For hornings or failings,

The broad sword and shield paid the rents of Buccleuch.
Then join in my chorus, &c.

From that day to this one,
We've lived but to bless them,

To love and to trust them as guardians true;
May Heaven protect then,
And guide and direct then,

This stem of the gen'rous old house of Buccleuch !
The Wats were the callans,

That steadied the balance,

When strife between kinsmen and Borderers grew;
Then here's to our scion,

The son of the lion,

The Lord of the Forest, the Chief of Buccleuch.

CHORUS.

Then join in my chorus,
Ye lads of the Forest,

With lilt of our muirs and our mountains of blue,

And hallow for ever,

Till a' the tow'rs shiver,

The name of our Master, young Wat of Buccleuch.

There's a sang for you, Timothy. My blude's up. I bless Heaven I am a Borderer. Here's the Duke's health-here's the King's health-here's North's health-here's your health-here's my ain health-here's Ebony's healthhere's Ambrose's health-the healths o' a' the contributors and a' the subscribers. That was a wully waught! I haena' left a dribble in the jug. I wuss it mayna flee to my head-it's a half-mutchkin jug.

TICKLER.

Your eyes, James, are shining with more than their usual brilliancy. But here it goes. (Drinks his jug.)

SHEPHERD.

After all, what blessing is in this world like a rational, well-founded, steadfast friendship between twa people that hae seen some little o' human life-felt some little o' its troubles-kept fast hald o' a gude character, and are doing a' they can for the benefit o' their fellow-creatures? The Magazine, Mr Tickler, is a mighty engine, and it beloves me to think well what I am about when Í set it a-working. The Cautholic Question is the cause o' great perplexity to my

mind, when I tak a comprehensive and philosophic view o' the history and constitution o' human nature.

TICKLER.

I never heard you, Mr Hogg, on the Catholic Question. I trust your opinions are the same with those of Mr North.

SHEPHERD,

Whatever my opinions are, Mr Tickler, they are my own, and they are the fruit of long, laborious, deep, and conscientious meditation. I cannot believe, with Drs Southey and Phillpotts, and other distinguished men, that the spirit of Catholicism is unchangeable. Nothing human is unchangeable. I do not, therefore, despair of seeing-no I must not say that, but of my posterity seeing-the Catholic religion so purified and rationalized by an unconscious Protestantism, that our Catholic brethren may be admitted without danger to the full enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of British subjects. That time will come, sir; but not in our day-no, not in our day. A century at the very least, perhaps two, must elapse before we can grant the boon of Catholic emancipation.

Just my sentiments.

TICKLER.

SHEPHERD.

No, sir, they are my own; and farther I say, that to emancipate the Catholics in order to destroy their religion, as is proposed many hundred times in the rival Journal, (blue and yellow,) is pure idiotry. I shall, therefore, not suffer Catholic emancipation.

TICKLER.

What think you of Constable's Miscellany? You wish me to speak. The idea is an excellent one, entirely his own, and the speculation cannot fail of success. Thousands of families that cannot afford to buy books, as they are sold in their original shape, will purchase these pretty little cheap periodicals, and many a fire-side will be enlightened. The selection of published works is judicious, and so in general is that of subjects to be treated of by Mr Constable's own authors; one most laughable exception there indeed is-History of Scotland, in three volumes, by William Ritchie, Esq.

SHEPHERD.

What the deevil!-Ritchie o' the Scotsman ?

TICKLER.

Why, it is rumoured, even Whigham the Quaker, when he heard of it, cried out, "Risus teneatis AMICI ?" Our excellent friend Constable committed a sad blunder in this; but he was speedily ashamed of it, and has scored out the most insignificant of all names from his list.

SHEPHERD.

Scored out his name?—And will Ritchie write three volumes of the History of Scotland after that?-I never heard of such an insult. Yet Mr Constable was in the right;-for only think for a moment of printing 15,000 copies of three volumes of a History of Scotland by William Ritchie! But Mr Constable may just drap the volumes a'thegether; for there will aye be a kind o❜ a disagreeable suspicion that Ritchie wrote them, and that would be eneugh to damn the History, were it frae the pen of Dionysius Harlicarnensis.

SHEPHERD.

The same. I ken a' about him frae Tennant o' Dollar, author of Anster Fair.

TICKLER.

Here's Tennant's health, and that of John Baliol, his new tragedy.

SHEPHERD.

With all my heart; but I wish people would give over writing tragedies. If they won't, then let them chuse tragical subjects; let them, as Aristotle says in his Poetics, purge our souls by pity and terror, and not set us asleep. The Bridal of Lammermuir is the best, the only tragedy since Shakspeare➡

TICKLER.

