wept and worshipped at the grave of Shakspeare, or down the yellow Avon thought we saw sailing her own sweet stately swan! Now gazed in dread astonishment on Portsmouth's naval arsenal, and all that machinerysublime, because of the power that sets it a-going, and far more, because of the power that it sends abroad, winged and surcharged with thunder, all over the main-ships without masts, sheer-hulks, majestic and magnificent even in that bare black magnitude, looming through the morning or evening gloaming—and lo! a First rater, deck above deck, tier above tier of guns, sending up, as she sails in sunshine, her clouds into the sky; and as the Ocean-Queen bears up in the blast, how grand her stern-and what a height above the waves tumbling a-foam in her wake! Now seated on the highest knoll of all the bright Malvern Hills in breathless delight, slowly turning round our head in obedience to the beauty and grandeur of that panorama-matchless on earth-we surveyed at one moment county upon county, of rich, merry, sylvan England, mansioned, abbeyed, towered, spired, castled; and at another, different, and yet not discordant, say, rather, most harmonious with that other level scene, the innumerous mountains of Wales, cloud-crested, or clearly cutting with outlines free, flowing or fantastic, here the deep blue, there the dark purple, and yonder the bright crimson sky! Wales, glorious, even were she without other glory, with Plinlimmon, Cader-Idris, Snowdon, "Vocal no more since Cambria's fatal day, To high-born Hoel's harp, or soft Llewellyn's lay." Now borne as on an angel's wing, and in the "very waist and middle of the night," we sat down a Solitary on Derwent Water's shore, "While the cataract of Lodore Peal'd to our orisons !" Now while Luna and her nymphs delighted to behold their own beauty on its breathless bosom, we hung in a little skiff, like a water-lily moored in moonshine, in the fairest of all fair scenes in nature, and the brightest of all the bright-how sweet the music of her name, as it falls from our lips with a blessing-Windermere-Win dermere ! VOL. XXIII. And thus we robbed all England of her beauty and her sublimity, her grandeur and her magnificence, and bore it all off and away treasured in our heart of hearts. Thus, the towers and temples of Oxford were haunted with new visions-thus in London we were assailed by sounds and sights from the far-off solitude of rocks, and cliffs, and woods, and mountains, on whose summits hung setting suns, or rose up in spiritual beauty the young crescent moon, or crowded unnumbered planets, or shone alone in its lustre, "The star of Jove, so beautiful and large," as if the other eyes of heaven were afraid to sustain the serenity of that one orb divine! But still as the few soul-brightening, soul-strengthening suns of youth rolled on,-those untamed years, of which every day, it might seem indeed every hour, brought the consciousness of some new knowledge, some new feeling, that made the present greater than the past, and was giving perpetual promise of a still greater future,-promise that was the divine manna of hope-while the world of nature continued to our eyes, our hearts, and our imaginations,dearer and more dear, saddened or sublimed by associations clothing with green gladness the growth of the young, with hoary sadness, the decay of the old trees, "Moulding to beauty many a mouldering tower ;" and in storm or sunshine, investing "Tis mind alone that in itself contains The beauteous or sublime!" Where are the blasts born that bring the clouds across the stars? Where are the thoughts born that bring clouds across our souls? The study of physics is sublime, for the student feels as if mounting the lower steps of the ladder leading up to God in the skies. But the metaphysics of our own moral, our own intellectual being, sublimer far! when reason is her own object, and conscience, by her own light, sees into her own essence! And where shall such studies be best pursued? Not alone in the sacred silence of the Academic Grove-although there should be their glimmering beginnings, and there their glorified but still obscurest end. But through the dim, doubting, and often sorely disturbed intermediate time, when man is commanded by the being within him to mingle with man, when smiles, and sighs, and tears, are most irresistible, and when the look of an eye can startle the soul into a passion of love or hate, then it is that human nature must be studied-or it will remain unknown and hidden for ever must be studied by every human being for himself, in the poetry and phi losophy of Life! As that life lies spread before us like a sea! At first, like delighted, wondering, and fearful children, who keep gazing on the waves that are racing like living creatures from some far-off region to these their own lovely and