admired by the world, that we often wonder he | into the town-all its life seems to do so-and as not been spoiled. "What a glorious Oc- to leave nothing behind but the bare trees and tober!" "Why, you will surely not leave us hedges. Equipages again go glittering along till October comes!" "October is the month all the streets, squares, circuses, and crescents of all months-and, till you see him, you have and one might think that the entire "nation of not seen the Lakes." We acknowledge his ladies and gentlemen "—for King George the claims. He is often truly delightful; but, like Fourth, we presume, meant to include the sex, other brilliant persons, thinks himself not only in his compliment-were moving through their privileged to be at times extremely dull, but his metropolis. Amusement and business walk intensest stupidity is panegyrized as wit of the hand-in-hand-you hardly know, from their first water-while his not unfrequent rudeness, cheerful countenances, which is which; for of which many a common month would be the Scots, though a high-cheeked, are not an ashamed, passes for the ease of high-birth, or ill-favoured folk in their features-and though the eccentricity of genius. A very different their mouths are somewhat of the widest, their feeling indeed exists towards unfortunate No- teeth are white as well as sharp, and on the vember. The moment he shows his face, all opening of their ruddy lips, their ivory-cases other faces are glum. We defy month or man, are still further brightened by hearty smiles. under such a trial, to make himself even tol- "Twould be false to say that their figures are erably agreeable. He feels that he is no fa- distinguished by an air of fashion-for we have vourite, and that a most sinister misinterpre- no court, and our nobles are almost all abtation will be put on all his motions, manners, sentees. But though, in one sense, the men are thoughts, words, and deeds. A man or a month ugly customers, as they will find so circumstanced is much to be pitied. Think, look, speak, act as he will-yea, even more like an angel than a man or a month-every eyebrow arches every nostril distends-every lip curls towards him in contempt, while blow over the ice that enchains all his feelings and faculties, heavy-chill whisperings of "who is that disagreeable fellow?" In such a frozen atmosphere eloquence would be congealed on the lips of an Ulysses-Poetry prosified on those of an Apollo.

Edinburgh, during the dead of Summer, is a far more solitary place than Glenetive, Glenevis, or Glenco. There is not, however, so much danger of being lost in it as in the Moor of Rannoch-for streets and squares, though then utterly tenantless, are useful as landmarks to the pilgrim passing through what seems to be

"A still forsaken City of the Dead!"

But, like a frost-bound river, suddenly dissolved by a strong thaw, and coming down in spate from the mountains to the low lands, about the beginning of November Life annually reoverflows our metropolis, with a noise like "the rushing of many chariots." The streets, that for months had been like the stony channels of dried-up streams-only not quite so well paved-are again all a murmur, and people addicted to the study of political economy, begin to hold

"Each strange tale devoutly true"

"Who chance to tread upon their freeborn toe," yet, literally, they are a comely crew, and if formed into battalions in marching order, would make the National Guard in Paris look like "That small infantry Warr'd on by cranes." Our females have figures that can thaw any frost; and 'tis universally allowed that they walk well, though their style of pedestrianism does not so readily recall to the imagination Virgil's picture of Camilla flying along the heads of corn without touching their ears, as the images of paviers with post-looking mallets driving down dislodged stones into the streets. Intermingling with the lighter and more elastic footsteps of your Southron dames, the on-goings of our native virgins produce a pleasant variety of motion in the forenoon mêlée that along the Street of Princes now goes nodding in the sun-glint.

"Amid the general dance and minstrelsy" who would wear a long face, unless it were in sympathy with his length of ears? A din of multitudinous joy hums in the air; you can. not see the city for the houses, its inhabitants for the people; and, as for finding one par ticular acquaintance in the crowd, why, to use an elegant simile, you might as well go search for a needle in a bottle of hay.

But hark! a hollow sound, distant, and as yet referred to no distinct place then a faint in the Malthusian theory of population. What mixture of a clear chime that is almost music swarms keep hovering round the great North--now a tune-and at last, rousing the massy ern Hive! Add eke after eke to the skep, multitude to enthusiasm, a military march, and still seems it too small to contain all the swelling various, profound, and high, with insects. Edinburgh is almost as large as Lon- drum, trombone, serpent, trump, clarionet, fife, don. Nay, don't stare! We speak compara-flute, and cymbal, bringing slowly on (is it the tively; and, as England is somewhere about six times more populous than Scotland, you may, by brushing up your arithmetic, and applying to the Census, discover that we are not so far wrong in our apparent paradox.

