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VARIETIES.

"Come, let us stray

Where Chance or Fancy leads our roving walk."

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

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WE really wish that Sir Walter Scott would not devote his great genius to the furtherance of the belief in ghosts, witches, and persons with supernatural power. There is scarcely any one of his glorious series of novels which has not in it some blemish of this kind, some prognostic verified, or some bond fide ghost at once. Even in Waverley, in which probably there are fewer faults than in any, there is the Bodach Glas-while Guy Mannering is wholly founded upon a gipsy's prophecy,' which is the alias its dramatizer has appended to the title. But now, he has written a regular apology, if not defence, of the belief. The annual entitled the Keepsake, for 1829, opens with an absolute argument in favor of the possibility of human beings possessing supernatural power, from his most influential pen. Now Sir Walter really should recollect that all this goes far beyond a joke. If his lucubrations were confined to the buyers of a guinea-book, probably the extent of the evil would be the making a few young ladies rather timorous at twilight, or perhaps breaking the rest of some antiquated lady of quality. But

these things are copied into newspapers, and read by the mass of man and womankind, and, in those minds in which the relics of these hateful superstitions are still lingering, we speak quite seriously when we say that we doubt not they have the most pernicious effect. If matters were left alone, we cannot but think that in these days this sort of thing would quietly fade away; but, at all events, the progress of education would crush it effectually. Why, then, should Sir Walter strive to pamper up these superstitions in their old age, and to give them renewed influence and vigor.

GOLDSMITH'S POETRY.

We may judge of the value of some contemporary criticism, by the opinions of the most popular of Goldsmith's poems, when first published. Dr. Kenrick, for example, pronounced "The Traveller" to be " flimsy ;" and he sneeringly said of the "Deserted Village," that it was "pretty," but deficient in " fancy, dignity, genius, and fire.”

PRINTED ORATORY.

The wreath which many a melting congregation has bound round the brows of an admired pulpit orator, has often been untwined by the hand of his own printer.

ANTIPATHIES.

Uladislaus, King of Poland, ran away at the sight of apples; Henry III., of France, could not endure a cat; the celebrated Scaliger was thrown into convulsions at the sight of cresses; Erasmus could not taste fish without falling into a fever; an Englishman (name unknown) is said to have died from reading the fiftythird chapter of Isaiah; Cardinal Henry de Cardonne swooned at the smell of a rose; Tycho Brahe, the celebrated Danish astronomer, trembled at the sight of a hare or a fox; Cardan, the famous philosopher, could not bear eggs; the poet Ariosto abhorred baths; Crassus had an insuperable dislike to bread; Cæsar de Lascalle could not endure the sound of cymbals.

EXORBITANT TITHES.

The clergy of Lisbon (if I recollect right, it is an exclusive grant to one convent, all the members of which are, and must be, of noble families) claim every tenth fish that is brought to market; and no fisherman dares sell a single fish from his boat, before

he has brought them to market and paid his tithe, which is collected in a most unjust and arbitrary manner. A man is appointed by these priests, who attends as the boats arrive, the owners of which are obliged to count all their fish out before him, one by one; and while they are so doing, he selects, at his pleasure, every fine fish he sees (by means of a sharp hook which he holds for that purpose): he does not take every tenth fish promiscuously, but thus selects the best tenth of the whole cargo. As an amazing quantity of fish is brought to market, this tenth, (which, after serving themselves, is retailed to hawkers and the stalls,) must produce an immense revenue to the convent, or convents. When this tithe is thus selected, the poor fisherman, in return, receives a printed permit to dispose of the remainder; and the hawkers, who carry fish in baskets through the city, are obliged to purchase, daily, a permit for so doing.

A NICE DISTINCTION.

"Before I begin to drink, my business is over for the day."-" My business is over for the day, when I be gin to drink."

CHINESE GEOGRAPHY.

