his countrymen then in power for looking upon him with an evil eye. But Bloomfield led a pure, peaceable, and blameless life. Easy, indeed, would it have been to make him happy-but he was as much forgotten as if he had been dead-and when he died-did England mourn over him-or after having denied him bread, give him so much as a stone? No. He dropt into the grave with no other lament, we ever heard of, but a few copies of indifferent verses in some of the Annuals, and seldom or never now

does one hear a whisper of his name. O fie! well may the white rose blush red-and the red rose turn pale! Let England then leave Scotland to her shame about Burns-and, thinking of her own treatment of Bloomfield, cover her own face with both her hands-and confess that it was most base. At least let her not impudently abuse us for the same sin-committed against greater genius, but less hallowed by virtue ;-and if she will not hang down her head in humiliation for her own neglect of her Own "poetic child," let her not hold it high over Scotland for the neglect of hers-justified as that neglect was by many things-and since, in some measure, expiated by a whole nation's tears, shed over the laurels on her great poet's grave!

Whew! here have we been absolutely working ourselves up into a passion about two dead men!

"After life's fitful fever they sleep well,"

and peace now lies on both their graves in a shroud of snow!

Snow! Beautiful as it yet is to our eyes, even through our spectacles, how gray-in imagination-it looks beside the snow that used to come with the long winters that glorified the earth in our youth, till the white lustre was more delightful even than the green-and we prayed that the fine fleecy flakes might never cease falling waveringly from the veil of the sky. No sooner comes the winter now, than he is away again to one of the poles. Then, it was a year in itself a whole life. We remember slides a quarter of a mile long, on level meadows; and some not less deep, down the sides of hills that to us

were mountains. No boy can slide on one leg now-not a single shoe seems to have sparables. The florid style of skating shows that that fine art is degenerating; and, except in a Torry, we look in vain for the grand simplicity of the masters that spread-eagled in the age of its perfection. A change has come over the spirit of the curler's dream. They seem to our ears indeed to have "quat their roaring play." The cry of "swoop-swoop" is heard still-but oh! a faint, feeble, and unimpassioned cry, compared with that that used, on the Mearns Brother-Loch, to make the welkin ring, and for a moment to startle the moon and starsthose in the sky, as well as those below the ice-till again the tumult subsided-and lo! all the host of heaven above and beneath serene as a world of dreams. Is it not even so, shepherd? Oh! what is a rink now on a pond in Duddingstone policy, to the rinks that rang and roared of old on the Loch o' the Lowes, when every stone, circled in a glorious halo of spray, seemed instinct with spirit, to obey, along all its flight, the voice of him that launched it on its unerring aim, and sometimes, in spite of his awkward skillessness, when the fate of the game hung on its own single crank, went cannonading through all obstacles, till it fell asleep, like a beauty as it was, just as it kissed the Tee!

Again we see—again we sit in the snow-house, built by us boys out of a drift in the minister's glebe, a drift-judg. ing by the steeple-which was sixty-about twenty feet high-and pure as marble. The roof was all strewed with diamonds, which frost saved from the sun. The porch of the palace was pillared-and the character of the building outside, was, without any servile imitation-for we worked in the glow of original genius-and none of us had then ever seen itself or its picture-wonderfully like the Parthenon. Entering, you found yourself in a superb hall, lighted up-not with gas, for up to that era, gas had not been used except in Pandemonium-but with a vast multitude of farthing-candles-each in a turnip stuck into the wall-while a chandelier of frozen snow-branches pendent from the roof set that presence-chamber in a blaze. On a throne at the upper end sat young Christopher North -then the king of boys, as now of men-and proud were

his subjects to do him homage. In niches all around the side-walls were couches covered with hare, rabbit, foumart, and foxes skins-furnished by those animals slain by us in the woods and among the rocks of that sylvan and moorland parish-the regal Torus alone being spread with the dun-deer's hide from Lochiel Forest in Lochaber. Then old airs were sung-in sweet single voice—or in full chorus that startled the wandering night-traveller on his way to the lone Kingswell-and then in the intermediate push, old tales were told " of goblin groom or fairy," or of Wallace Wight at the Barns of Ayr, or the Brigg o' Stirling or a glorious outlaw, harbouring in caves among the Cartlane Craigs,—or of Robert Bruce the Deliverer, on his shelty, cleaving in twain the skull of Bohun the English knight, on his thundering war-stced, armed cap. à-pie, while the King of Scotland had nothing on his unconquered head but his golden crown. Tales of the snowhouse! Oh, that we had but the genius to recall you to life in undying song!