Were November in himself a far more wearifu' month than he is, Edinburgh would nevertheless be gladsome in the midst of all nis gloom, even as a wood in May with the Gathering of the Clans. The country flows

measured tramp of the feet of men, or the confused trampling of horses?) banners floating over the procession, above the glitter of steel, and the golden glow of helmets. "Tis a regi ment of cavalry-hurra! the Carbineers! What an Advanced Guard!

"There England sends her men, of men the chief," still, staid, bold, bronzed faces, with keen eyes, looking straight forward from between sabres: while beneath the equable but haughty motion

Now all the youth of Scotland are on fire!"

of their steeds, almost disciplined as their | ters-a change wrought for an hour of peace riders, with long black horse-hair flowing in the heart of the hurricane! Therefore the in martial majesty, nod their high Roman sailor enjoys it on the green wave-the shep. casques. The sweet storm of music has been herd on the green sward; while the memory passing by while we were gazing, and is now of mists and storms deepens the enchantment. somewhat deadened by the retiring distance Even so, Idlesse can be enjoyed but by those and by that mass of buildings, (how the win- who are permitted to indulge it, while enduring dows are alive, and agaze with faces!) while the labours of an active or a contemplative troop after troop comes on, still moving, it is life. To use another, and a still livelier image felt by all, to the motion of the warlike tune, see the pedlar toiling along the dusty road, though now across the Waterloo Bridge sound- with an enormous pack on his excursion; and ing like an echo, till the glorious war-pageant when off his aching shoulders slowly falls back is all gone by, and the dull day is deadened on the bank the loosened load, in blessed redown again into the stillness and silence of an lief think ye not that he enjoys, like a very ignoble peace. poet, the beauty of the butterflies that, wavering through the air, settle down on the wildflowers around him that embroider the wayside! Yet our pedlar is not so much either of an entymologist or a botanist as not to take out his scrip, and cat his bread and cheese with a mute prayer and a munching appetitenot idle, it must be confess'd, in that sensebut in every other idle even as the shadow of the sycamore, beneath which, with his eyes half-open-for by hypothesis he is a Scotsman-he finally sinks into a wakeful, but quiet half-sleep. "Hallo! why are you sleeping there, you idle fellow ?" bawls some beadle, or some overseer, or some magistrate, or perhaps merely one of those private persons who, out of season and in season, are constantly sending the sluggard to the ant to learn wisdomthough the ant, Heaven bless her! at proper times sleeps as sound as a sicknurse.

All her cities and towns are rejoicing in the welcome Winter; and mind, invigorated by holidays, is now at work, like a giant refreshed, in all professions. The busy bar growls, grumphs, squeaks, like an old sow with a litter of pigs pretending to be quarrelling about straws. Enter the Outer or the Inner House, and you hear eloquence that would have put Cicero to the blush, and reduced Demosthenes to his original stutter. The wigs of the Judges seem to have been growing during the long vacation, and to have expanded into an ampler wisdom. Seldom have we seen a more solemn set of men. Every one looks more gash than another, and those three in the centre seem to us the embodied spirits of Law, Equity, and Justice. What can be the meaning of all this endless litigation? On what immutable principles in human nature depends the prosperity of the Fee-fund? Life is strife. Inestimable the blessing of the great institution of Property! For without it, how could people go together by the ears, as if they would tear one another to pieces? All the strong, we must not call them bad passions, denied their natural element, would find out some channels to run in, far more destructive to the commonweal than lawsuits, and the people would be reduced to the lowest ebb of misery, and raised to the highest flow of crime. Our Parliament House here is a vast safety-valve for the escape of the foul steam that would otherwise explode and shatter the engine of the state, blowing the body and members of society to smash. As it is, how the engine works! There it goes! like Erickson's Novelty or Stevenson's Rocket along a railroad; and though an accident may occur now and then, such as an occasional passenger chucked by some uncalculated collision into the distant horizon, to be picked up whole, or in fragments, by the hoers in some turnip-field in the adjacent county, yet few or none are likely to be fatal on a great scale; and on goes the Novelty or Rocket, like a thought, with many weighty considerations after it, in the shape of wagons of Christians or cottons, while Manufactures and Commerce exult in the cause of Liberty and Locomotion

all over the world.

