misery in the Salmon Pool. Oh! that it had | you-our Hearty-though not two feet long been our purse! Who cares for a dozen dirty sovereigns and a score of nasty notes? And what's the use of them to us now, or indeed at any time? And what's the use of this identical rod? Hang it, if a little thing would not make us break it! A multiplying reel indeed! The invention of a fool. The Tent sees not us again; this afternoon we shall return to Edinburgh. Don't talk to us or flies at the next village. There are no flies at the village -there is no village. O Beelzebub! O Satan! was ever man tempted as we are tempted? See-see a Fish-a fine Fish-an enormous Fish-leaping to insult us! Give us our gun that we may shoot him-no-no, dang guns -and dang this great clumsy rod! Therelet it lie there for the first person that passesfor we swear never to angle more. As for the Awe we never liked it-and wonder what infatuation brought us here. We shall be made to pay for this yet-whew! there was a twinge -that big toe of ours we'll warrant is as red as fire, and we bitterly confess that we deserve the gout. Och! och! och! But hark! whoop and hollo, and is that too the music of the hunter's horn? Reverberating among the woods a well-known voice salutes our ear, and there! bounds Hamish over the rocks like a chamois taking his pastime. Holding up our LASCELLES! he places it with a few respectful words-hoping we have not missed it and standing aloof-leaves us to our own reflections and our flies. Nor do those amount to remorse-nor these to more than a few dozens. Samson's strength having been restored-we speak of our rod, mind ye, not of ourselves—we lift up our downcast eyes, and steal somewhat ashamed a furtive glance at the trees and stones that must have overheard and overseen all our behaviour. We leave those who have been in any thing like the same predicament to confess-not publicly there is no occasion for that-nor on their knees but to their own consciences, if they have any, their grief and their joy, their guilt, and, we hope, their gratitude. Transported though they were beyond all bounds, we forgive them; for even those great masters of wisdom, the Stoics, were not infallible, nor were they always able to sustain, at their utmost strength, in practice the principles of their philosophy. We are in a bloody mood, and shall not leave this Pool--without twenty mortal murders on our head. Jump away, TROUTS-without any bowels of compassion for the race of flies. Devouring Ephemerals! Can you not suffer the poor insects to sport out their day? They must be insipid eating; but here are some savoury exceedingly-it is needless to mention their name-that carry sauce piquante in their tails. Do try the taste of this bobber -but any one of the three you please. There! hold fast KIRBY-for that is a Whopper. A Mort! we did not suppose there were any in the river. Why, he springs as if he were a Fish? Go it again, Beauty. We ourselves could jump a bit in our day-nearly four times our own length-but we never could clear our own height, nor within half-a-foot of it; while certainly do the perpendicular to the tune of four from tail-fin to water-surface-your snout being six nearer the sky than the foam-bells you break in your descent into your native element. Cayenne, mustard, and ketchup is our zest, and we shall assuredly eat you at sunset. Do you know the name of the Fool at the other end-according to Dr. Johnson? CHRISTOPHER NORTH. "Tis an honour to be captured by the Old Knight of the Bloody Hand. You deserve to die such a death-for you keep in the middle of the current like a mort of mettle, and are not one of the skulkers that seek the side, and would fain take to the bush in hopes of prolonging life by foul entanglement. Bravely bored, Gil Morrice. There is as great difference in the moral qualities of the finny tribe as among us humans-and we have known some cowardly wretches escape our clutches by madly floundering in among floating weeds, or diving down among labyrinths of stone at the bottom, in paroxysms of fear that no tackle could withstand, not even Mackenzie's. He has broke his heart. Feeble as the dying gladiator, the arena swims around him, and he around the arena-till sailing with snout shore-ward, at sea in his own pool, he absolutely rolls in convulsions in between our very feet, and we, unprepared for such a mode of procedure, hastily retreating, discover that our joints are not so supple as of yore, and play cloit on our back among the gowans. O'Bronte tooths him by the cerebellum, and carries him up-brae in his mouth like a mawkin. About six pounds. Had we killed such a mort as is now in Magog, fifty years ago, we should not have rested a single instant after basketing him, before rerushing, with a sanguinary aspect, to the work of death. Now carelessly diffused, we lie on our elbow, with our mild cheek on our palm, and keep