beloved shores,-or still with unabated admiration, at morning, see the level sands yellowing far away, with bands of beautiful birds walking in the sun, or, having trimmed their snowy plumage, wheeling in their pastime, with many wildmingled cries, in the glittering air,with here-there-yonder some vessel seemingly stranded, and fallen help less on her side, but waiting only for the tide to waken her from her rest, and again to waft her, on her re-expanded wings, away into the main! Then, as the growing boy becomes more familiar with the ebb and the flowwith all the smiles and frowns on the aspect-all the low and sweet, all the loud and sullen, tones of the voice of the sea-in his doubled delight he loses half his dread, launches his own skiff, paddles with his own oar, hoists his own little sail-and, ere long, impatient of the passion that devours him, the passion for the wonders and dangers that dwell on the great deep, on some day disappears from his birthplace and his parents' eyes, and, years afterwards, returns a thoughtful man from his voyaging round the globe! Therefore, to know ourselves, we sought to penetrate into the souls of other men to be with them, in the very interior of their conscience, when they thought no eye was upon them but the eye of God. 'Twas no seclusion of the spirit within itself to take cognizance of its own acts and movements; but we were led over the fortunes and works of human beings wherever their minds have acted or their steps have trod. All sorrow and all joy, the calamities which have shaken empires, the crimes which have hurried single souls into perdition, the grounds of stability, just order, and power, in the great societies of men-the peace and happiness that have blossomed in the bosom of innocent life, the loves that have interwoven joy with grief, the hopes that no misery can overwhelm, the fears that no pleasure can assuage, the gnawing of the worm that never dies, the bliss of conscience, the bale of remorse, the virtue of the moral, and the piety of the religious spirit,all these, and everything that human life, in its inexhaustible variety, could disclose, became the subjects of inqui ry, emotion, thought, to our intellect seeking knowledge of human nature, to us a student desirous, in restless and aspiring youth, to understand something of his own soul-of that common being in which he lives and breathes, and of which, from no other source, and no other aid, can he ever have any uninspired revelation. Is it wonderful then that we, like other youths with a soul within them, mingled ourselves and our very being with the dark, bright, roaring, bushed, vast, beautiful, magnificent, guilty and glorious London! Coleridge, that rich-freighted Argosie tilting in sunshine over Imagination's Seas, feared not-why should he have feared?-in a poem of his young-scarcely hath it reached its youth-to declare to all men, "To me hath Heaven, with bounteous hand, assign'd Energic reason and a shaping mind." That boast may not pass our lips! Yet what forbids us even now exultingly to say, that nature had not withheld from us the power of genial delight in all the creations of genius; and that she shrouded, as with a gorgeous canopy, our youth, with the beauty and magnificence of a million dreams? Lovely to our eyes was all the loveliness that emanated from more gifted spirits, and in the love with which we embraced it, it became our very own! We caught the shadows of high thoughts as they passed along the wall, reflected from the great minds meditating in the hallowed shade! And thenceforth they peopled our being! Nor haply did our own minds not originate some intellectual forms and combinations, in their newness fair, or august-recognized as the product of our own more elevated moods, although unarrayed, it might be, in words, or passing away with their symbols into oblivion, nor leaving a trace behind-only a sense of their transitory presence, consolatory and sublime! Even then, in thy loud streets, O London! as the remembrance of Scotland's silent valleys came suddenly and softly upon our hearts, a wish, a hope, a belief arose that the day might come, when even our voice might not be altogether unlistened to by the happy dwellers there,-haply faint, low, and irregular, like the song of some bird-one of the many linnets -in its happiness half-afraid to tune its melodies, amidst the minstrelsy of Merle and Mavis, with which the whole forest rings! prime. But since its first year rolled round the sun, how many towers and temples have in ever-changeful London 66 gone to the earth!" How many risen up whose "statures reach the sky!" Dead is the old King in his darkness, whom all England loved and reverenced. Princes have died, and some of them left not a namemighty men of war have sunk, with all their victories and all their trophies, vainly deemed immortal, into oblivion-Mute is the eloquence of Pitt's and of Canning's voice-In that Abbey, the thought of whose sacred silence did often touch his high heart, when all his fleet was moored in peace, or bearing down in line of battle, now Nelson sleeps!