PATRIOTISM. It is recorded of Dr. W. P. Alison, the celebrated physician, who died in 1859, that, as a child, he had spoken to a man, who had spoken to Henry Jenkins, who lived to the age of 169, and had, when a boy, carried arrows to the English archers, who won the battle of Flodden in 1513. There is a story in Lockhart's 'Life of Scott' of a blacksmith, whom Scott had known as a horse-doctor, and whom he afterwards found at a small country town south of the border, practising medicine with a reckless use of 'laudamy and calomy.' The man apologised for the mischief he might be doing, by the assurance that, 'at any rate,' it would be lang before it made up for Flodden.' It may be presumed that, if it had been possible, the ci-devant blacksmith would not have altogether objected to prescribe for Henry Jenkins; but, if so, would Jenkins have survived to converse with Alison's informant? SONNET. 'If thou must love me, let it be for nought That falls in well with mine, and certes brought A sense of pleasant ease on such a day "— Be changed, or change for thee, and love, so wrought, May be unwrought so. Neither love me for Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,--- Thou may'st love on, thro' love's eternity.' Elizabeth B. Browning. This has been said before, but never more touchingly or eloquently. EDGAR POE. Some one has observed that 'Edgar Poe's muse by the side of his abominable life' (I believe it has been lately ascertained that his life was anything but abominable, which is unfortunate for this remark) 'was like a nunnery in the heart of a disorderly and immoral city, surrounded, but not contaminated by it.' It is a great advantage for a man of literary genius to have been an unfortunate scamp, and almost as lucky to have been a worthy simple-minded creature of singularly evil fortunes. How much Cowper has gained by his craziness, and Goldsmith would have lost if he had not been so absurd and impecunious ! Then we have Marlowe and Byron. We should never have heard of Savage had he been a respectable man. If there were a tradition that Southey had got tipsy, and had tried to kiss Miss Maria Edgeworth, or that he had pledged the 'Curse of Kehama' at the pawnbroker's, perhaps people would think a good deal more of the 'Curse of Kehama.' The first flight of virtuous biographers fill in all the dark shadows, laying them on thick; then come a party of wild white-washers, and all the time the game is kept alive, the Author is talked about, his works sell, and are perhaps read. This reaction about Poe is really too hard upon him—if ever his character should be entirely rehabilitated the world will find out he was something of a literary charlatan. THE STYLE AND SPIRIT OF THE CLASSIC WRITERS. 'Let us consider, too, how differently young and old are affected by the words of some classic author, such as Homer or Horace. Passages, which to a boy are but rhetorical commonplaces, neither better nor worse than a hundred others which any clever writer might supply; which he gets by heart and thinks very fine, and imitates, as he thinks, successfully in his own flowing versification, at length come home to him, when long years have passed, and he has had experience of life, and pierce him as if he had never before known them, with their sad earnestness and vivid exactness. 'Then he comes to understand how it is that lines, the birth of some chance morning or evening at an Ionian festival or among the Sabine Hills, have lasted generation after generation, for thousands of years; with a power over the mind, and a charm, which the current literature of his own day, with all its obvious advantages, is utterly unable to rival.' * ** Grammar of Assent.' How transparent is this thought-how simple are the words, and yet the whole seems to tingle with a suppressed emotion ! BEAUMARCHAIS. Beaumarchais was blâmé by the Court, and the effect of that blâme was very serious. It made a man legally infamous. But the public feeling was so strongly with Beaumarchais that he paraded his stigma as if it were a mark of honour. He gave himself such airs that somebody said to him, 'Monsieur, ce n'est pas assez que d'être blâmé; il faut être modeste?" THE LAMENT FOR CULLODEN. Burns's beautiful lament for Culloden is composed of two stanzas, in the first the lovely lass of Inverness mourns the loss of her father and her three brothers; and it is only in the concluding stanza that she says And by them lies the dearest lad That ever blest a woman's ee! Not mentioning the lad in the first stanza makes it much more impressive, and more pathetic when he is mentioned. WITHOUT AND WITHIN. 'My coachman, in the moonlight there, I hear him with his brethren swear, 'Flattening his nose against the pane, And dooms me to a place more hot. 'He sees me in to supper go, A Silken Wonder by my side, |