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From the Gentleman's Magazine. ALLAN RAMSAY.

ON one side of a letter addressed

To Mr. Allan Ramsay, at Mris Ross's, in Orange-court, near the Meuse, London, and thus endorsed by Andrew Millar, the

lisher

with the addition of one hundred and fifty songs, The Tea Table Miscellany; or, a collection of the most choice Songs, Scots and English. By Allan Ramsay. Printed for A. Millar, at Buchanan's Head, in the Strand, and sold by him, &c.

The eleventh edition was published at Lonpub-don, four vols. in one, 12mo, 1750. The subsequent ones are merely reprints of each other. The eighteenth, and probably the latest, edition appeared at Edinburgh in 1792.

Ed July 15, 1732. Allan Ramsay, at Ed to A. M., allowing him ye liberty of reprinting his 3 vols. of songs, to wch he agrees, per his July 27,

is the following interesting letter:

Edinburgh, July 13th, 1732.

DEAR ANDREW, I received yours of date the 6th inst., and allow you to print the three volumes of the Tea Table Miscellanys or Collections of Sougs published by me in what form you please, on your paying me against Martinmas next five pounds sterling. Further I empower you to take up for me five guineas from the printers of my Poems, the unpaid moiety as agreed on between them and Mr. M'Ewen, who had instructions from me to transact with them, and to whom they paid the first moiety. — I am, dear Andrew, your

very humble servt.,

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Ramsay's letter relates to the first collected edition of the Tea Table Miscellany, that in three thin duodecimo volumes, with the same pagination throughout, printed for Andrew Millar in 1733, and called "the ninth edition, being the compleatest and most correct of any yet published by Allan Ramsay."

The first volume of the Tea Table Miscellany was published at Edinburgh in 1724. The second, third, and fourth volumes were published separately in 24mo, at various intervals. When the second was published is, I believe, unknown. The third appeared at Edinburgh in 1727, and the fourth at London in 1740. A pirated edition was published at Dublin in 1729, three volumes in one, 12mo, pp. 334," printed for E. Smith." Ramsay's letter relates to the ninth, and the following advertisement in the Caledonian Mercury of July 17, 1740, to the tenth edition :

This day is published, neatly printed in a pocket volume, the tenth edition, being the Completest and most correct of any yet published,

From the Dublin University Magazine. FRUITS OF THE WILDS. HORTICULTURAL art may point to its elèves with pride; but let not Nature remain unrepresented. Let us not forget that Providence has kindly spread abroad wild fruits for those who cannot command the luxuries of the fenced and tended garden. The sinall raspberry beside the brook, and the sweet Wood Strawberry, the delight of peasant children, have passed away before autumn commenced; but all over the country the wholesome and pleasant Blackberry offers an abundant feast to all who are not too proud to stoop for it; and both its flowers and fruit are useful to the dyer. The species called the rose blackberry is the badge of the Scotch clan MacNab. The species called dewberry (rubus casius), with its fine, dark-blue bloom, and the large grains of its small juicy fruit, has ing part of Titania's fairy feast (Midsummer been throught worthy, by Shakspeare, of formNight's Dream, act iii. scene 2) :

Feed him with apricots and dewberries, With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries. Boggy grounds, especially on mountains, supply the elegant Cranberry, with its erect, shining leaves, and very pretty rosecolored flowers, succeeded by the speckled and mottled berries, that look like tiny birds' eggs. The name is properly craneberry, because the footstalks bend like the neck of a crane, the flower-bud representing the crane's head. It is a badge of the clan Grant.

The clan M'Farlane bears as its device the handsome Cloudberry, that takes its name from growing on the tops of high mountains, almost among the clouds, and decorates those wild scenes with its smooth-surfaced, serrate edged leaves, and fair white flowers, which give place to the tawnyberry, that lies uninjured beneath the snows, and is prized by the mountaineers for its long duration, as well as for its antiscorbutic qualities, and its pleasant acid flavor.

On the heathy hill we look for the Bilberry (or whortleberry), with its myrtle-like leaves, adorned by its waxen rosy flowers, and afterwards with its dark-blue bloomy fruit, rich in

places where it cannot be marked by the punctuation :

THE HILL OF HEATH.

