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inches, and unless the flint was put in to a nicety, by pulling the trigger you by no means caused any uncovering of the pan, but things in general remained in statu quo-and there was perfect silence. She had a wormeaten stock, into which the barrel seldom was able to get itself fairly inserted; and even with the aid of circumvoluting twine, 'twas always coggly. Thus too, the vizy (Anglice sight) generally inclined unduly to one side or the other, and was the cause of all of us every day hitting and hurting objects of whose existence, even, we were not aware, till alarmed by the lowing or the galloping of cattle on the hills; and we hear now the yell of an old woman in black bonnet and red cloak, who shook her staff at us like a witch, with the blood running down the furrows of her face, and, with many oaths, maintained that she was murdered. The Lang Gun" had certainly a strong vomit-and, with slugs or swan shot, was dangerous at two hundred yards to any living thing. Bob Laurie, at that distance, arrested the career of a mad doga single slug having been sent through the eye into the brain. We wonder if one or both of those companions of our boyhood be yet alive-or, like many other great guns that have since made more noise in the world, fallen a silent prey to the rust of oblivion!

Not a boy in the school had a game certificate-or, as it was called in the parish" a leeshance." Nor, for a year or two, was such a permit necessary; as we confined ourselves almost exclusively to sparrows. Not that we had any personal animosity to the sparrow individually on the contrary, we loved him, and had a tame one-a fellow of infinite fancy-with comb and wattles of crimson cloth like a game-cock. But their numbers, without number numberless, seemed to justify the humanest of boys in killing any quantity of sprauchs. Why, they would sometimes settle on the clipped half-thorn and half-beech hedge of the Manse garden in myriads, midge-like; and then out any two of us, whose

of no use in

day it happened to be, used to sally with Muckle-mou'd Meg and the Lang Gun, charged two hands and a finger; and, with a loud shout, startling them from their roost like the sudden casting of a swarm of bees, we let drive into the whirr a shower of feathers was instantly seen swimming in the air, and flower-bed and onion-bed covered with scores of the mortally wounded old cocks with black heads, old hens with brown, and the pride of the eaves laid low before their first crop of pease! Never was there such a parish for sparrows. You had but to fling a stone into any stack-yard, and up rose a sprauchshower. The thatch of every cottage was drilled by them like honey-combs. House-spouts were rainy weather-for they were all choked up by sprauch-nests. At each particular barn-door, when the farmers were at work, you might have thought you saw the entire sparrowpopulation of the parish. Seldom a Sabbath, during pairing, building, breeding, nursing, and training season, could you hear a single syllable of the sermon for their sakes, all a-huddle and a-chirp in the belfry and among the old loose slates. On every stercoraceous deposit on coach, cart, or bridle road, they were busy on grain or pulse; and, in spite of cur and cat, legions embrowned every cottage garden. Emigration itself in many million families would have left no perceptible void; and the inexterminable multitude would have laughed at the Plague.

O Muckle-mou'd Meg! and can it be that thou art numbered among forgotten things-unexistences!

"Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees!"

What would we not now give for a sight-a kiss of thy dear lips! Lips which we remember once to have put to our own, even when thy beloved barrel was double-loaded! Now we sigh to think on what then made us shudder! Oh! that thy but were but now resting on our shoulder! Alas! for ever discharged! Burst and rent

asunder, art thou now lying buried in a peat-moss? Did some vulgar villain village Vulcan convert thee, name and nature, into nails? Some darkvisaged Douglas of a hen-roost-robbing Egyptian, solder thee into a pan? Oh! that our passion could dig down unto thee into the bowels of the earth and with loud lamenting elegies, and louder hymns of gratulation, restore thee, butless, lockless, vizyless, burst, rent, torn, and twisted though thou be'st, to the light of day, and of the world-rejoicing Sun! Then would we adorn thee with evergreen wreaths of the laurel and the ivy—and hang thee up, in memory and in monument of all the bright, dim, still,

stormy days of our boyhood-when gloom itself was glory-and whenBut

"Be hush'd my dark spirit! for wisdom condemns,

When the faint and the feeble deplore.” Cassandra, Corinna, Sappho, Lucretia, Cleopatra, Tighe, De Stael-in their beauty or in their genius-are, with millions on millions of the fairfaced or bright-souled, nothing but dust and ashes; and as they are, so shall Baillie, and Grant, and Hemans, and Landor be-and why vainly yearn "with love and longings infinite," to save from doom of perishable nature -of all created things, but one alone Muckle-mou'd Meg!