Nor was our frozen hall at times uncheered by the smiles of beauty. With those smiles was heard the harmless love-whisper, and the harmless kiss of love. For the cottages poured forth their little lasses in flowerlike bands, nor did their parents fear to trust them in the fairy frozen palace, where Christopher was king. Sometimes the old people themselves came to see the wonders of the lamp, and on a snow-table stood a huge bowl-not of snowthat steamed with nectar that made Hyems smile as he hung his beard over the fragrant vapour. Nay, the minister himself with his mother and sister-whose souls are now in heaven-were with us in our fantastic festivities-and gave to the architecture of our palace their wondering praise. Then Andrew Lyndsey, the blind Paisley musician, a Latin scholar, who knew where Cremona stood-struck up on his famous fiddle, jig or strathspey-and the swept floor, in a moment, was alive, with a confused flight of foursome reels, each begun and ended with kisses, and maddened by many a whoop and yell— so like savages were we in our glee, dancing at the marriage of some island king!

Fifty years have fled since that snow-palace melted

away-and of all who danced there, how many are now alive! Pshaw! as many probably as then danced any where else. It would never do to live for ever let us then live well and wisely-and when death comes-from that sleep how blessed to awake! in a region where is no frost-no snow-but the sun of eternal life. Dreaming of that snow-palace-we remember the description of another by Cowper-more magnificent, no doubt-but to our imagination not half so dear!

"Less worthy of applause, though more admired,
Because a novelty, the work of man,
Imperial mistress of the fur-clad Russ,
Thy most magnificent and mighty freak,
The wonder of the north. No forest fell,

When thou wouldst build; no quarry sent its stores
T'enrich thy walls; but thou didst hew the floods,
And make thy marble of the glassy wave.

In such a palace Aristæus found
Cyrene, when he bore the plaintive tale
Of his lost bees to her maternal ear;
In such a palace Poetry might place
The armoury of Winter; where his troops,
The gloomy clouds, find weapons, arrowy sleet,
Skin-piercing volley, blossom-bruising hail,
And snow, that often blinds the traveller's course,
And wraps him in an unexpected tomb.
Silently as a dream the fabric rose;

No sound of hammer or of saw was there :
Ice upon ice, the well-adjusted parts

Were soon conjoin'd, nor other cement ask'd
Than water interfused to make them one.
Lamps gracefully disposed, and of all hues,
Illumined every side; a watery light

Gleam'd through the clear transparency, that seem'd
Another moon new risen, or meteor fall'n
From Heaven to Earth, of lambent flame serene.
So stood the brittle prodigy; though smooth
And slippery the materials, yet frost-bound,
Firm as a rock. Nor wanted aught within,
That royal residence might well befit,
For grandeur or for use. Long wavy wreaths
Of flowers, that fear'd no enemy but warmth,
Blush'd on the pannels. Mirror needed none
Where all was vitreous; but in order due

Convivial table and commodious seat

(What seem'd at least commodious seat) were there;
Sofa, and couch, and high-built throne august,
The same lubricity was found in all,

And all was moist to the warm touch; a scene
Of evanescent glory, once a stream,
And soon to slide into a stream again.
Alas! 'twas but a mortifying stroke
Of undesign'd severity, that glanced
(Made by a monarch) on her own estate,
On human grandeur and the courts of kings.
'Twas transient in its nature, as in show
'Twas durable; as worthless, as it seem'd
Intrinsically precious; to the foot

Treacherous and false; it smiled, and it was cold."

Mercy on us! what a hubbub!-Can the harriers be hunting in such a snowfall as this, and is poor pussy in view before the whole murderous pack, opening in full cry on her haunches? Why-Imagination, thou art an ass, and thy long ears at all times greedy of deception! 'Tis but a country schoolhouse pouring forth its long imprisoned stream of life, as in a sudden sunny thaw, the mad master flying in the van of his helter-skelter scholars, and the whole yelling mass precipitated, many of them headlong, among the snow. Well do we know the fire-eyed poet-pedagogue, who, more outrageous than Apollo, has "ravished all the Nine." Ode, elegy, epic, tragedy, or farce-all come alike to him; and of all the bards we have ever known-and the sum total cannot be under a thousand-he alone, judging from the cock and the squint of his eye, labours under the blessing or the curse-we wot not whilk it be-of perpetual inspiration. A rare eye, too, is his at the setting of a springe for woodcocks, or tracking a mawkin on the snow. Not a dare-devil in the school that durst follow the indentations of his toes and fingers up the wall of the old castle to the holes just below the battlements, to thrust his arm up to the elbows harrying the martins' nests. The corbies ken the shape of his shoulders, as craftily he thrids the wood; and let them build their domicile as high as the swinging twigs will bear its weight, agile as squirrel, and as foumart ferocious, up speels, by the height undizzied, the dreadless dominie;