FROM THE IRISH.

(A Aindir mhilis, mhanla, a ttag me gean is gradh dhuit, &c.) My darling white-armed maiden, I'll love thee very dearly!

I'd give thee the best dwelling "that ere was built on earth,

I'd go with thee to Arran,* to France, or Spain how cheerly;

To wildest strand of ocean, or the fair hill of mirth.

We 'd wile an hour in watching "the boats come homewards rowing,

Or loiter in the lone wood," the shady boughs

beneath;

I'd need not breast the steep then, with gay song upward going

sanguine-colored juice. It is the badge of the clan M'Lean; but among the ancients it was the emblem of treachery from the story of Myrtilus. Hippodamia, the beautiful daughter of Oenomaus, King of Etis, was wooed by many Greek princes; but an oracle having declared that her husband would be the cause of her father's death, the latter, to prevent her marriage, refused to give her to any, save one who would be able to conquer him in a chariot race, which he flattered himself would be impossible, as his horses were of unrivalled fleetness. Notwithstanding the condition made by the king, that each of his defeated competitors should forfeit his life, thirteen princes had attempted the race, and been defeated and slain. But the fourteenth, Pelops, son of Tantalus, King of Phrygia, bribed Myrtilus, the charioteer of Oenomaus, to leave a linchpin of his master's chariot loose, by which means the chariot was overturned, and the king mortally injured. When dying, he requested Pelops, the victor, to avenge him on his faithless charioteer, which Pelops did, by throwing Myrtilus into the sea. waves having cast his body ashore, it was honorably buried by the people of the country, by whom he was reputed the son of Mercury; and the bilberry is said to have first sprung from his grave. In botany it bears his name, Vaccinium Myrtilus, an appellation The which is also appropriate, from the resemblance of the shrub to a little myrtle. Myrtilus is fabled, by the classic mythology, to have been ultimately translated by Mercury The Banshee chants her dirges, half singing and to the skies, where he shines as the constellation Auriga, or the Charioteer. The bilberry has been called "the fruit of the proscribed," because growing in solitudes, fit for the haunts of outlaws, who have used its bloodred juice to stain and disguise their faces.

The

To ask for news of Mary "upon the Hill of
Heath.

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High on the stone-heaped mountaint one day when lonely lying,

From Benduff's peak so darksome “I looked out east by north;

I heard the cuckoo speaking, I saw the sea-gulls
flying,

While with their dams the lambkins "and
badger and the weasle" there get them lairs
calves were going forth.
for sleeping;

The red fox finds a shelter "from winds that
rudely breathe,

half weeping,

That scene is grander far than "the little Hill of Heath.

There bloom the rose and lily, and honey is abounding,

There the bright crystal sparkles, the white

The heath-cocks there are crowding, the hounds'
swan glides along,
shrill cry resounding,

Harps at each door are chiming "to sweet-
voiced maidens' song.

There grow sweet fruits, the berry "upon the wild bush blazes,

There are all things delicious" to keep away

There

With these fruits of the mountains and the wilds we will associate a simple rustic song, which we translate from the original Irish, a language that deserves to be better known and appreciated for its variety, energy, and pathos; a language that can boast of more peasant poets than perhaps any other in Europe. This song was popular in Munster (among those who understood the original, for we believe it has never before appeared in English). It was written by a poor piper (whose name we have been unable to learn), in opposition to a song in praise of a hill called the Hill of Heath, composed by a There rival musician, of which only a few fragments are now extant. The pictures of rural plenty and happiness presented in our song exist no longer, save in the memory of those who talk of the good old times in poor Ireland" before the famine and the emigration. In order to preserve the rhythm we mark the pause for the voice by the cæsura thus ", in

That

grim death,

dwells my love whose beauty "excels all

beauteous faces

place is better far than "the little Hill of Heath.

is sweet milk and butter, "fat swine at

all times straying

On both sides of the river, and round the verdant hill,

The Isle of Arran in the Bay of Galway. † Alluding to the cairns, or piles of loose stones, anciently heaped up as sephulchral monuments. The quartz crystal.