THE AMERICAN QUARTERLY REVIEWS.

THERE are three Quarterly Reviews now published in the United States; one at Boston, one at Philadelphia, and one at Charleston. They are each exceedingly creditable specimens of the talents and attainments of our brethren of the New World; and we, whatever others may think, feel a real satisfaction, somewhat approaching to pride, in beholding the English language cultivated with such success, and made the instrument of diffusing so much valuable information through countries where the rude dialect of the Indian savage was, a century ago, the only medium of communicating the commonest thoughts and desires of the wild huntsman's life. The spread of our native tongue over the widest and fairest portions of the globe is a remarkable example of the influence of a great commercial nation in the civilization of mankind; and it is more than probable that, in a very few years, the use of the English will as far exceed that of all other languages, as did the Spanish within a century after the discovery of the passage of the Cape.

The North American Review, published at Boston, is now in its 60th

number. This work is well known in England, and is distinguished, if not for its brilliancy, for its calm good sense, and its general freedom from national prejudices.

It is,

There is nothing that we can see in it, of any jealousy of England and her institutions, or any vain parade of the power, the resources, and intelligence of our transatlantic brethren. indeed, fortunate, that the unnatural animosities of children, boasting a common mother, and participating, each very largely, in the blessings of a free government, should no longer be fomented by the passions and prejudices of ignorant and flippant writers, on either side the water. It is to the real interest, both of England and America, that a constant feeling of kindness should be cherished between them;—those who desire friendship and peace cannot do better than promote their common literature, and freely interchange a tribute of respect for all those productions which belong to high principles and solid learning.

"The American Quarterly Review" is printed at Philadelphia, and has yet only reached its tenth number. It appears to us well adapted for popu

larity, and conveys a great body of valuable information, not very new or very original, but well adapted to the wants of a people whose literary habits have yet to be formed. The subjects, and the mode of treating them, are rather more elementary than in the North American Review; and it is, perhaps, rather more distinguished for a strong religious tone, not in the least allied to fanaticism, but very decided.

Of the Southern Review," two numbers only have yet appeared. The publication commenced in February, of the present year.

The first number of this work cer

tainly displays much variety of talent; -for we have papers on the Calculus, Phrenology, Political Economy, Colonization, and Mineralogy ;-and we must conscientiously say they appear to us each executed with talent and learning that reflect honor on the source from which American Literature has sprung.

There is a very forcible paper on Roman Literature in the second number, which appears to us from the same able pen as that of Classical Learning. It comes with peculiar interest from an American pen-and from a country where literature must necessarily be catholic rather than national-a reflection of the modes of

thought and feeling in the Old World, rather than the exposition of any pe

culiarities in their own state of socie

ty. The United States have sprung up at once into the manhood of civilization, without having toiled to that eminence through the long contests which knowledge, in Europe, has had to wage with brute force, and which contests have left behind them the monuments and the associations upon

which a national literature must be

formed. The antiquities of North America are to be found in England.

The American periodicals, which we have rapidly noticed, present us with few favorable specimens of original works published in the United States, particularly in works of ima

gination. Our Southern reviewer is inclined to be sufficiently severe upon his poetical brethren-and not without justice.

The interchange of literature between nations is like the reciprocity of commerce ;-each party must profit by it.

