sicklike trashtric, and a meikle ashet in the middle, with naething in't I can mak onything o', gin it be na snaw taen frae a dyke, wi' a wheen green leaves amang't. Wha, the foul fiend, can drink a haill night on such a shilpit foundation, I wad like to ken? O the blythe days lang since gane! I mind as weel as if it were yesterday, fifty years bygane, there was auld Keppoch, Glenaladale, and myself, gaed doun to honest Luckie Merrylies's, in the Canongate, just by way o' takin' a freenly glass in her canny howff.-By my saul, freends we might weel be ca'd, for we never crossed the ootside o' Luckie's door for five weeks; drinkin' and drinkin', till I wad nae hardly thocht it a marvel if we had grown into fish, and the very fins had come oot at our backs. Ay, ay, those were days indeed, and braw callants lived in them! But noo-Oich! oich!" In this lugubrious manner would the good laird soliloquize, ever and anon carrying the glass to his mouth, and now and then bestowing a rueful glance on his prostrate and degenerate cronies. The following anecdote exhibits the mountain chief in all his territorial supremacy, and displays a lofty and magnanimous contempt for the petty, paltry regulations established by the sons of vulgar trade. Like many other proprietors of large but unproductive estates, the Laird of Macnab was often under the necessity of compromising his dignity by granting bills for his various purchases. These bills, for many years, were always discounted at the Perth bank, and when due, he no more dreamed of putting himself in the slightest degree out of the way by returning his scraps of paper, conformably to the established rules of trade, than of paying the national debt. In fact, it would have been a dangerous experiment to have hinted to him the propriety of what he considered a most degrading and unchieftain-like practice. The directors of the bank, knowing their money to be sure, humoured him, as being a character of no ordinary description. His acceptances were therefore never (strange to say) noted or protested; indeed, such an impertinent procedure on their part, might have brought down like a torrent the furious chief, and a score or two of his gillies, to sack great Perth. Unluckily for him, one of "thae damnable bits o' paper" found its way to the Stirling bank, an establishment with which the laird had no connection. Agreeably to his auld use and wont, he gave himself no trouble about the matter. It was in due course noted and protested, of which due intimation was sent to him. The laird treated these various notices VOL. II. with the most sovereign contempt. He was, however, effectually roused, by the alarming information that a writ of horning and caption had been taken out against him, and that, in consequence, a clerk belonging to the bank, accompanied by two messengers, would proceed on the following Friday to Achlyne House, for the special purpose of taking him into custody. Even this dire communication the laird received with unruffled composure. On that "portentous morn," which threatened him with "durance vile," he took aside an old woman who had been long attached to the family, and who was highly regarded by her master for her shrewdness as well as fidelity. "Shanet," said he, "there are three landloupers, a clerk and twa limbs o' Satan, in the shape o' messengers, coming ower the hills the day frae Stirling, to tak me awa bodily, and to clap me within the compass o' four stane wa's; and for what, think ye?—a peetiful scart o' a guse's feather-deil cripple their soople shanks. It would ill become me to hae ony hobbleshow wi' sicklike vermin; so I'll awa up to ma lord's at Taymouth, and leave you, my bonny woman, to gie them their kael through the reek." Having thus primed the old lady, he departed. The transaction now recorded having occurred upwards of half a century ago, it is proper to mention, that the line of travelling between Stirling and Achlyne was of a most rugged and toilsome description, and only passable by pedestrians. The clerk and his legal myrmidons, therefore, did not reach the place where they expected their prey till it was nearly dusk. The ancient carline had been long on the outlook, and going to meet them, she invited them into the house in the most couthy and kindly manner. "O, sirs!" quoth she, "ye maun be sair forfoughen wi' your langsome travel. Oor Hieland hills are no for them that hae breeks on, I reckon. Sit doon, sit doon, and pit some meat in yere wames, for atweel they maun be girnin and wamling like knots o' edders. The laird's awa to see a freend, and will be back momently. What gars ye glower at that daftlike gate, sirs? There is what ye're wantin' in that muckle kist, in bonnie yellow gowd, fairly counted by his honour this blessed mornin'. Wha would hae thocht ye wad hae been sae langsome in coming up here; chields like you, that are weel kent to be greedy gleds after the siller. But bide ye till the laird comes in, and ye will get what ye want." So saying, she spread before them a plentiful store of mountain delicacies, not forgetting kippered salmon and braxy ham-fare congenial to hungry 46 stomachs. Nor, it may be opined, was the nal furies. "What, the foul fiend, gars he gude glenlivet spared on this occasion. The mak sic a din for?" shouts the fearful beldam. clerk and his legal understrappers, delighted Quaking every limb, the only words their lips with the intelligence that the cash was forth could give utterance to, were, "What's—what's coming (for the directors of the bank were that on the tree?" "What's that on the tree!" unwilling to take the chief captive if it could cried the carline, in a dismally hollow and possibly be avoided), threw themselves tooth elritch tone of voice; "it's a bit clerk-body and nail upon the welcome eatables, which frae the bank o' Stirling that cam here last vanished before them with a celerity truly sur- | night to deave the laird for siller,-we've taen prising. But it was the special object of cun- and hangit him, puir elf." The effect of this ning Shanet that they should do ample justice appalling disclosure was electrifying. Fear to her glenlivet.