gazing-but not lack-a-daisically-on the circumambient woods. Yes! circumambient-for look where we will, they accompany our ken like a peristrephic panorama. If men have been seen walking like trees, why may not trees be seen walking like men—in battalia-in armies-but oh! how peaceful the array; and as the slow silvan swimming away before our eyes subsides and settles, in that steadfast variegation of colouring, what a depth of beauty and grandeur, of joy and peace! Phin! this rod is thy masterpiece. And what Gut! There she has it! Reel-music for ever! Ten fathom are run out already-and see how she shoots, Hamish;—such a somerset as that was never thrown from a springboard. Just the size for strength and agilitytwenty pound to an ounce-jimp weight, Hamish-ha! Harlequin art thou-or Columbine? Assuredly neither Clown nor Pantaloon. Now we have turned her ladyship's nose up the stream, her lungs, if she have any, must be be ginning to labour, and we almost hear her snore. What! in the sulks already-sullen among the stones. But we shall make you mudge, madam, were we to tear the very tongue out of your mouth. Aye, once more down the middle to the tune of that spirited countrydance-"Off she goes!" Set corners, and ree!! The gaff, Hamish-the gaff! and the landing-net! For here is a shallow of the silver sand, spreading into the bay of a ford-and ere she recovers from her astonishment, here will we land her-with a strong pull, a long pull, and a pull altogether-just on the edge of the greensward-and then smite her on the shoulder, Hamish-and, to make assurance dc ubly sure, the net under her tail, and hoist her aloft in the sunshine, a glorious prize, dazzling the daylight, and giving a brighter verdure to the woods. He who takes two hours to kill a fish-be its bulk what it may-is no man, and is not worth his meat, nor the vital air. The proportion is a minute to the pound. This rule were we taught by the "Best at Most" among British sportsmen-Scrope the Matchless on moor, mountain, river, loch, or sea; and with exquisite nicely, have we now carried it into practice. Away with your useless steelyards. Let us feel her teeth with our fore-finger, and then held out at arm's length-so-we know by feeling, that she is, as we said soon as we saw her side, a twenty pounder to a drachm, and we have been true to time within two seconds. She has literally no head; but her snout is in her shoulders. That is the beauty of a fishhigh and round shoulders, short waisted, no loins, but all body, and not long of terminating -the shorter still the better-in a tail sharp and pointed as Diana's, when she is crescent in the sky. And lo, and behold! there is Diana-but not crescent-for round and broad is she as the sun himself-shining in the south, with as yet a needless light-for daylight has not gone down in the west-and we can hardly call it gloaming. Chaste and cold though she seem, a nunlike luminary who has just taken the veil-a transparent veil of fine fleecy cloudsyet, alas! is she frail as of old, when she descended on the top of Latmos, to hold dalliance with Endymion. She has absolutely the appearance of being in the family way-and not far from her time. Lo! two of her children stealing from ether towards her feet. One on her right hand, and another on her left-the fairest daughters that ever charmed mother's heart-and in heaven called stars. What a celestial trio the three form in the sky! The face of the moon keeps brightening as the lesser two twinkle into larger lustre; and now, though Day is still lingering, we feel that it is Night. When the one comes and when the other goes, what eye can note, what tongue can tell-but what heart feels not in the dewy hush divine, as the power of the beauty of earth decays over us, and a still dream descends upon us in the power of the beauty of heaven! going to pull her through the first few hours of the night-along with the flowing tide-up to Kinloch-Etive, to try a cast with their long net at the mouth of the river, now winding dim like a snake from King's House beneath the Black Mount, and along the bays at the head of the Loch. A rumour that we were on the river had reached them-and see an awning of tartan over the stern, beneath which, as we sit, the sun may not smite our head by day, nor the moon by night. We embark-and descend ing the river like a dream, rapidly but stilly and kept in the middle of the current by cunning helmsman, without aid of idle oar, all six suspended, we drop along through the silvan scenery, gliding serenely away back into the mountain gloom, and enter into the wider moonshine trembling on the wavy verdure of the foam-crested sea. May this be Loch-Etive? Yea-verily; but so broad here is its bosom, and so far spreads the billowy brightness, that we might almost believe that our bark was bounding over the ocean, and marching mer rily on the main. Are we-into such a dream might