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ANECDOTE OF A CROCODILE. The Indians told us, that at San Fernando scarcely a year passes without two or three grown-up persons, particularly women who fetch water from the river, being drowned by these carnivorous reptiles. They related to us the history of a young girl of Uritucu, who, by singular intrepidity and presence of mind, saved herself from the jaws of a crocodile. When she felt herself seized, she sought the eyes of the animal, and plunged her fingers into them with such violence, that the pain forced the crocodile to let her go, after having bitten off the lower part of her left arm. The girl, notwithstanding the enormous quantity of blood she lost, reached the shore, swimming with the hand that still remained to her. In those desert countries, where man is ever wrestling with nature, discourse daily turns on the best means that may be employed to escape from a tiger, a boa, or a crocodile; every one prepares himself in some sort for the dangers that may await him. "I knew," said the young girl of Uritucu coolly, "that the cayman lets go his hold if you push your fingers into his eyes." Long after my return to Europe, I learned that in the interior of Africa the negroes know and practise the same means of defence. Who does not recollect with lively interest, Isaac, the guide of the unfortunate Mungo Park, who was seized twice by a crocodile, and twice escaped from the jaws of the monster, having succeeded in thrusting his fingers into the creature's eyes while under water? The African Isaac and the young American girl owed their safety to the same presence of mind, and the same combination of ideas. - Humboldt's Personal Narrative.

SPEED ON RAILWAYS. Dr. Lardner adopts' some ingenious arguments, or rather illustrations, to render familiar the extraordinary velocity with which our express trains move. The Great Western Express to Exeter travels at the rate of 43 miles an hour, including stoppages, or 51 miles an hour without including stoppages; to attain this rate, a speed of 60 miles an hour is adopted midway between some of the stations; and in certain experimental trips 70 miles an hour have been reached. A speed of 70 miles an hour is about equivalent to 35 yards per second, or 35 yards between two beats of a common clock; all objects near the eye of a passenger travelling at this rate will pass by his eye in the thirty-fifth part of a second; and if 35 stakes were erected at the side of the road, a yard asunder, they would not be distinguishable one from another; if painted red, they would appear collectively as a continuous flash of red color. If two trains with this speed passed each other, the relative velocity would be 70 yards per second; and if one of the trains were 70 yards long, it would flash by in a single second. Supposing the locomotive which draws such a train to have driving-wheels seven feet in diameter, these wheels will revolve five times in a second; the piston moves along the cylinder ten times in a second; the valve moves and the steam escapes ten times in a second- but as there are two cylinders, which act alternately, there are really twenty puffs or escapes of steam in a second. The locomotive can be heard to "cough" when moving slowly, the cough being occasioned by the abrupt emission of waste steam up the chimney; but twenty coughs per second cannot be separated by the ear, their individuality becoming lost. Such a locomotive speed is equal to nearly onefourth that of a cannon-ball; and the momentum of a whole train, moving at such a speed, would be nearly equivalent to the aggregate force of a number of cannon-balls, equal to one-fourth the "smash" should folweight of the train: that a low a "collision," is no subject for marvel, if a train moving at such speed. or anything like such speed- should meet with any obstacle to its progress. - Dodd's Curiosities of Industry.

Select Poems of Prior and Swift.

A judicious selection from the poems of men whose names are better known to this generation than their works. The editor, who has already proved his hand in the Selections from Dryden, introduces each author by a critical preface; the estimate in both cases being true, though we think he assigns a poetical merit to Prior which the present generation will hardly confirm. The "Henry and Emma" inculcates a blindly confident love, which is opposed to the opinions of the present day; "Solomon," notwithstanding the great merit of passages and parts, is deficient in interest as a whole. Johnson, who was born before Prior died, and who wrote at a time when his works were popular, felt that it wanted that without which all other excellences are of small avail, the power of engaging attention and alluring curiosity."- Spectator.

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 472.-4 JUNE, 1853.

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POETRY: Old England's Babes in the Woods, 577; Lines among the Leaves-To a Little Girl, 578; To One Afar, 619.

SHORT ARTICLES: Palmerstonian Catechisms, 619; The Washington and Reed Letters Little and Bad, 624.

NEW BOOKS: 624; 631; 632.

From Punch.

OLD ENGLAND'S BABES IN THE WOOD.

