for some time to talk at intervals with those who stood round. Bitter, indeed, and almost a full requital for his crimes, must have been the recollection of what he was once, as compared with what he was now, and what he might have been if-but it was no longer in his power, and remorse came too late to do ought else but embitter the few short remaining moments of a mis-spent life. At length, roused from his stupor by hearing the tramp of horses rapidly approaching the spot where he was concealed, he called his servant to aid him to commit that last crime, to the perpetration of which he felt his unaided efforts unequal; then repeating a line of one of his favourite poets, an actor no longer in the Roman theatre, but on the great stage of life, he inflicted a mortal wound with a dagger, and sunk backwards to die! A centurion entering at the moment, strove to staunch the wound, but in vain: the tyrant feeling himself already getting weaker, glared fiercely upon him, uttering in a deep voice: "Is this your fidelity! you came too late!" and immediately expired. Such was the end of this most rightly-named of Roman tragic emperors.

Silent he sleeps! that eye

So lately bright with hope, is closed for ever; Struck by the lightning shock, he sank; but never

Was one more fit to die.

Death is a sudden blow,

But yesterday he lived in health and beauty;

And now they've hurried through their dreadful duty, And left me to my woe.

Where are my friends all flown?

Those friends that shared my every hour of gladness, Comes there not one to dry the tears of sadness?— Not one! I am alone.

Father! to thee I turn;

And though in sorrow, by the cold world slighted, And every dream of happiness is blighted,

Not in despair I mourn.

No. XVII.

After thorough investigation of the subject, and much consultation of the authorities connected therewith, I do not discover that it is recorded that the cerebral formation in man is adapted alone to the cultivation of the baytrees of Parnassus. Still, it is a melancholy fact, a fact which must nevertheless be allowed, that a delusion to that effect will prevail. I do not say that I myself am at all free from hallucination on that subject. I do, however, hope and trust that I am convalescing. At the moment that I write, I have, I fancy, rejected the idea that I am a Tennyson, and am content to be undeceived. Why should we not all be undeceived? The discovery does not affect my health, my appetite, or my spirits. I can still play football with my usual relish: I can read the Rugbæan without malice: still think of and admire other bards without envy or immoderate desire to emulate them.

It is perhaps fortunate that there is a kind of style called prose. If there was none to act as a safety-valve to our pent-up intellects, I should tremble for the consequences. Those who have written verse for ages, and still will continue to write without obtaining Kudos from their fellows, or admission into the pages of the Rugbæan, can diversify their efforts by a few parenthetical essays in Prose. It is upon the whole advantageous that glory can be obtained by an article in the latter style, as well as in the former; at all events let them try. Rome, says the adage, was not built in a day. But not only let them throw aside the Muses,

a

but also that style of Prose which is closely allied to those gentle maids. Need I say I refer to the honied and metaphorical. The Persian writers used to talk of the steed of the pen expatiating in the mazy plains of the paper, and I doubt if we were to search the contribution high-flown expressions. It is to be sure box of the Rugbæan if we were not to find as trifling draw-back that they are sometimes expressed dubiously, or that the simile is not quite plain, like Moliere's hero, who, wishing to imitate the Turkish salutation, remarked to his friends, that he prayed that they might have "the prudence of lions, and the force of serpents," instead of vice versâ: that, however, was quite a minor consideration. But in closing this small article, allow me to quote Latin, and to say that if Poeta nascitur non fit is a true remark, it is not applicable to a Prose writer. It is by labour that we can attain to excellence in the latter line. Finally, if any one feels injured by what we have said, please to take notice that no single individual is meant by us in particular.

LAYS OF SCOTTISH CAVALIERS.—AYTOUN.

It is no longer a crime to be a Jacobite; a person may now alter his own opinion respecting the expediency, or otherwise, of the revolution of 1688. Few will, therefore, blame the professor of Rhetoric for expressing his own opinions on some of the most important political events in the history of his native land, which is commemorated in the "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers," a volume certainly a valuable addition to our ballad-poetry. It would be hard to find at this time a Southron of such rugged mould as to be angry with the Author for describing the feelings of the "wives and mothers of Dunedin," after a battle that had blighted the hopes of a nation, and deprived a country of its beloved sovereign. In the Lay of "Edinburgh after Flodden," how graphi

cally does the poet describe the extreme anxiety of the citizens left behind, respecting the fate of those most dear to them; the lamentations that followed the news of woe; the manly sorrow of Randolph Murray, as he exclaims

No one fails him; he is keeping

Royal state and semblance still;
Knight and noble lie around him,
Cold on Flodden's fatal hill.

How noble is the bearing of the aged provost, comforting his fellow-citizens

God our Father will not fail us

In that last tremendous hour;
If all other bulwarks crumble,

He will be our strength and tower.

And then he reminds them that even though they are defeated, and their city is reduced to ashes,

There is yet one place of shelter,

Where the foemen cannot come.

Another subject on which Aytoun has written, is one which stamps an indelible disgrace on the government of William the Third. Whether the king himself gave directions for the bloody massacre of Glencoe is a matter of doubt. Aytoun produces evidence that it was done by his orders. The act, from whomsoever it originated, has received from posterity the reprobation it deserved.