Try the anchovies. I forget if you skate, Hogg?

SHEPHERD.

Yes, like a flounder. I was at Duddingston Loch on the great day. Twa bands of music kept chearing the shade of King Arthur on his seat, and gave a martial character to the festivities. It was then, for the first time, that I mounted my cloak and spurs. I had a young leddie, you may weel guess that, on ilka arm; and it was pleasant to feel the dear timorous creturs clinging and pressing on a body's sides, every time their taes caught a bit crunkle on the ice, or an embedded chucky-stane. I thocht that between the twa they wad never hae gei'n ower till they had pu'd me doun on the bread o' my back. The muffs were just amazing, and the furbelows past a' enumeration. It was quite Polar. Then a' the ten thousand people (there could na' be fewer) were in perpetual motion. Faith, the thermometer made them do that, for it was some fifty below zero. I've been at mony a bonspeil, but I never saw such a congregation on the ice afore. Once or twice it cracked, and the sound was fearsome,- —a lang, sullen growl, as of some monster starting out o' sleep, and raging for prey. But the bits o' bairns just leuch, and never gied ower sliding; and the leddies, at least my twa, just gied a kind o' sab, and drew in their breath, as if they had been gaun in naked to the dooken on a cauld day; and the mirth and merriment were rifer than ever. Faith, I did make a dinner at the Club-house.

Was the skating tolerable?

TICKLER.

SHEPHERD.

No; intolerable. Puir conceited whalps! Gin you except Mr Tory o' Prince's Street, wha's a handsome fallow, and as good a skaiter as ever spreadeagled; the lave a' deserved drowning. There was Henry Cowburn, like a dominie, or a sticket minister, puttin' himself into a number o' attitudes, every ane clumsier and mair ackward than the ither, and nae doubt flatterin himself that he was the object o' universal admiration. The hail loch was laughing at him. The cretur can skate nane. Jemmy Simpson is a feckless bodie on the ice, and canna keep his knees straught. I couldna look at him without wondering what induced the cretur to write about Waterloo. The Skatin' Club is indeed on its last legs.

Did you skate, James?

TICKLER.

SHEPHERD.

That I did, Timothy-but ken you hoo? You will have seen how a' the newspapers roosed the skatin' o' an offisher, that they said lived in the Castle. Fools!-it was me-naebody but me. Ane o' my two leddies had a wig in her muff, geyan sair curled on the frontlet, and I pat it on the hair o my head. I then drew in my mouth, puckered my cheeks, made my een look fierce, hung my head on my left shouther, put my hat to the one side, and so, arms a-kimbo, off I went in a figure of 8, garring the crowd part like clouds, and circumnavigating the frozen ocean in the space of about two minutes. "The curlers quat their roaring play," and every tent cast forth its inmates, with a bap in the ae haun' and a gill in the ither, to behold the Offisher frae the Castle. The only fear I had was o' my long spurs ;-but they never got fankled; and I finished with doing the 47th Proposition of Euclid, with mathematical precision. Jemmy Simpson, half an hour before, had fallen over the Pons assinorum.

TICKLER.

Mr Editor, I fear that if in your articles you follow the spirit that guides 'your conversation, you will be as personal as Mr North himself. No intrusion on priváte character.

SHEPHERD.

Private character! If Mr James Simpson, or Mr Henry Cockburn, or myself, exhibit our figures or attitudes before ten thousand people, and cause all the horses in the adjacent pastures to half-die of laughter, may I not mention the disaster? Were not their feats celebrated in all the newspapers? There it was said that they were the most elegant and graceful of volant men. What if I say in the next Number of the Magazine, that they had the appearance of the most pitiful prigs that ever exposed themselves as public performers? Besides, they are by far too old for such nonsense. They are both upwards of

fifty, and seem much older. At that time of life they should give their skates to their boys.

TICKLER.

My dear Editor, you are forgetting the articles. The devil will be here for copy

......

MR AMBROSE (entering.)

Did you ring, Mr North? Beg your pardon, did you ring, Mr Hogg?

SHEPHERD.

No, Ambrose. But here,-take that poetry, and tell the cook to singe yon. The turkey, you know. Let us have supper precisely at twelve.

MR AMBROSE (receiving the poetry from Tickler.)

Might I be allowed, gentlemen, to preserve a few fragments? English gentlemen are always speaking of the Magazine; and there are two very genteel gentlemen indeed, and excellent customers of mine, Mr Hogg,-one of them from Newcastle, and the other all the way from Leeds,-one in the soft, and the other in the hard line,-who would esteem a fragment of manuscript from the Balaam-box an inestimable treasure.