But to us utter idlesse is perfect bliss. And why! Because, like a lull at sea, or loun on land, it is felt to descend from Heaven on man's toilsome lot. The lull and the loun, what are they when most profound, but the transient cessation of he restlessness of winds and wa

We are now the idlest, because once were we the most industrious of men. Up to the time that we engaged to take an occasional glance over the self-growing sheets of The Periodical, we were tied to one of the oars that move along the great vessel of life; and we believe that it was allowed by all the best watermen, that

"We feather'd our oars with skill and dexterity."

But ever since we became an Editor, our repose, bodily and mental, has been like that of a Hindoo god. Often do we sit whole winter nights, leaning back on our chair, more like the image of a man than a man himself, with shut eyes, that keep seeing in succession all the things that ever happened to us, and all the persons that we ever loved, hated, or despised, embraced, beat, or insulted, since we were a little boy. They too have all an imagelike appearance, and 'tis wondrous strange the stage of that revived drama, which somehow silent they all are, actors and actresses on times seems to be a genteel comedy, and sometimes a broad farce, and then to undergo dreadful transfiguration into a tragedy deep as death.

We presume that the Public read in her own papers-we cannot but be hurt that no account of it has appeared in the Court Journal

that on Thursday the 12th current, No. 99, Moray Place, was illuminated by our annual Soirée, Conversazzione, Rout, Ball, and Supper. A Ball! yes-for Christopher North, acting in the spirit of his favourite James Thomson, "No purpose gay, Amusement, dance, or song he sternly scorns For happiness and true philosophy Are of the social, still, and smiling kind."

Al the rooms in the house were thrown open, except the cellars and the Sanctum. To the people congregated outside, the building, we have been assured, had all the brilliancy of the Bude Light. It was like a palace of light, of which the framework or skeleton was of white unveined marble. So strong was the reflection on the nocturnal heavens, that a rumour ran through the City that there was a great fire in Moray Place, nor did it subside till after the arrival and departure of several engines. The alarm of some huge conflagration prevailed during most part of the night all over the kingdom of Fife; while in the Lothians, our illumination was much admired as an uncommonly fine specimen of the Aurora Borealis.

"From the arch'd roof,

Pendent by subtle magic, many a row
Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed
With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light
As from a sky. The hasty multitude
Admiring enter'd."

We need not say who received the company, and with what grace SHE did so, standing at the first landing-place of the great staircase in able stole; for the widow's weeds have not yet been doffed for the robes of saffron-with a Queen-Mary cap pointed in the front of her serene and ample forehead, and, to please us, a few pearls sprinkled among her hair, still an unfaded auburn, and on her bosom one star

bright diamond. Had the old General himself come to life again, and beheld her then and there, he could not have been offended with such simple ornaments. The weeds he would have felt due to him, and all that his memory was fairly entitled to; but the flowers-to speak figuratively-he would have cheerfully acknowledged were due to us, and that they well became both face and figure of his lovely relict. As she moved from one room to another, showering around her serene smiles, we felt the dignity of those Virgilian words,

"Incedit Regina."

empty and motionless-with us two al ne sit. ting by each other's side affectionately and re spectfully on a sofa. Now it is filled with life and heard you ever such a happy murmur? Yet no one in particular looks as if he or she were speaking much above breath, so gentle is true refinement, like a delightful fragrance

"From the calm manners quietly exhaled."

Oh! the atrocious wickedness of a great big, hearty, huge, hulking, horse-laugh in an assemblage of ladies and gentlemen, gathered gracefully together to enjoy the courtesies, the amenities, the urbanities, and the humanities of cultivated Christian life! The pagan who perpetrates it should be burnt alive-not at a slow fire-though that would be but justicebut at a quick one, that all remnants of him and his enormity may be instantly extinguished. Lord Chesterfield has been loudly laughed at with leathern lungs for his anathema against laughter. But though often wrong, there his Lordship was right, and for that one single rule of manners he deserves a monument, as having been one of the benefactors of his species. Let smiles mantle-and that sweet, soft, low sound be heard, the susurrus. Let there be a many-voiced quiet music, like that of the summer moonlight sea when the stars are in its breast. But laughter-loud peals of laugh

ter-are like breakers-blind breakers on a

blind coast, where no verdure grows except that of tangle, and whatever is made into that vulgarist of all commodities, kelp.