Although, for many years, England will supply America with books-for the more civilized country will have greater leisure to attend to the luxuries of life, while the settlers, the creators of fresh channels of commerce, the inventors and adapters of machinery, must be busy for a century or so, getting their new house in order -it is not therefore to be concluded the literature of America. We apthat we shall derive no advantage from prehend that the writers of the United States, with occasional exceptions, will for some time put forth their strength in periodical papers rather than in bulky volumes. They have no literature to create. The wide extent of our common storehouse is open to them;-and they may range, fully and freely, amongst our plenteous garners. They were born in a happy time for the rapid attainment of knowledge. They live in an age of Encyclopædias—and all they have to do is to adapt the great mass of information to the leisure and temper of their own people. Science and literature must, time elementary and popular. They in the United States, be for a long have to enclose all the old, fat, blosfields, before they have occasion to soming, and fruit-bearing commonbreak up the wastes of knowledge. They will, therefore, reprint all our old glorious writers—the Shakspeares, and Bacons, and Miltons, and Popes, and Swifts, and Burkes-their inheritance have they not the Murrays, and Longas well as ours. For modern novelties, mans, and Colburns of England, to fore, they will review, for half a censet their presses going? And, theretury at least. But we shall still be gainers by this process. We shall see how our factitious modes of thought, growing out of our over-refinement in manners, and our intricate system of

compromises in politics, will look in the eyes of individuals and communities who are inclined to err in the other excess-who sometimes mistake rudeness for strength, and are too apt to apply the standard of utility to matters which have neither heighth nor breadth, and cannot be guaged by all the algebra in the world. One of their reviewers-and we think the most talented of them-reproaches his fellow-citizens, that they begin from the beginning and take nothing for granted. We, on the other hand, are mightily inclined to pride ourselves upon taking most things for granted, beginning at the practical point, according to our notions of that really ideal halting-place. Now, in our hatred of appearing ignorant, and of being suspected of moving in our leading strings, both in learning and politics, we sometimes utterly forget those general principles-of liberty and all that, for instance,-which no refinement, real or imaginary, ought to allow us to neglect. The mirror of American literature may sometimes very happily show us, what a prim, affected, strait-laced, effeminate and powerless thing is that public mind, "which goes on refining," till it has lost all relish for the plain food from which it must derive its strengthand minces along, the shadow of a

shade, "powdered as for a feast," but "rank and foul within," amidst all its perfumes. American literature will be for many years to the English, as the bold, sometimes rude, but honest and substantial yeoman, is to the polite, perchance sarcastic, but elegant and accomplished favorite of the operabox. The one tells a plain tale in homely and vigorous language-does not repress his natural curiosity when he sees anything wonderful or newand is often abundantly provoking with his rather ignorant boasting upon the subject of his own imperfect acquaintance with men and books, and most matters of taste. The other disdains to mention any single thing by its right name-remains in ignorance of any unfamiliar object rather than request to be informed-and is most contemptuously loud in his abomination of all those persons and matters which conduce to the ordinary comforts and satisfactions of life. Now these two individuals might learn a great deal of each other-if each would abate a little of exclusiveness and arrogance ;

and just in the same way, two nations like England and the United States, might abundantly profit by an intellectual interchange, if they would agree to cast aside the prejudices which occasionally render each odious in the eyes of the other.

THE SPANISH GUITAR.

My gay guitar, my gay guitar!
When sleep the furious sounds of war,
The soldier's bosom, fresh and free,
Finds solace and delight in thee.
The stern array, the warrior pride,
The plume, the musket-dashed aside,
Those pulses that unmoved can brave
The burst of battle's fiery wave,
Dance light beneath the evening star,
When ring thy notes, my gay guitar!
O! what can smooth to joy but thou,
The toiling peasant's dusty brow?
When o'er Valencia's burning plain
No breezes fan the yellow grain,—
No shower to cool the parching sky,—
No shade to rest the wearied eye,-
While homeward slow he plods his way
In the red sunset's level ray,
He springs with glee to hear from far
The tinkling of the gay guitar.

When night's deep hue the horizon bounds,
Amid the ceaseless ocean sounds,
The dash of waves, the voiceful gale,
The sea-bird's cry, the shifting sail,
The fisher in his lonely boat,
Cheers the long darkness with thy note.
He looks where many a league away
His native shore lies dim and grey,
And wakes, to greet the moon's pale car,
The music of his gay guitar.