This Lay is very affecting: the aged mother of the family of Glencoe appears, speaking sometimes in a tone of calmness, bordering on despair; next bursting forth in fierce invectives against those who had murdered her kindred, and robbed her of every earthly joy; while she spurs on the orphan heir of the house of Macdonald, to avenge his father's death. And does not this remind us (to refer to mythology) of the once gentle Hecuba, brutalized by the weight of grief she had to undergo, and uttering the direst imprecations on those who had so cruelly oppressed her? It is almost impossible to picture that fearful night in which the "daughters of Clanranald" waited till day dawn to discover the mangled remains of their kindred, and to search the glen for the corpses almost concealed by the cold covering of snow. Perhaps the lay that most deserves comment is the "Burial March of Dundee," in which

Aytoun gives a far different account of Claverhouse from that which most historians have given; he also challenges the accuracy of Macaulay, who represents Dundee as almost a fiend. It would be an interesting study to examine the different accounts of the Græme, and from them to gather the truth: our knowledge about him at present is very unsatisfactory. The last few stanzas of this lay are very fine, wherein the remains of the departed generals are laid in the vaults of Athol. They are to sleep till the Archangel's trumpet resound through every sepulchre, and summon its long buried inhabitants to the judgment seat of Christ.

EARLY IMPRESSIONS.

How much Time steals from pleasure! and the course Of passing years lays bare

What once seemed good and fair!

Whence borrows it this strange, this robber force? We live to learn-to mould the shapes of things From sight to sense; from form

To something else less warm,

But teeming with the greatness knowledge brings.
Yet there is something sweeter to the mind,
When less of life has flown,

When less of life is known,
And we live unsuspecting of our kind.
For then is life more simpleness, though less
Of truth, for the false light

That maketh all things bright
To the young wanderers of this wilderness;
And yet not false, but happily preserved
To spread round innocence

A joyous glow, intense

With strength to bless and strengthen the unnerved.
How glad seemed everything around, when all

Our days sped goldenly
Across their summer sea,
And all their troubles vanished with nightfall.
The first idea of pleasure, was it not
A purer, simpler thing

Than life-taught man can bring
From the deep treasures of a blessed lot?

DEFINITIONS.

A Fag is that which has no cane, and no dignity.

A Swot is work without play.

The extremities of swots are not fags.

A right swot is that which lies evenly between

extremes.

A Swell is that which has only length and breadth of pattern.

The extremities of swells are Wellingtons. A regular Scrummage is that in which any two legs being taken, the space between them lies wholly in that scrummage.

A regular Charge is the inclination of two bodies to each other in a scrummage, which hack, but are not on the same side.

When one first lesson following on another first lesson makes the adjacent marks equal to nothing, each of these marks is called a Floor; and that which inflicts this floor is called a Master.

An Obtuse Fellow is faster than a Moderate. An Acute Fellow is slower than a Moderate. A Go, or Row, is the extremity of anything.

THE CONSTRUE HUNTER.

The Construe Hunter is the most miserable of beings for the ten minutes which precede every lesson. The rest of the day he spendeth at puntabout. He haunteth the studies of others. He affecteth not to know when the lesson beginneth, and to care less. He standeth about the quad. He is always round the corner. He catcheth little boys who know the lesson. He patteth one on the back, and calleth one a jolly fellow. He sayeth he will never ask again, which fact he forgetteth by next time. He hath always copies to do before the evening. He is always certain to be called up next time. He hath no dictionary. He writeth the words in his book. He nameth one "old boy." He is excessively polite. He only wanteth one or two small pieces, but somehow or other getteth a construe of the whole lesson. Ile scorneth to learn lines. He knoweth no proper

The wind that on the desert shore
Sweeps howling to the rocky caves,
And dashes wildly barren waves,

And throughout the sea-washed caverns raves,

Sees desolation evermore.

More glorious in her flooding woe,

Grand in the desolation sad

Of all she loved and all she had,

As doubting that she had been glad, Wailed Rizpah, as the wild winds know. Upon the barren height she wept,

And spread her sack-cloth on the rock,
Now yielding to the merciless shock;
Now the stern force of grief to mock,
The fount of outward sorrow slept.

All through the night, and through the day
The hot sun beating fiercely down,
The cold wind wearing hoary frown,
The strength of sorrow cannot drown,
She wills to weep her soul away.
Her bow is broken-There are those

Her stength in life, her pride, her all!
Cold, cold in death!-Upon them fall
The rains of heaven, a dreary pall!
Her heart was broken, and she rose.

THE WELL.

With walls of stone it is circled round
And the blackened waters gleam below
The depths of its bosom none can sound

And the springs of its pure stream none may know It seeks no friend in weal or woe,

In its cavernous home it delights to dwell. It loves not the haunts where others go,

But it loves the sweet calm of its lonely cell,

It loves not the regions of social mirth,
It loves not the objects of earthly love,
But it looks unmoved from the depths of earth
On the wondrous things in the heaven above.
The cord must be good, and stout, and long,
That would dare to enter its lonely cell;
The pail must be honest, and sound, and strong,
That would win the sweets of the lonely well.
There is a well in the heart of man

And its waters are sweet and hard to win,
The walls around it many may scan,

But few can attain to the thoughts within

She smiled-And the day dream of love's enthralling,
Broke on my heart and its cheerless waste-
She spoke-And her accents, in music falling,
Thrilled every chord in my throbbing breast.
She was a being too sweet for men
So Heaven recalled her above again.

She was fair as the flower which blooming ever,
Sighs forth its odour to winds around;
And her life flowed on as a waveless river,

With a sunlit grace of affection crowned;

And we felt that her worth, though we loved her well
Was too exquisite far for a tongue to tell

And we loved as a mortal may love a being
Too heavenly far for a world like this,
For a deathless loving was wedded to seeing,
And to gaze on her once were a nameless bliss;
And little we thought that yon heaven of love,
Would take back our flower to blossom above.