"Tis not a literary conversazzione, mind ye, gentle reader; for we leave that to S. T. Coleridge, the Monarch of the Monologue. But all speak-talk-whisper-or smile, of all the ble little interesting affairs, incidents, and ocspeakable, talkable, whisperable, and smileacurrences, real or fabulous, of public, private, demi-public, or demi-semi-private life. Topics are as plentiful as snow-flakes, and melt away as fast in the stream of social pleasure,

for gossip, what other vindication does it need, than an order for you to look at a soirée of swallows in September on a slate-roof, the most innocent and white-breasted creatures that pay

Surely there is something very poetical in "A moment white, then gone for ever!" the gradual flowing in of the tide of grace, elegance and beauty, over the floors of a suit of Not a little scandal-much gossip, we dare regal-looking rooms, splendidly illuminated. say; but as for scandal, it is the vulgarest erEach party as it comes on has its own pecu- ror in the world to think that it either means, liar picturesqueness, and affects the heart or or does, any harm to any mortal. It does inimagination by some novel charm, gently finite good. It ventilates the atmosphere, and gliding onward a little while by itself, as if not prevents the "golden-fretted vault" from beunconscious of its own attractions, nor un-coming "a foul congregation of vapours." As proud of the gaze of perhaps critical admiration that attends its progressive movement. We confess ourselves partial to plumes of feathers above the radiant braidings of the silken tresses on the heads of virgins and matrons-provided they be not "dumpy women" -tall, white, blue, and pink plumes, silent in their wavings as gossamer, and as finely deli- but such gossipers that the whole air is cate, stirred up by your very breath as you a-twitter with their talk about their neighbours' bend down to salute their cheeks-not with nests-when-whew! off and away they go, kisses-for they would be cut of order both of winnowing their way westwards, through the time and place-but with words almost as ten-setting sunlight, and all in perfect amity with der as kisses, and awakening almost as tender themselves and their kind, while a return-a few sweet syllables breathed in a silver voice, with blushing cheeks, and downcast eyes that, when again uplifted, are seen to be from heaven.

A long hour ago, and all the mansion was

"Their annual visits round the globe,
Companions of the sun,"

"The world is all before them where to choose, And Providence their guide."

And, madam, you do not matronize-and, sir, you do not patronize-waltzing? "Tis very O

fie-fieish, you think-and in danger of becom- | Hebrew Melody! And now your hear feels ing very, very faux-pa-pa-ish! the utter mournfulness of these words,

"The course of true love never yet ran smooth❞— comes glidingly to our side, and having heard our wish breathed whisperingly into her ear-driven our Winter Rhapsody clean out of our a rare feature when small, thin, and delicate noddle-and to-morrow we must be sending as a leaf-just as glidingly she goes, in stature for the slater, the plumber, and the glazier. To that is almost stateliness, towards her Harp, go to bed in such a hurly-burly, would be to and assuming at once a posture that would make an Ultra-Toryish acknowledgment, not have charmed Canova, after a few prelusive only of the divine right, but of the divine touches that betray the hand of a mistress in power, of King Morpheus. But an Ultra-Tory the divine art, to the enchantment of the white we are not-though Ultra-Trimmers try to im motions of those graceful arms and fingers fine, pose upon themselves that fiction among a awakes a spirit in the strings accordant to the thousand others; so we shall smoke a cigar, spirit in that voice worthy to have blended and let sleep go to the dogs, the deuse the with St. Cecilia's in her hymning orisons. Adevil, and the Chartists.

STROLL TO GRASSMERE.