-And thousands, unknown and unhonoured, as wise, or brave, in themselves as good and as great as those whose temples fame hath crowned with everlasting halo, have dropt the body, and gone to God. How many thousand fairest faces, brightest eyes, have been extinguished and faded quite away! Fairer and brighter far to him whose youth they charmed and illumined, than any eyes that shall ever more gaze on the flowers of earth, or the stars of heaven! Methinks the westering sun shines cooler in the garden-that the shades are somewhat deepened that the birds are not hopping round our head, as they did some hour ago that in their afternoon siesta they are mute. Another set of insects are in the air. The flowers, that erewhile were broad and bright awake, with slumbering eyne are now hanging down their heads; and those that erewhile seemed to slumber, have awoke from their day-dreams, and look almost as if they were going to speak. Have you a Often do we vainly dream that language of your own-dear creatures Time works changes only by ages-by-for we know that ye have loves? centuries! But who can tell what even an hour may bring forth? Decay and destruction have " ample room and verge enough," in such a City; and in one year they can do the work of many generations. This century is but But, hark, the Gong-the Gong! in the hand of John, smiting it like the slave of some Malay-chief. In our Paradise there is "fear that dinner cool," mortal man must eat-and thus endeth "OUR MIDSUMMER-DAY'S DREAM." DEAR SIR, A STRANGE SECRET. Related in a Letter from the Ettrick Shepherd. YESTERDAY there was a poor man named Thomas Henderson came to our door, and presented me with a let ter from a valued friend. I was kind to the man; and as an acknowledgment, he gave me his history in that plain, simple, and drawling style, which removed all doubts of its authenticity. It is not deserving of a recital; but as I am constantly on the look-out for fundamental documents of any sort relating to Scotland, there was one little story of his that I deemed worthy of preservation; and consequently here have I sat down to write it out in the man's own words, while yet they are fresh in my memory. I was nine years a servant to the Earl of and when I left him, he made me a very handsome present; but it was on condition that I should never again come within a hundred miles of his house. The truth is, that I would have been there to this day, had I not chanced to come at the knowledge of something relating to the family that I ought not to have known, and which I never would have known, had I gotten my own will. "Pray, what was that, Thomas? Above all things, I should like to hear some of the secrets of a noble family." Weel, ye shall hear a' that I ken, sir; which, to say the truth, is but very little after a'. But it was this. When the auld Earl died there was an unca rumpus an' confusion, and at length the young lord came hame frae abroad, an' tuke the command. An' I think he hadna been master aboon twa years when he rings the bell ae morning, an' sends for me. I was merely a groom, and no used to gang up stairs to my lord; but he often spoke to me in the stables, for I had the charge o' his favourites Cleopatra and Venus, and I thought he wanted to gie me some directions about them. Weel, up the stair I rins, wanting the jacket and bonnet, and I opens the door and I says, "What is't, my lord ?" "Shut the door and come in," says he. "Hech! what in the world is in the wind now!" thinks I. "Am I gaun to be made some grand secreter?" "Tom, has the Lady Julia ordered the coach to-day?" says he. "I believe she has, my lord. I think Hector was saying so." "And is it still to the old spot again in the forest ?" "That winna be kend till Hector is on the speat. But there is little doubt that it is to the same place. She never drives to any other." " "Tom, I was long absent from home, but you have been in the family all the while, and must know all its secrets. What is it supposed my sister Julia has always ado with the forester's wife at the shieling of Aberduchra?" "That has never been kend to ane o us, my lord. But it is supposed there is some secret business connected wr her visits there." "That is a great stretch of supposition, indeed, Tom! Of that there can be no doubt. But what do the servants suppose the secret relates to? Or what do you suppose it does? Come, tell me honestly and freely.” "O, naebody kens that, my lord; for Lady Julia just lights at a certain point o' the road, and orders the coach to be there again at a certain hour at