Above the maidens of my age and rank;

Still shunn'd their company, and still sought mine;
I was not won by gifts, but still he gave ;
And all his gifts, tho' small, yet spoke his love.
He pick'd the earliest strawberries in woods,
The cluster'd filberds, and the purple grapes:
He taught a prating stare to speak my name;
And when he found a nest of nightingales,
Or callow linnets, he would show 'em me,
And let me take 'em out.'

John Dryden.

MR. ROGERS'S POETRY.

I have always been very fond of Mr. Rogers's poem called 'A Wish.' This is the first stanza :

Mine be a cot beside a hill;

A bee-hive's hum shall soothe my ear;
A willowy brook, that turns a mill,
With many a fall, shall linger near.

The words printed in italics are singularly happy, their sound is very suggestive of a winding stream of water; and though the ideas may be commonplace enough, and the wish could hardly be sincere—at least I should judge so from my recollection of No. 22 St. James's Place-it is a graceful little poem, and I should think it might survive many more pretentious productions.

Rogers never offends against taste, and, if he does not greatly stimulate his reader, at any rate he does not exasperate him. There are poems, and there are pictures, which one would not think half so bad if they were not quite so good. For instance, let us suppose that the artist is a man of vigour, there is a blowsy sentiment about his work, or a bloated power, and it arrests you, you cannot ignore him, and at last you get to hate him.

It is somewhat the same with a face. I know a woman, she is desperately ugly, as ugly as sin, and (I venture to think) almost as agreeable; but she has big, bright eyes, and if it were not for those eyes her extreme plainness might never have arrested me; as it is, when I look at her, I am always arrested, and her ugliness makes me gasp again.

The two next anecdotes are taken from Dean Ramsay's 'Reminiscences.' It is pleasant to read that work, and to think that it was compiled by a Scottish ecclesiastic. The Dean was a man of real piety, he was free from cant, a refined and loveable person, and he must have been a bold man to publish such a collection. He has left us a most interesting legacy, and Scotland and England should be grateful for the book, and to the man who gave it.

'IT'S NO' MY WIG.'

The Laird of Balnamoon (pronounced Bonnymoon), dining out, took a little too much wine, and, returning home, his servant had to drive him over a very wild and desolate tract of country, called Munrimmon Moor. While crossing it, the laird's hat and wig fell off, and the servant got down, picked them up, and brought them to his master. He took the hat, but declined the wig-" It's no' my wig, Hairy, lad; it's no' my wig," and he stoutly refused to have anything to do with it. Hairy lost patience, being naturally anxious to get home, and he remonstrated thus with his master: “Ye'd better tak' it, sir, for there's nae waile o' wigs" (choice of perukes) "on Munrimmon Moor."

A TENDER CONSCIENCE.

Mr. Wilson, the Scottish vocalist, was taking lessons from Mr. Finlay Dunn, who had just returned from Italy, much impressed with the deep sentiment of the Italian school. Mr. Dunn regretted that his pupil's fine voice was marred by want of expression and feeling; so, one day, he said to him: 'Now, Mr. Wilson, just try and fancy that I'm your lady-love, the

idol of your soul, and then sing to me as you would sing to her.' Poor Mr. Wilson hesitated and blushed, in doubt how far, in his case, such a personification was altogether justifiable; at last he hesitatingly remonstrated with 'Ay, but, Mr. Dunn, sir, ye forget I'm a married man!'

THE SCOTTISH LANGUAGE,

A Scot in Canada, who generally spoke favourably of the country of his adoption, could not help making the following exception when he compared it with the land of his birth: 'But, oh, sir, there are nae linties in the wuds.' How touching are the words in his own dialect! The North American woods, although full of birds of beautiful plumage, have no singing birds.

Dean Ramsay mentions this story mainly to show the picturesqueness and beauty of the old Scottish language; he would imply that linnet does not convey so much of simple beauty, and of pastoral ideas, as belong to the Scottish word lintie, and he says the same for Auld lang syne, and maintains it has no equivalent in English.

THE SEMI-DETACHMENT.

'Good-bye, small house, good-bye, Tho' weak in roof and rafter,

I will not tell a lie

To him who cometh after :

I could not meet a charge of guilt
Were I to say thou wert well built.

'Yet thou art sweet tho' small,

Yet art thou dear tho' crack'd;
While fearing thou might'st fall
Our faith remain'd intact:

And lived superior to our fears
For seven short matrimonial years.

'Good-bye, old house, good-bye,

I brought my bride to thee,

In thee I taught to fly

My little nestlings three,

So cannot leave thee, my first nest,

Without a sinking at my breast.

'We soar to other fields,

To woods and pastures new,

And if the prospect yields

A happiness as true

We scarce can be so brightly blest

Elsewhere as here, thou ill-built nest!