fancy for a moment half beguile herself ―rowing back, after a day among the savage islanders, to our ship lying at anchor in the offing, on a voyage of discovery round the world? Where are all the dogs? Ponto, Piro, Basta, trembling partly with cold, partly with hunger, partly with fatigue, and partly with fear, an ong and below the seats of the rowers-with their noses somewhat uncomfortably laid between their fore-paws on the tarry timbers, but O'Bronte boldly sitting at our side, and wistfully eyeing the green swell as it heaves beautifully by, ready at the slightest signal to leap overboard, and wallow like a walrus in the brine, of which you might almost think he was born and bred, so native seems the elemen to the "Dowg o' Dowgs." Ay, these are seamews, O'Bronte, wheeling white as silver in the moonshine; but we shall not shoot themno-no-no-we will not shoot you, ye images of playful peace, so fearlessly, nay, so lovingly attending our bark as it bounds over the breasts of the billows, in motion quick almost as your slowest flight, while ye linger around, and behind, and before our path, like fair spirits wiling us along up this great Loch, farther and farther through gloom and glimmer, into the heart of profounder solitude. On what errands of your own are ye winnowing your way, stooping ever and anon just to dip your wing-tips in the waves, and then up into the open air-the blue light filling this magnificent hollow-or seen glancing along the shadows of the mountains as they divide the Loch into a succession of separate bays, and often seem to block it up, But hark! the regular twang and dip of oars till another moonlight reach is seen extending coming up the river-and lo! indistinct in the far beyond, and carries the imagination on-on distance, something moving through the moon--on-into inland recesses that seem to lose at shine and now taking the likeness of a boat-last all connection with the forgotten sea. a barge-with bonnetted heads leaning back at once the moon is like a ghost;-and we be. at every flashing stroke-and, Hamish, list! lieve-Heaven knows why-in the authenticity a choral song in thine own dear native tongue! of Ossian's Poems. Sent hither by the Queen of the sea-fairies to bear back in state Christopher North to the Tent? No. "Tis the big coble belonging to the tacksman of the Awe-and the crew are All Was there ever such a man as Ossian? We devoutly hope there was-for if so, then there were a prodigious number of fine fellows, besides his Bardship, who after their death figured be acknowledged-let all its glaring plagiar isms from poetry of modern date inspire what derision they may-and far worse the perpetual repetition of its own imbecilities and inanities, wearying one down even to disgust and anger; yet, in spite of all, are we not made to feel, not only that we are among the mountains, but to forget that there is any other world in exist ence, save that which glooms and glimmers, and wails and raves around us in mists and clouds, and storms, and snows-full of lakes and rivers, sea-intersected and sea-surrounded, with a sky as troublous as the earth-yet both at times visited with a mournful beauty that sinks strangely into the soul-while the sha dowy life depictured there eludes not our human sympathies; nor yet, aerial though they beso sweet and sad are their voices-do there float by as unbeloved, unpitied, or unhonoured -single, or in bands-the ghosts of the brave and beautiful when the few stars are dim, and the moon is felt, not seen, to be yielding what faint light there may be in the skies. away as their glimmering ghosts, with noble | impossible-let all the inconsistencies and effect, among the moonlight mists of the moun- violations of nature ever charged against it tains. The poetry of Ossian has, it is true, since the days of Macpherson, in no way coloured the poetry of the island; and Mr. Wordsworth, who has written beautiful lines about the old Phantom, states that fact as an argument against its authenticity. He thinks Ossian, as we now possess him, no poet; and alleges that if these compositions had been the good things so many people have thought them, they would, in some way or other, have breathed their spirit over the poetical genius of the land. Who knows that they may not do so yet? The time may not have come. But must all true poetry necessarily create imitation, and a school of imitators? One sees no reason why it must. Besides, the life which the poetry of Ossian celebrates, has utterly passed away; and the poetry itself, good, bad, or indifferent, is so very peculiar, that to imitate it at all, you must almost transcribe it. That, for a good many years, was often done, but naturally inspired any other feeling than delight or admiration. But the simple question is, Do the poems of Ossian delight greatly and The boat in a moment is a bagpipe; and not widely? We think they do. Nor