night; an' that's a' that has ever been kend about it. But we a' notice that Lady Julia is sair altered. An' the folks say,-but as to that I'm ignorant The folks say, ye ken, that auld Eppie Cowan's a witch." "And that it is on some business of enchantment or divination that my sister goes to her?" "Na, na, I dinna say that, my lord; for a' that I say is just this, that I believe naebody in this world, excepting Lady Julia an' auld Eppie themsells twa, kens what their business is thegither, or how they came to be connected." “Well, well, Tom, that is what I want particularly to know. Do you set out just now; go over the shoulder of Beinny-Veol, and through GlenEllich, by the straight route. Get to Aberduchra before my sister. Conceal yourself somewhere, in the house or out of the house, in a thicket or in a tree. Note all that you see Lady with one continued mumble, like the sound of a distant waterfall. The sounds still increased, and I sometimes made myself believe that I heard the voice of a third person. I cannot tell what I would then have given to have heard what was going on, but though I strained my hearing to the uttermost, I could not attain it. At length, all at once, I heard a piercing shriek, which was followed by low stifled moanings. "L-d J- -s, they are murdering a bairn, an' what will I do!" said I to myself, sobbing till my heart was like to burst. And finding that I was just going to lose my senses, as well as my hold, and fall from the tree, I descended with all expedition, and straightway ran and hid myself in below the bank of the burn behind the house, that thereby I might drown the cries of the suffering innocent, and secure myself from a fall. Now, here shall be my watch," thinks I; "for here I can see every ane that passes out or into the house; and as for what is gaun on in the inside, that's mair than I'll meddle wi'." I had by this time got up to the top of a great elm-tree that almost overlooked the door o' the shieling, but when I saw the auld roudess looking about her sae sternly, I grew frighted, for I thought, if she be a witch, I shall soon be discovered; and then, should she cast any cantrips that may dumfounder me, or should I see ought to put me beside myself, what a devil of a fa' I will get! I wad now hae gien a' the claes on my back to have been safe down again, and had begun to study a quick descent, when I perceived Lady Julia coming rapidly up the glen, with manifestly a kind o' trepidation o' manner. My heart began now to quake like an aspin leaf, for I suspected that some awesome scene was gaun to be transacted, that could bring the accomplished Lady Julia to that wild retired spot. And yet when she drew near, her modest mien and fading beauty were sae unlike onything wicked or hellish, that in short I didna ken what to think or what to fear, but I had a considerable allow-quity. ance o' baith. With many kind and obsequious courtesies did old Eppie receive the lady on the green, and after exchanging a few words, they both vanished into the cottage, and shut the door. Now, thinks I, the infernal wark will begin; but goodness be thankit, I'll see nane o't frae here. I changed my place on the tree, however, and came as near to the top of the lum as the branches would carry me. From thence I heard the voices of the two, but knew not what they were saying. The Lady Julia's voice was seldom heard, but when it was, it had the sounds of mental agony; and I certainly thought she was imploring the old hag to desist from something which the other persisted in. The voice of the latter never ceased; it went on I had got a nice situation now, and a safe ane, for there was a thick natural hedge of briers, broom, and brambles, down the back o' the kail-yard. These overhung the burn-brae, so that I could hide mysell frae every human ee in case of great danger, and there was an opening in the hedge, a kind of thin bit, through which I could see all that passed, and there I coured down on my knees, and lay wi' my een stelled on that shieling o' sin and ini I hadna lain lang in this position till out comes the twasome, cheek for chowe, and the auld ane had a coffin under her arm; and straight on they comes for the very opening o' the hedge where I was lying. Now, thinks I, I'm a gone man; for in below this very bank where I am sitting, are they coming to hide the corpse o' the poor bairn, and here ten might lie till they consumed, unkend to the haill warld. Ay, here they are coming, indeed, for there is not another bit in the whole thicket where they can win through; and in half a minute, I will have the witch and the murderess baith hinging at my throat like twa wul-cats. I was aince just setting a' my joints to make a clean splash down the middle of the burn like an otter; but the power was denied me, an' a' that I could do, was |