-Like Caliban, they deemed added wings to their speed,—and the terrified the liquor not earthly; and so zealous were brace of messengers never looked behind them they in paying their respects to the greybeard, for the first ten miles on their road to Stirling. that they were speedily in a very unfit state to retread their steps to Stirling. No word of the laird yet. Seeing they had got to the precise pitch she wanted, says Shanet, "Deil tak me, gin I ken what's come ower the laird; nae doot he maun be up at the Yerl's, and ye canna expeck he can leave the company o' sic grand fowk on the like o' your account. Na, na; ye'll just tak your beds here, and the first thing ye'll get to your hansell in the mornin' will be a sonsie breakfast and weel-counted siller." There was no alternative, and being, moreover, hardly able to stand, the proposal was far from disagreeable. The clerk, in respect of his gentility, was bestowed in an apartment by himself; the messengers were put in another, containing a single bed for their accommodation. One of the latter worthies, feeling, towards the morning, his entrails scorched with that intolerable heat consequent on mighty over-night potations, got up in quest of some friendly liquid. To aid him in his search, he opened the window-shutter-when the first object which saluted his astonished organs of vision almost petrified him into stone. The sight was indeed rather alarming-a human figure dangling in the winds of heaven from a branch of an ancient oak in the front of the house. As soon as the wretched terrier of the law had recovered what small sense he possessed, he made a shift to stagger to the bedside, and roused his brother in tribulation, who, when he beheld the horrid spectacle, was assailed with the most dreadful agonies of terror and consternation. To add to their miseries, the door was locked. Bells there were none in the Highlands in those days; but they stamped and kicked on the floor with dreadful energy and clamour. After keeping the poor devils in a state of unspeakable terror for a space of time which appeared to them an eternity, the old woman unlocked the door, and presented a visage in which were expressed all the united horrors of countenance attributed to the infer Now what almost frightened into convulsions two such exquisitely sensitive personages as messengers are in general, was a bundle of straw, artificially stuffed by Shanet into some ancient garments of the laird's, which she had suspended from the tree in the manner described. The innocent clerk, during all this stramash, was quietly reposing in his bed; and if he dreamed at all of suspensions, it was that of the writ of horning and caption. When he got up, he was surprised at the non-appearance of his companions, nor could he extract the smallest information on the subject from trusty Shanet. Being therefore deprived of his legal tools, no other resource was left for him but to "plod homewards back his weary way." To conclude: so tremendous an account did the messengers give of their expedition, that no temptation could have induced twenty of them to venture on a similar errand, unless backed by a regiment of a thousand strong. Literary Gazette. THE DEATH-BED. We watch'd her breathing through the night, So silently we seemed to speak — As we had lent her half our powers Our very hopes belied our fears, For when the morn came dim and sad- THOMAS HOOD A SOLDIER'S LOVE SONG. [James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, born 1612; executed at Edinburgh, 21st May, 1650. One of the most daring soldiers who devoted life and fortune to the Stuart cause; and no mean verse-writer, as the following will testify.1] My dear and only love, I pray This noble world of thee, Which virtuous souls abhor, Like Alexander I will reign, And I will reign alone; My thoughts shall evermore disdain He either fears his fate too much, But I must rule and govern still, And always give the law, Thou shunn'st the prize to bore, Or in the empire of thy heart, And dares to vie with me; And guest on such a score, But if thou wilt be constant then, And faithful of thy word, I'll make thee glorious by my pen, Was never heard before, I'll crown and deck thee all with bays, THE STORY OF LA ROCHE. [Henry Mackenzie, born in Edinburgh 19th August, 1745 (the day on which the standard of Prince Charles Edward was raised in the north); died 14th January, 1831. He was educated for the legal profession, and his services to the Tory party obtained for him in 1804 the appointment of comptroller of taxes for Scotland. As the author of the Man of Feeling, the Man of the World, and Julia de Roubigne, he early won fame as a novelist. He also wrote several dramatic pieces-the Spanish Father, the Prince of Tunis, the Shipwreck, or Fatal Curiosity, the Force of Fashion, and the White Hypocrite-but none of them obtained favour on the stage. He was the editor of the Mirror and the Loung r, two periodicals after the model of the Spectator; they extended to 211 numbers, and of these 99 were written by Mackenzie. In the former publication first appeared the story of La Roche, which Scott regarded as one of the author's finest efforts on account of the "unexampled delicacy and powerful effect with which he described the sublime scene of the sorrows and resignation of the bereaved father." As a novelist Scott's estimate of him was, in brief, that-"Mackenzie aimed at being the historian of feeling, and has succeeded in the object of his ambition."] More than forty years ago an English philosopher, whose works have since been read and admired by all Europe, resided at a littletown in France. Some disappointments in his native country had first driven him abroad, and he was afterwards induced to remain there, from having found, in this retreat, where the connections even of nation and language were avoided, a perfect seclusion and retirement highly favourable to the development of abstract subjects, in which he excelled all the writers of his time. Perhaps, in the structure of such a mind as Mr. -'s, the finer and more delicate sensibilities are seldom known to have place, or, if originally implanted there, are in a great measure extinguished by the exertions of intense study and profound investigation. Hence the idea of philosophy and unfeelingness being united, has become proverbial, and in common language, the former word is often used to express the latter. Our philosopher has been censured by some as deficient in warmth and feeling: but the mildness of his manners has been allowed by all; and it is certain that, if He was the reputed author of other poems; few of he was not easily melted into compassion, it them, however, can be ascribed to him without doubt. He was at Brussels when he first heard of the execution of Charles I., and the lines supposed to be written on was, at least, not difficult to awaken his benevolence. One morning, while he sat busied in those that occasion are the best authenticated of all his com- speculations which afterwards astonished the positions. They contain a promise which he fulfilled in action: "I'll sing thy obsequies with trumpet sounds, And write thy epitaph with blood and wounds." world, an old female domestic, who served him for a housekeeper, brought him word that an elderly gentleman and his daughter had |