can we be- only so, but all the mountains are bagpipes, lieve that they would not still delight such a and so are the clouds. All the bagpipes poet as Mr. Wordsworth. What dreariness in the world are here, and they fill heaven overspreads them all! What a melancholy and earth. "Tis no exaggeration-much less spirit shrouds all his heroes, passing before us a fiction-but the soul and body of truth. There on the cloud, after all their battles have been Hamish stands stately at the prow; and as the fought, and their tombs raised on the hill! The boat hangs by midships on the very point that very picture of the old blind Hero-bard him- commands all the echoes, he fills the whole self, often attended by the weeping virgins night with the "Campbells are coming," till the whom war has made desolate, is always touch-sky yells with the gathering as of all the Clans. ing, often sublime. The desert is peopled with lamenting mortals, and the mists that wrap them with ghosts, whose remembrances of this life are all dirge and elegy. True, that the images are few and endlessly reiterated; but that, we suspect, is the case with all poetry composed not in a philosophic age. The great and constant appearances of nature suffice, in their simplicity, for all its purposes. The poet seeks not to vary their character, and his hearers are willing to be charmed over and over again by the same strains. We believe that the poetry of Ossian would be destroyed by any greater distinctness or variety of image-vesting with apparent woodiness what an hour ry. And if, indeed, Fingal lived and Ossian sung, we must believe that the old bard was blind; and we suspect that in such an age, such a man would, in his blindness, think dreamily indeed of the torrents, and lakes, and heaths, and clouds, and mountains, moons and stars, which he had leapt, swam, walked, climbed, and gazed on in the days of his rejoicing youth. Then has he no tendernessno pathos-no beauty. Alas for thousands of hearts and souls if it be even so! For then are many of their holiest dreams worthless all, and divinest melancholy a mere complaint of the understanding, which a bit of philosophical eriticism will purge away, as the leech's phial does a disease of the blood. Macpherson's Ossian, is it not poetry? Wordsworth says it is not-but Christopher North says it is with all reverence for the King. Let its antiquity be given up--let such a state of society as is therein described be declared His eyes are triumphantly fixed on ours to catch their emotions; his fingers cease their twinkling; and still that wild gathering keeps playing of itself among the mountains-faint er and fainter, as it is flung from cliff to cliff, till it dies away far-far off—as if in infinitude sweet even and soft in its evanescence as some lover's lute. We are now in the bay of Gleno. For though moonlight strangely alters the whole face of nature, confusing its most settled features, and with a gentle glamoury blending with the green. sward what once was the gray granite, and in ago was the desolation of herbless cliffs-yet not all the changes that wondrous nature, in ceaseless ebb and flow, ever wrought on her works, could metamorphose out of our recog nition that Glen, in which, one night-longlong ago "In life's morning march, when our spirit was young!" we were visited by, a dream-a dream that shadowed forth in its inexplicable symbols the whole course of our future life-the gravesthe tombs where many we loved are now buried-that churchyard, where we hope and believe that one day our own bones will rest. But who shouts from the shore, Hamishand now, as if through his fingers, sends forth a sharp shrill whistle that pierces the sky! Ah, ha! we ken his shadow in the light, with the roe on his shoulder. "Tis the schoolmas ter of Gleno, bringing down our quarry to the boat-kilted, we declare, like a true Son of the Mist. The shore here is shelving but stony, and our prow is aground. But strong-spined and loined, and strong in their withers, are the M'Dougals of Lorn; and, wading up to the red hairy knees, he has flung the roe into the boat. and followed it himself like a deer-hound. So bend to your oars, my hearties-my heroesthe wind freshens, and the tide strengthens from the sea; and at eight knots an hour we shall sweep along the shadows, and soon see the antern, twinkling as from a lighthouse, on the pole of our Tent. In a boat, upon a great sea-arm, at night, among mountains, who would be so senseless, so soulless as to speak? The hour has its might, and state of the stones over which we make such a clatter, we shrewdly suspect that the parliamentary grant for destroying the old Highland torrent-roads has not extended its ravages to Glen-Etive. O'Bronte, "Like panting Time, toils after us in vain ; and the pointers are following us by our own scent, and that of the roe, in the distant darkness. Pull up, Hamish, pull