Till very lately, the Chinese, in their maps of the earth, set down the Celestial Empire in the middle of a large square, and dotted round it the other kingdoms of the world, supposed to be 72 in number, assigning to the latter ridiculous or contemptuous names. One of these, for example, was Siao-gin-que, or the Kingdom of Dwarfs, whose inhabitants they imagined to be so small as to be under the necessity of tying themselves together in bunches, to prevent their being carried away by the kites. In 1668, the Viceroy of Canton, in a memorial to the Emperor, on the subject of the Portuguese embassy, says, "we find very plainly that Europe is only two little islands in the middle of the sea." With such ideas of other nations, it is not wonderful that they should consider the embassies and presents sent to them as marks of submis

sion, and hasten to write down the donors on their maps, as tributaries of the Chinese Empire.

ABSENTEES

Soon become detached from all habitual employments and duties; the salutary feeling of home is lost; early friendships are dissevered, and life becomes a vague and restless state, freed, it may seem, from many ties, but yet more destitute of the better and purer pleasures of existence.

ELYSIAN SOUP.

The French have a soup which they call " Potage à la Camerani," of which it is said "a single spoonful will lap the palate in Elysium; and while one drop remains on the tongue, each other sense is eclipsed by the voluptuous thrilling of the lingual nerves !"

A father had three sons, in whose company he was walking, when an old enemy of his came running out of an ambush, and inflicted a severe wound upon him before any of the bystanders could interfere. The eldest son pursued the assassin, the second bound up his father's wound, and the third swooned away. Which of the sons

loved his father best?

When Demetrius conquered the city of Magara, and everything had been plundered by his soldiers, he ordered the philosopher Stilpon to be called before him, and asked him whether he had not lost his property in this confusion? "No," replied Stilpon, "as all I possess is in my head."

The forthcoming Novel, entitled the Castilian, written by the Author of Gomez Arias, is said to relate to that interesting period in the annals of Spain, when Don Pedro and his brother, the Count of Trastamara, contended for the sovereignty of Castile. It is likewise understood to embrace that romantic era in English history, when the Black Prince and his knights performed such prodigies of valor, though opposed to the united chivalry of France and Spain.

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As the simple and primitive inhabitants of the Highlands of Scotland, unchanged in their manners for centuries, and having a literature and a history of their own, blended with the singular but sublime superstition of the Northmen, from whom they had received their chiefs; as they melted away from their mother country, and were lost in the wastes of other lands, a something which it would have been new and delightful for us to know, and of which we can now procure no knowledge, vanished along with them. That the change is or is not for the better, as far as physical wealth and comfort are concerned, is a question for others to settle; it is for us to regret that many pages have thereby been torn from the natural history of man; and it is with the lost pages of that history, as with a lost recollection in our train of thought, how trifling soever it may be in reality, we prize it more than all that we remember. Regret is of no avail, however. It were better, just as the antiquaries of the present time do with the ruins of those edifices which would yet have been entire but for the labor of their own ancestors, to put together and preserve the fragments in the best manner we are able.

Of these fragments one was the Reverend Donald M'Cra, who, for more than half a century, had ruled and directed the inhabitants of Inverdonhuil in all matters of faith, and morals, and gossip, and whatsoever 51 ATHENEUM, VOL. 1, 3d series.

This

else falls within the wide and varied scope of the parochial superintendence of a Scottish country parson. Reverend Gentleman was, as one would say, almost self-made; or, at least, it was difficult to say whence came the means by which he received the rudiments of his education. His father was a poor shepherd, wholly illiterate himself, and, as one would think, without any possibility of having that ambition of bestowing instruction upon his son which is so general among the cottagers in the southern parts of Scotland. It is difficult indeed to imagine how, in those times, any notion at all of education could exist in the glen. It lies upon a branch of a river in the very fastness of the mountains, inaccessible on three sides, and can be entered only by two narrow passes at the sides of a rocky island which divides the stream at the fourth, and near the confluence of the Donhuil with the larger river of which it is a branch. The rebellion had just closed, too, and the landing and final retreat of Prince Charles were tales only of yesterday. Nay, the country was in an absolute state of hostility: the M'Kenzie, the great lord of these parts, had gone into exile; and the halls of Elan Donan were mouldering in their decay; but the hearts of the clan Cuinich were true, and not one shilling of the rents ever found its way into the Exchequer, or a civil officer or soldier dared come to distrain them. The moment that a party ap

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