perfection, you should mistake the gateway of the Lodge for that of some other sylvan abode, and come upon us as we are sitting under the blossom-fall of a laburnum; or lying carelessly diffused in a small circle of flower-fringed green-sward, like Love among the roses. Our face, then, has no expression but that of mildness-you see a man who would not hurt even a wasp-our intellectual is merged, not lost, in our moral being-and if you have read Tacitus, you feel the full meaning of his beautiful sentence about Agricola,-" Bonum virum facile crederes, magnum libenter."

Awaking sufficiently to see that some one is present before us, we motion the light or shadow to lie down, and begin conversing so benignly and so wisely, that the stanger feels at home as if in his birthplace, even as a son returned from afar to his father. The cheerful stillness of the retirement, for there is no stir but of birds and bees, the sea-murmur is not heard to-day, and the city bells are silent,-is felt to be accordant with the spirit of our green old age, and as the various philosophy of human life overflows the garden, our visiter regards us now as the indolent and indulgent Epicurus-now as the severe and searching Stagy rite-now as the poet-sage, on whose lips in infancy fell that shower of bees, the divine Plato-now Pythagoras, the silent and the silencing-now" that old man eloquent," Socrates, the loving and beloved; and unconsciously at the close of some strain of our discourse he recites to himself that fine line of Byron,

"Well hast thou said, Athena's wisest son!"

Or, were you to fall in with us as we were angling our way down the Tweed, on some half-spring half-summer day, some day so made up of cloud and sunshine that you know not whether it be light or dark,—

"That beautiful uncertain weather,

When gloom and glory meet together,"

some day, when at this hour the air is alive with dancing insects, and at that very gauzy and gaudy winglet hushed

-some day on which you could wander wild as a red deer over the high mountains and by the shores of the longwinding loch, or sit fixed as the cushat in the grove, and eye the ruins of an old castle;-were you to fall in with us on such a forenoon, by the pool below Nidpath, or the meadow-mound of sweet Cardrona-mains, or the ford of Traquair, near the lively Inverleithen, or the sylvan dens of Dryburgh, or the rocky rushings of the Trows, or— but sit down beneath the umbrage of that sycamoreheavens! what a tree!-and be thou Charles Cotton and we Isaac Walton, and let both of us experience that high and humane delight which youth and age do mutually communicate, when kindness is repaid with gratitude, and love with reverence.

Yet even as we hobble along the city street-the street of Princes-with one or two filial youngsters at our side -for old men are our aversion, so nut-deaf are they, so sand-blind, so perverse, and so cell-bound are their souls -our company and our converse is not undelightful, pitched as the latter then is, on a low but lively key, like the twitter of a bird, even of a sparrow, who, let the world say what it will, chirps a pleasant song as he frisks along the eaves, and both in love and war-though there, alas! the parallel between us falls to the ground-yields to no brother of his size in the whole aviary of nature. Or if sparrow please you not, why then we are even as the swallow, lover too of the abodes of men-a true household bird-and seeming, as he wheels in the sunshine, to be ever at his pastime, yet all the while gathering sustenance for the nest he loves, and never so happy as when sitting in his "auld clay biggin," breast to breast-but there again, wo is us! fails the similitude-breast to breast, with his white-throated mate, whom in another month, he will accompany, along with their full-fledged family, over the wide wide seas, and, their voyage ended, renew their loves beneath the eaves of other human dwellings, afar off and in foreign lands, for all their life is love, and still they make

"Their annual visit round the globe,
Companions of the spring."

Nay, you would be pleased to sit beside, or before, or behind us, in pit or box of our theatre, and list our genial eulogiums on Murray, and Mackay, and Mason, and Stanley, and Pritchard; or him from London town, the inimitable, for the name of the actor is lost in that of Long Tom. No critics, it is well known, are we; but, when a true son or daughter of nature, "some well-graced actor decks the stage," the best of our remarks might grace the Journal. Yea, the very beauty of the Siddons herself becomes more starlike-for, mind ye, a star is ever gentle in its brightest glow,-as if kindling before your eyes in the fine enthusiasm of our praise. Or, if Pasta, or Paton -Eliza the modest and the musical-hush the room, it is pleasant to see old Christopher North sitting almost ghostlike amid the pathos! In his younger days, the harp was the instrument on which he loved to play, but now he seldom touches a string; yet when beauty with a smile hints the wish to hear some ancient melody, the old man is not unwilling, in a rare hour, to try his trembling hand, repaid at the close of the Broom o' the Cowdenknows, or the Flowers o' the Forest-nor has his voice been silentrepaid, oh, soft-eyed daughter of the son of the dead brother of our youth, a thousand times repaid by one single

tear!