FIRST SAUNTER.

yet for not a few years we bore the name of "The Man of the Mountains ;" and, though no COMPANION of the Crutch! hast thou been a great linguists, we hope that we know some loving observer of the weather of our island- what more than the vocabulary of the lanclime? We do not mean to ask if you have guages of calm and storm. Remember that from youth been in the daily practice of rising we are now at Ambleside-and one week's from your study-chair at regular intervals, residence there may let you into some of the and ascertaining the precise point of Mercury's secrets of the unsteady Cabinet of St. Cloud. elevation on the barometrical scale. The One advice we give you, and by following it idea of trusting, throughout all the fluctuations you cannot fail to be happy at Ambleside, and of the changeful and capricious atmosphere in everywhere else. Whatever the weather be, which we live, to quicksilver, is indeed pre-love, admire, and delight in it, and vow that posterous; and we have long noticed that you would not change it for the atmosphere of meteorologists make an early figure in our a dream. If it be close, hot, oppressive, be obituaries. Seeing the head of the god above thankful for the faint air that comes down fitthe mark "fair," or "settled," out they march fully from cliff and chasm, or the breeze that in thins, without great-coat or umbrella, when ever and anon gushes from stream and lake. such a thunder-plump falls down in a deluge, If the heavens are filled with sunshine, and that, returning home by water and steam, they you feel the vanity of parasols, how cool the take to bed, and on the ninth day fever hurries silvan shade for ever moistened by the murthem off, victims to their confidence in that murs of that fairy waterfall! Should it blow treacherous tube. But we mean to ask, have great guns, cannot you take shelter in yonder you an eye, an ear, and a sixth sense, anony- magnificent fort, whose hanging battlements mous and instinctive, for all the prognosticat- are warded even from the thunder-bolt by the ing sights and sounds, and motions and shapes, dense umbrage of unviolated woods? Rainof nature? Have you studied, in silence and rain-rain-an even-down pour of rain, that solitude, the low, strange, and spirit-like whis- forces upon you visions of Noah and his ark, perings, that often, when bird and bee are and the top of Mount Ararat-still, we beseech mute, come and go, here and there, now from you, be happy. It cannot last long at that rate; crag, now from coppice, and now from moor, the thing is impossible. Even this very after all over the sultry stillness of the clouded land-noon will the rainbow span the blue entrance scape? Have you listened among mountains to the voice of streams, till you heard them prophesying change? Have you so mastered the occult science of mists, as that you can foretell each proud or fair Emergency, and the hour when grove, precipice, or plain, shall in sudden revelation be clothed with the pomp of sunshine? Are all Bewick's birds, and beasts, and fishes visible to your eyes in the woods, wastes, and waves of the clouds? And know ye what aerial condor, dragon, and whale, respectively portend? Are the Fata Morgana as You will not imagine, from any thing we familiar to you as the Aberdeen Almanac! have ever said, that we are enemies to early When a mile-square hover of crows darkens rising. Now and then, what purer bliss than air and earth, or settling loads every tree with to embrace the new-wakened Morn, just as sable fruitage, are you your own augur, equal- she is rising from her dewy bed! At such ly as when one raven lifts up his hoary black-hour, we feel as if there were neither physical ness from a stone, and sails sullenly off with nor moral evil in the world, The united power a croak, that gets fiercer and more savage in of peace, innocence, and beauty subdues every the lofty distance? Does the leaf of the forest thing to itself, and life is love. twinkle futurity? the lonely lichen brighten or Forgive us, loveliest of Mornings! for havpale its lustre with change? Does not the gifting overslept the assignation hour, and allowed of prophecy dwell with the family of the violets and the lilies? The prescient harebells, do they not let drop their closing blossoms when the heavens are niggard of their dews, or uphold them like cups thirsty for wine, when the blessing, yet unfelt by duller animal life, is beginning to drop balmily down from the rainy cloud embosomed in the blue of a midsummer's meridian day?

Forgive these friendly interrogatories. Perhaps you are weather-wiser than ourselves;

into Rydal's woody vale, as if to hail the westering sun on his approach to the mountainsand a hundred hill-born torrents will be seen flashing out of the up-folding mists. What a delightful dazzle on the light-stricken river! Each meadow shames the lustre of the emerald; and the soul wishes not for language to speak the pomp and prodigality of colours that Heaven now rejoices to lavish on the grove-girdled Fairfield, who has just tossed off the clouds from his rocky crest.

thee to remain all by thyself in the solitude, wondering why thy worshipper could prefer to thy presence the fairest phantoms that ever visited a dream. And thou hast forgiven usfor not clouds of displeasure these that have settled on thy forehead; the unreproaching light of thy countenance is upon us-a loving murmur steals into our heart from thine--and pure as a child's, daughter of Heaven! is thy breath.

In the spirit of that invocation we look