At vintage feast, when dance and song
Inspire with jollity the throng,
'Mid lips that gush with joyous tone,
And eyes the heart's delight that own,
O! then, my gay guitar, thy strain
Flings a new life through every vein;
In halls where high-born beauties glide,
'Mid brows of sway, and steps of pride,
The revel's blithest hour 'twould mar, 1
To want thy notes, my gay guitar!

In toilsome paths, o'er steep and glade,
Where waves the hoary cork-tree's shade,
Where loud the inland torrent roars,
Or rise the Atlantic's stormy shores,
Rings the slow mule's unceasing bell
From sea to plain, from crag to dell;
And still his seguidilla's cheer
The wanderings of the muleteer,
And to his soul no joys there are
So dear as thine, my gay guitar!

The student pale, whose eyes are wrought
To dimness by excess of thought,
Whose vigor all is worn away,
And youthful locks untimely grey,
Who feebly runs to meet the tomb,
While wisdom lights him through the gloom;
When beats the swelling heart with pain,
And anguish throbs in every vein,
O! then with thee, my gay guitar,
He soothes his struggling bosom's jar.

My gay guitar, at midnight hour,
With thee I seek Louisa's bower:
Thy music round her slumber streams,
And blends amid her starry dreams,
Till opes the lattice and displays
Her form of light to bless my gaze,
Her trembling breast, and glowing cheek,
And eyes a timid joy that speak,
For pride and fear's reluctant bar
Yield to thy strain, my gay guitar!

When memory's shadows round me rise,
When hope departs, and pleasure dies,
And every gentler pulse has fled
The anguish'd heart, and aching head;
When burning passion's wildest hour
O'er the dark soul asserts its power;
In each dread change the soul can know
Of impulse fierce, or hopeless woe,
To calm the troubled spirit's war,
I touch thy strings, my gay guitar!

THE LATEST LONDON FASHIONS.

Explanation of the Print of the Fashions.

BALL DRESS.

A DRESS of pink gauze, with a rich white satin stripe. Three pointed fiounces, set on rather scanty, ornament the border: one, the same as the dress, placed between two of white Japanese gauze: the flounces fall over each other, and all have the points bound with a narrow rouleau. The body is made slightly en gerbe, high across the bust, but low on the shoulders, and the sleeves are very short, plain, and full, with the stripes in bias. The hair is elevated à la Giraffe, on the summit of the head; but this ornamental hair, which is carried so high, is not formed of wired loops, according to the first arrangement of that head-dress, but consists of innumerable curls in raised clusters, confined by narrow platted braids, which by being twisted round, support, and keep them firm together: at the base of this elevation is a wreath of large, full-blown, blush roses; the hair in front is parted on the forehead, in very full curls, though not large, over the temples, and short at the ears. Madonna braids are next the face, and the curls beyond. The ear-pendants are of pearls, but not very long; and the necklace is à la

Solitaire, formed of depending pearpearls, from festoons of gold, in light chain work. The bracelets consist of

two rows of gold beads, clasped with a cameo.

WALKING DRESS.

A pelisse of stone-color muslin, lined with sarcenet of the same color, and finished down each side the front of the skirt with points; between each point is a bouquet of flowers in embroidery, of black. Over the bust and back is a canezou-spencer without sleeves, the same as the pelisse, finished by points, the same as those on the skirt, except that the bouquets are left out. The sleeves are à la Marie, and have a deep cuff at the wrist, edged with antique English points, which are finished round in the same manner as those on the pelisse and canezou: the throat is encircled by a double ruff.

A white transparent bonnet is worn with this dress, with a ruche at the edge, and trimmed with pink ribbon, edged and spotted with black: though the bonnet is fastened under the chin by a mentonnière of blond, the strings are tied carelessly by a bow on the right side.

EVENING COSTUME.

A DRESS of turquoise-blue sarcenet, with two rows of points round the

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