Or seek you the saloon, "Grandeur's most magnificent saloon," and mingle, mingle, mingle, with the restless and glittering flow of fashionable life, a sea of tossing plumes! Why even there, you may perchance see Christopher sitting all by himself in a nook-silent but not sad-grave but not gloomy-critical but not censorious-in love with the few, in liking with the many-in good-will with all. His gracious eye is not averted even from the flying waltz; for, "Honi soit qui mal y pense," and if yours be the heart of a man, what evil thought can be inspired into it by the breath of innocence! Youth is the season of love and joy, and inhale therefore into thy inmost soul the bliss of that balmy breath, and hug to thy inmost soul the ideal embrace, so faint-so very faint-of that young virgin, whose waist now thine arm is privileged blamelessly to encircle; for where virtue glides in all her blushing beauty, the touch even of passion's self shall be reverential, and

that bright girl and bright boy shall part as they met, as pure in thought as two doves, that happen to intersect each other's flight, and after a few airy evolutions in the sunshine, flee away, each to its own place of pleasure or

rest.

Or, need we allude to ourselves sitting by the inglecheek, so crouse and canty, at the sober-yea, the sober orgies of our Noctes Ambrosianæ ? We are no cameleons -we neither feed on air, nor change our colour. Of much of the Glenlivet we gulp, the parent barley is yet unborn-the only ether we imbibe is the ether of the imagination-opium, in drop or pill, touches not our lips, but in the feast of fancy; though one choice spirit doth occasionally sit and shine among us, to whom that drug is dear-and the oyster-beds along the sounding shores of the mighty sea, have reason to bless their stars that the accounts they have from the fishermen, of the innumerous barrels so unmercifully emptied in Picardy, are apocryphal. See there is our outstretched arm, and on the point of that little finger-not unfrequently turned up so-lies untrembling the drop of the mountain-dew! So steady is every sinew of sobriety-who often rises with the sun, and often sits up for him too-the sun, who, washed and dressed almost in a moment, takes a stage by steam before breakfast, and whom you see dining on a dessert of fruits of all glorious sorts and sizes about midday, right over your head, sitting beneath the Deas, in the blue chamber, ceiling'd and fretted by the sky! Not brighter is that blue chamber of the sun, than the parlour where we hold our Parliament-North in the chair, and unlike that solemn silence in St. Stephens, a speaker indeed! No rat or radical from rotten borough here—each of us member for a county, Lowland or Highland,-the Representatives of Scotland-ay, of England, too,-for lo! «England sends her men, of men the chief"-Seward of Christchurch, and Buller of Brazennose ;-and as for Ireland, the green and glorious,-lo! the bold, the dauntless O'Doherty,the adjutant good-at-need,-the ensign, with whom no hope is forlorn,-the standard-bearer, who plants the staff of joy in the centre of our table, in a hole bored by the gleg gimlet of his nation's wit, so that the genial board is

overshadowed by its bright emblazonry, and at every rustle in its folds, Tickler seems to rise in stature, Macrabin to become more and more the grave Covenanter, Mullion's mirth to grow broader as the crump farl on the gridiron, and our shepherd to shine like a rowan-tree in autumn, brightening the greensward where lie his sheeplike lambs. Invincibles all! It is indeed a bright, a benign, a beautiful little circular world, inhabited but by a few choicest spirits-some of them-oh! may we dare to hope it even on earth immortal! The winged wordssome like bees and some like birds-keep working and lurking, stinging and singing, wherever they alight-yet no pernicious pain in the wound, no cruel enchantment in the strain. The winged words-bee or bird-like-are still murmuring among flowers,

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Flowers, worthy of Paradise, which not nice art
In beds and curious knots, but nature boon
Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain,
Both where the morning sun first warmly smote
The open field, and where the unpierced shade
Imbrown'd the noontide bowers!"

The

Some faint echo of the sounds that then circle round the inner shrine, not unheard by the outward world, makes its heart to beat or burn within it, its nerves to tingle, or haply even brings the dim haze across its eye. mean and malignant are cowed like poultry by the crowing of a far-off game-cock, on his airy walk on a pleasant hill-farm. The son of genius pining in the shade-Oh! why should genius ever pine beneath the sun, moon, and stars?-feels encouragement breathed into his spirit, and knows that one day or other he shall emerge from the gloom in glory, cheered by the cordial strain of us kindred spirits, who, one and all, will take him by the hand, the mirthful as well as the melancholy, for their likings and loves are the same, and place him among the 'Oporios, the equal-honoured, the sacred band, brothers all, who, to the sound of flutes and soft recorders, in firmest phalanx move on in music to everlasting fame.

We were some half hour ago speaking of the fashionable world—were we not-of Edinburgh? Why, in Edin