up, or otherwise we shall overshoot our mark, and meet with some accident or other, perhaps a capsize on Bachaille-Etive, or the Black Mount. We had no idea the circle of greensward in front of the Tent was so spacious. Why, there is room for the Lord Mayor of London's state-coach to turn with its eight horses, and that enormous "Because not of this noisy world, but silent and divine!" ass, Parson Dillon, on the dickey. What could A sound there is in the sea-green swell, and Certes, the association of ideas is a droll thing, have made us think at this moment of London? the hollows of the rocks, that keep muttering, as and also sometimes most magnificent. Dancing their entrances feel the touch of the tide. But no- in the Tent, among strange figures! Celebrathing beneath the moon can be more solemn,now tion of the nuptials of some Arab chief, in an that her aspect is so wan, and that some melan-oasis in the Great Desert of Stony Arabia! choly spirit has obscured the lustre of the stars. Heavens! look at Tickler! How he hauls the We feel as if the breath of old elegiac poetry Hizzies! There is no time to be lost-he and were visiting our slumber. All is sad within the Admiral must not have all the sport to us, yet why we know not; and the sadness is stranger as it is deeper after a day of almost themselves; and, by and by, spite of age and foolish pastime, spent by a being who believes infirmity, we shall show the Tent a touch of that he is immortal, and that this life is but the the Highland Fling. Hollo! you landloupers ! Christopher is upon you-behold the Tenth threshold of a life to come. Poor, puny, and paltry pastimes indeed are they all! But are they more so than those pursuits of which the moral poet has sung, "The paths of glory lead but to the grave!" Methinks, now, as we are entering into a sabler mass of shadow, that the doctrine of eternal punishment of sins committed in time-but "Here's a health to all good lasses, Avatar incarnated in North. But what Apparitions at the Tent-door salute our approach? "Back step these two fair angels, half afraid So suddenly to see the Griesly King!" Goat-herdesses from the cliffs of Glencreran or Glenco, kilted to the knee, and not unconscious of their ankles, one twinkle of which is sufficient to bid "Begone dull care" for ever. One hand on a shoulder of each of the mountain-nymphs-sweet liberties-and then emRest on your oars, lads. Hamish! the quech! braced by both, half in their arms, and half give each man a caulker, that his oar may send on their bosoms, was ever Old Man so pleaa bolder twang from its rollock, and our fish-santly let down from triumphal car, on the coble walk the waves like a man-of-war's gig, with the captain on board, going ashore, after a long cruise, to meet his wife. Now she spins! and lo! lights at Kinloch-Etive, and beyond on the breast of the mountain, bright as Hesperus -the pole-star of our Tent! soft surface of his mother-earth? Ay, there lies the Red-deer! and what heaps of smaller slain! But was there ever such a rush of dogs! We shall be extinguished. Down, dogs, down-nay, ladies and gentlemen, be seated on one another's knees as before-we beseech you-we are but men like yourselves Well, this is indeed the Londe of Faery! A car with a nag caparisoned at the water edge!-and On with the roe, and in with Christopher and the fish. Now, Hamish, hand us the Crutch. After a cast or two, which, may they be successful as the night is auspicious, your presence, gentlemen, will be expected in the Tent. Now, Hamish, handle thou the ribbons-alias the hair-tether-and we will touch him behind, should he linger, with a weapon that might "Create a soul under the ribs of death." Linger! why the lightning flies from his heels, as he carries us along a fine natural causeway, ke Ossian's car-borne heroes. From the size "Without the smile from partial beauty won, Oh! what were man ?-a world without a sun!" What it is to be the darling of gods and men, and women and children! Why, the very stars burn brighter-and thou, O Moon! art like the Sun. We foresee a night of danc. ing and drinking-till the mountain-dew melt in the lustre of morn. Such a day should have a glorious death-and a glorious resur rection. Hurra! Hurra! THE MOORS FOR EVER! THE MOORS! THE MOORS! HIGHLAND SNOW-STORM. WHAT do you mean by original genius? By | presence-if any mortal feeling be so-is that fine line in the Pleasures of Hope "To muse on Nature with a poet's eye?" sublime. Your imagination is troubled, and dreams of death, but of no single corpse, of no single grave. Nor fear you for yourselfWhy-genius-one kind of it at least-is for the Hut in which you thus enjoy the storm, transfusion of self into all outward things. is safer than the canopied cliff-calm of the The genius that does that-naturally, but noeagle's nest; but your spirit is convulsed from velly is original; and now you