hypocritical dogmas of self-constituted judges, have never deceived the stately intellect that holds its converse with the

"Wisdom and spirit of the universe, The soul that is the eternity of thought." His patriotism has been like his poetry, affectionate, tender, and beautiful, but at the same time strong, rational, and sublime.

"The only great English poet of our time, who seems to despise the triumphs of his country, to despair of the security of her freedom, and to treat without respect the instruments to which she has delegated her authority, is Byron. It is pity that it should be so. Such a spirit deserved better things than it has found. But we must beware of drawing any general conclusions from the tone in which this gloomy poet speaks of political affairs. If he be a just interpreter of the political feelings of his countrymen, shall we not admit his testimony to be of equal weight in regard to their notions of religion, but, above all, of morality? Alas! Byron is no Englishman in any of these things. His creed seems to be that of a dark despairing fatalist, who despises exertion, and almost disbelieves futurity. His morality is apparently even more unworthy of his genius. Formed by nature to be the promoter of high thoughts and magnificent aspirations, he condescends to extenuate the foulness of heartless corruption, and to scoff with bitter derision at the proudest of all his country's distinctionsthe purity of her domestic virtues. We must lament the perversion of this great mind; but we should beware of quoting that as an authority, which can only be viewed as a lamentable and unnatural exception.

"During the last visit which I paid directed to the subject on which you to England, my thoughts were often have addressed me; for so must the thoughts be of every one who reads the daily newspapers and tracts circulated among all classes of this people of politicians. The more I reflected, the more confidence did I gain. But I must confess that the circumstance which made most impression on my haps, presented itself to you, and mind, was one, which has never, perwhose weight I suspect, indeed, is not duly felt by those who are more nearly

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