SHEPHERD.

Certainly, Ambrose, certainly. Keep that little whitey-brown article; but mind now you give all the rest to the kyuck.

MR AMBROSE (inspecting it.)

O yes, the whitey-brown article will do admirably.

SHEPHERD.

You think so, do you, Ambrose? What is it about? Pray, read it up.

MR AMBROSE (recites.)

TUNE-" To all you Ladies now at Land."
For once in sentimental vein

My doleful song must flow,

For melancholy is the strain,

It is a song of woe!

Ah! he who holds the monthly pen

Is most accurst of mortal men

With a fa, la, la, &c.

From month to month 'tis still his doom

To drag the hopeless chain,

For fair or foul, in mirth or gloom,

He shares the curse of Cain ;

It is a woful thing to see

A sight like this among the free!
With a fa, la, la, &c.

The devil comes at break of day,

The hapless wretch to dun,—
Oh! then the devil is to pay,
His work is not begun!

With heavy heart and aching head

He sends a hearty curse instead.

With a fa, la, la, &c.

But Christopher is not the man
His failings to excuse,

He must bestir as best he can,

And spur his jaded muse ;

Oh! cheerless day and dreary night

The endless article to write!

With a fa, la, la, &c.

But ah! when Here he blithely sits,

How altered is his lot!

He clears his brow, unbends his wits,-
His cares are all forgot;

He sings his song, his bumper fills,
And laughs at life and all its ills,
With a fa, la, la, &c.

SHEPHERD.

Dog on it, if I don't believe you are the author of the Whitey-brown yourself, Mr Ambrose.

AMBROSE.

No, Mr Editor. I could not take that liberty. In Mr North's time, I did indeed occasionally contribute an article. The foreign gentleman is ringing his bell; and, as he is very low-spirited since the death of Alexander, I must attend him. Pardon me, gentlemen, whisky or Hollands ?

SHEPHERD.

Baith. What's the name of the Russian gentleman ?

AMBROSE.

I believe, sir, it is Nebuchadnezzar.

SHEPHERD.

Ay, ay, that is a Russian name; for they are descended, I hear, from the Babylonians. (Exit Mr AMBROSE.)—Mr Tickler, here's a most capital article, entitled "Birds." I ken his pen the instant I see the scart o't. Naebody can touch aff these light, airy, buoyant, heartsome articles like him. Then there's aye sic a fine dash o' nature in them-sic nice touches o' descriptionand, every now and then, a bit curious and peculiar word-just ae word and nae mair, that lets you into the spirit of the whole design, and makes you love both the writer and the written.-Square down the edges with the paper-folder, and label it "Leading Article."

I wish he was here.

TICKLER.

SHEPHERD.

He's better where he is-for he's a triflin' creatur when he gets a bit drink; and then the tongue o' him never lies.-Birds,-Birds!-I see he treats only o singing birds;-he maun gie us afterhend, Birds o' Prey. That's a grand subject for him.-Save us! what he would mak o' the King o' the Vultures! Of course he would breed him on Imaus. His flight is far, and he fears not famine. He has a hideous head of his own,-fiendlike eyes,-nostrils that woo the murky air, and beak fit to dig into brain and heart. Don't forget Prometheus and his liver. Then dream of being sick in a desert-place, and of seeing the Vulture-King alight within ten yards of you-folding up his wings very composedly-and then coming with his horrid bald scalp close to your ear, and beginning to pick rather gently at your face, as if afraid to find you alive. You groan,—and he hobbles away, with an angry shriek, to watch you die. You see him whetting his beak upon a stone, and gaping wide with hunger and thirst. Horror pierces both your eye-lashes before the bird begins to scoop; and you have already all the talons of both his iron feet in your throat. Your heart's-blood freezes; but notwithstanding that, by and by he will suck it up; and after he has gorged himself till he cannot fly, but falls asleep after dinner, a prodigious flock of inferior fierce fowl come flying from every part of heaven, and gobble up the fragments.

My certes, Mr Tickler, here's a copy of verses that Ambrose has dropped, that are quite pat to the subject. Hearken-here's the way John Kemble used to read. Stop-I'll stand up, and use his action too, and mak my face as like his as I can contrive. There's a difference o' features-but very muckle o' the same expression.

O to be free, like the eagle of heaven,

That soars over valley and mountain all day,

Then flies to the rock which the thunder hath riven,
And nurses her young with the fresh-bleeding prey!
No arrow can fly

To her eyrie on high,