know the its deepest and darkest foundations, and all meaning of one kind of original genius. Have that lay hidden there of the wild and wonder we, then, Christopher North, that gift? Have ful, the pitiful and the strange, the terrible and you! Yea, both of Us. Our spirits animate pathetic, is now upturned in dim confusion, the insensate earth, till she speaks, sings, and imagination, working among the hoarded smiles, laughs, weeps, sighs, groans, goes gatherings of the heart, creates out of them mad, and dies. Nothing easier, though per-moods kindred and congenial with the hurri haps it is wicked, than for original genius like ours, or yours, to drive the earth to distraction. We wave our wizard hand thus—and lo! list! she is insane. How she howls to heaven, and how the maddened heaven howls back her frenzy! Two dreadful maniacs raging apart, but in communion, in one vast bedlam! The drift-snow spins before the hurricane, hissing like a nest of serpents let loose to torment the air. What fierce flakes! furies! as if all the wasps tha. ever stung had been revivified, and were now careering part and parcel of the tempest. We are in a Highland Hut in the midst of mountains. But no land is to be seen cane, intensifying the madness of the heaven and the earth, till that which sees and that which is seen, that which hears and that which is heard, undergo alternate mutual transfiguration; and the blind Roaring Dayat once substance, shadow, and soul-is felt te be one with ourselves-the blended whole either the Live-Dead, or the Dead-Alive. We are in a Highland Hut-if we called it a Shieling we did so merely because we love the sound of the word Shieling, and the image it at once brings to eye and ear-the rustling of leaves on a summer silvan bower, by simple art slightly changed from the form of the any more than if we were in the middle of the growth of nature, or the waving of fern on the sea. Yet a wan glare shows that the snow-turf-roof and turf-walls, all covered with wildstorm is strangely shadowed by superincum-flowers and mosses, and moulded by one sin bent cliffs; and though you cannot see, yougle season into a knoll-like beauty, beside its hear the mountains. Rendings are going on, frequent, over your head-and all around the blind wilderness-the thunderous tumblings down of avalanches, mixed with the moaning, shriekings, and yellings of caves, as if spirits there were angry with the snow-drift choking up the fissures and chasms in the cliffs. Is that the creaking and groaning, and rocking and tossing of old trees, afraid of being uprooted and flung into the spate? "Red comes the river down, and loud and oft The angry spirit of the water shrieks," more fearful than at midnight in this nightlike day-whose meridian is a total sun eclipse. The river runs by, bloodlike, through the snow--and, short as is the reach you can see through the flaky gloom, that short reach shows that all his course must be terrible more and more terrible-as, gathering his streams like a chieftain his clan-erelong he will sweep shieling, and hut, and hamlet to the sea, undermining rocks, cutting mounds asunder, and blowing up bridges that explode into the air with a roar like that of cannon. You sometimes think you hear thunder, though you know that cannot be-but sublimer than thunder is the nameless noise so like that of agonized life-that eddies far and wide around -high and huge above-fear all the while being at the bottom of your heart—an objectless, dim, dreary, undefinable fear, whose troubled guardian birch-tree, insupportable to all evil spirits, but with its silvery stem and drooping tresses dear to the Silent People that won in the land of peace. Truly this is not the sweet human dwellings, on the dip of some great Shieling-season, when, far away from all other mountain, quite at the head of a day's-journeylong glen, the young herdsman, haply all alone, without one single being with him that has the use of speech, liveth for months retired far from kirk and cross-Luath his sole companion-his sole care the pasturing heids-the sole sounds he hears the croak of the laven on the cliff, or bark of the eagle in the sky. O sweet, solitary lot of lover! Haply in some oasis in the wilderness, some steadfast gleam of emerald light amid the hyacinthine-hue of the heather, that young herdsman hath pitched his tent, by one Good Spirit haunted morning, noon, and night, through the sunny, moonlight, starry months,-the Orphan-girl, whom years ago her dying father gave into his arms-the old blind soldier-knowing that the boy would shield her innocence when every blood-rela tion had been buried-now Orphan-girl no more, but growing there like a lily at the Shieling door, or singing within sweetlier than any bird-the happiest of all living thingsher own Ronald's dark-haired Bride. We are in a Highland Hut among a High land Snow-storm-and all at once amidst the |