an old acquaintance dies, but adds that he lived too fast; and that poor Bob was a sad dog in his youth;

66

"a very sad dog, Sir; mightily set upon a short life and a merry one.”

When he gets very old indeed, he will sit for whole evenings, and say little or nothing; but informs you, that there is Mrs. Jones (the housekeeper)—“ She'll talk."

XXVII.-DOLPHINS.

OUR old book-friend, the Dolphin, used to be confounded with the porpus; but modern writers seem to concur in making a distinction between them. We remember being much mortified at this separation ; for having, in our childhood, been shewn something dimly rolling in the sea, while standing on the coast at twilight, and told with much whispering solemnity that it was a porpus, we had afterwards learnt to identify it with the Dolphin, and thought we had seen the romantic fish on whom Arion rode playing his harp.

Spenser introduces Arion most beautifully, in all his lyrical pomp, in the marriage of the Thames and Medway. He goes before the bride, smoothing onwards with the sound of his harp, like the very proof the water.

gress

Then there was heard a most celestiall sound

Of dainty musicke, which did next ensue

Before the Spouse. That was Arion crowned:
Who, playing on his harp, unto him drew
The eares and hearts of all that goodly crew;
That even yet the Dolphin, which him bore
Through the Ægean seas from pirates' view,
Stood still by him astonished at his lore;
And all the raging seas for joy forgot to roar.

So went he, playing on the watery plain.

Perhaps in no one particular thing or image, have some great poets shewn the different characters of their genius more than in the use of the Dolphin. Spenser, who of all his tribe lived in a poetical world, and saw things as clearly there as in a real one, has never shewn this nicety of realization more than in the following passage. He speaks of his Dolphins with as familiar a detail, as if they were horses waiting at a door with an equipage.

A team of Dolphins ranged in array
Drew the smooth charett of sad Cymoënt.
They were all taught by Triton to obey
To the long reins at her commandement :
As swift as swallows on the waves they went,
That their broad flaggy finnes no foam did reare,
Ne bubbling roundell they behind them sent.
The rest of other fishes drawen were,

Which with their finny oares the swelling sea did sheare.

Soon as they been arrived upon the brim

Of the Rich Strand, their charets they forlore;

And let their teamed fishes softly swim

Along the margent of the foamy shore,

Lest they their finnes should bruise, and surbeat sore
Their tender feete upon the stony ground.

There are a couple of Dolphins like these, in Raphael's Galatea. Dante, with his tendency to see things in a dreary point of view, has given an illustration of the agonies of some of the damned in his Inferno, at once new, fine, and horrible. It is in the 22d book, "Come i delfini," &c. He says that some wretches, swimming in one of the gulphs of hell, shot out their backs occasionally, like Dolphins, above the pitchy liquid, in order to snatch a respite from torment; but darted them back again like lightning. The devils would prong them as they rose. Strange fancies these for maintaining the character of religion !

Hear Shakspeare, always the noble and the goodnatured. We forget of what great character he is speaking; but never was an image that more singularly yet completely united superiority and playful

ness.

His delights

Were dolphin-like; and shewed themselves above
The element he lived in.

XXVIII. RONALD OF THE PERFECT HAND.

[The following tale is founded on a Scottish tradition. It was intended to be written in verse; which will account for its present appearance.]

THE stern old shepherd of the air,

The spirit of the whistling hair,

The wind, has risen drearily
In the Northern evening sea,
And is piping long and loud
To many a heavy upcoming cloud,-
Upcoming heavy in many a row,
Like the unwieldy droves below
Of seals, and horses of the sea,
That gather up as drearily,

And watch with solemn-visaged eyes
Those mightier movers in the skies.

'Tis evening quick;-'tis night:-the rain Is sowing wide the fruitless main, Thick, thick;—no sight remains the while From the farthest Orkney isle,

No sight to sea-horse, or to seer,

But of a little pallid sail,

That seems as if 'twould struggle near,

And then as if its pinion pale

Gave up the battle to the gale.

Four chiefs there are of special note,

Labouring in that earnest boat;
Four Orkney chiefs, that yesterday
Coming in their pride away

From there smote Norwegian king,
Led their war-boats triumphing
Straight along the golden line
Made by morning's eye divine.
Stately came they, one by one,
Every sail beneath the sun,
As if he their admiral were
Looking down from the lofty air,
Stately, stately through the gold.—
But before that day was done,

Lo, his eye grew vexed and cold;
And every boat, except that one,
A tempest trampled in its roar;
And every man, except those four,

Was drenched, and driving far from home,
Dead and swift, through the Northern foam.

Four are they, who wearily

Have drunk of toil two days at sea;

Duth Maruno, steady and dark,
Cormar, Soul of the Winged Bark;
And bright Clan Alpin, who could leap
Like a torrent from steep to steep;

And he, the greatest of that great band,
Ronald of the Perfect Hand.

Dumbly strain they for the shore,
Foot to board, and grasp on oar.
The billows, panting in the wind,
Seem instinct with ghastly mind,
And climb like crowding savages
At the boat that dares their seas.
Dumbly strain they, through and through,
Dumbly, and half blindly too,

Drenched, and buffetted, and bending

Up and down without an ending,
Like ghostly things that could not cease

To row among those savages.

Ronald of the Perfect Hand

Has rowed the most of all that band;
And now he's resting for a space
At the helm, and turns his face
Round and round on every side
To see what cannot be descried,