In a nurse's uncouth telling, in a broadside's random spelling,

Or in statelier garb of story-book, with binding and gilt edges,

For ages has that story set Young England's

tears a-welling,

With what bursts of tender sobbing he blessed the gentle robin,

Who the forest leaves their faces laid with pious beak and claws on,

And how heavily in school-days was he visited with cobbing

Who the robin's sacred nest laid his sacrilegious paws on.

That sanctifies the red-breast on our window- That old tale with a new dress on, for Old Eng

sills and hedges.

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How oft the nursery's rattle has been hushed before the prattle

Of those pretty babes which wrought so on the milder-minded Walter,

That in the lonely forest he gave his fellow battle,

And slew him, thereby cheating the gallows and the halter.

And then, instead of staying to keep the babes from straying,

He weakly left them, with command to " stop there like good children;"

For Young England well remembered his own manner of obeying

The like order from the nurse-maid whom he gloried in bewildering.

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VOL. I. 37

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Another tale 't is telling,

Where the clustered elm is swelling

With dancing joy, that seems to laugh outright;
And the leaves, all bright and clapping,
Sound like human fingers snapping
With delight.

The fitful key-note shifteth
Where the heavy oak uplifteth
A diadem of acorns broad and high;

And it chants with muffled roaring,
Like an eagle's wings in soaring
To the sky.

Now the breeze is freshly wending,
Where the gloomy yew is bending,

To shade green graves and canopy the owl;
And it sends a mournful whistle,
That remindeth of the missal
And the cowl.

Another lay it giveth
Where the spiral poplar liveth,
Above the cresses, lily, flag, and rush;
And it sings with hissing treble,
Like the foam upon the pebble,
In its gush.

A varied theme it utters,
Where the glossy date-leaf flutters,

A loud and lightsome chant it yielded there;
And the quiet, listening dreamer
May believe that many a streamer
Flaps the air.

It is sad and dreary hearing
Where the giant pine is rearing

A lonely head, like hearse-plume waved about;
And it lurketh melancholy,"
Where the thick and sombre holly

Bristles out.

It murmurs soft and mellow

'Mid the light laburnum's yellow,

As lover's ditty chimed by rippling plash,
And deeper is its tiding,

As it hurries, swiftly gliding,
Through the ash.

A roundelay of pleasure
Does it keep in merry measure,

While rustling in the rich leaves of the beech,
As though a band of fairies

Were engaged in Mab's vagaries,
Out of reach.

Oh! a bard of many breathings

Is the Wind in sylvan wreathings, O'er mountain tops and through the woodland groves,

Now fifing and now drumming-
Now howling and now humming,
As it roves.

Oh! are not human bosoms

Like these things of leaves and blossoms, Where hallowed whispers come to cheer and rouse ? Is there no mystic stirring

In our hearts, like sweet wind whirring
In the boughs?

Though that wind a strange tone waketh
In every home it maketh,

And the maple-tree responds not as the larch,

Yet Harmony is playing

Round all the green arms swaying

'Neath heaven's arch.

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VEX not thy little heart that time will spread
The frost of age upon thy father's head
Will line his brow, and dim the loving eye
That gazes on thee, as the years go by ;
Thy gentle love, my darling, cannot stay
The conquering despot on his cruel way.
No! the strange fears that flutter in thy heart,
The tender tears that from thy blue eyes start,
The fond embrace that tightens round my neck,
Have not the power his ravages to check.
We both move onward to the expectant tomb;
And my decay accompanies thy bloom.
But though my form may alter day by day,
And Nature's universal law obey;

Though my stout arm may tremble in the clasp
That round thy woman's form is fondly cast;
Though the strong frame that bears thee gayly

now,

Beneath the sadder weight of years may bow;
My heart, defying time, shall ne'er decay!
Years cannot steal its vital warmth away!
Fed by thy love, its deep, perennial joy
Is young with strength that age cannot destroy.
Thy womanhood will never weep to see
Time's changing features in my love for thee.
Deep in the oak's old trunk there hidden lie
Buds that have never opened to the sky;
Let but its noble head be rudely torn,
And forth they spring, the ruin to adorn.
In the tough fibre of my being sleep
Buds of warm feeling thickly strown and deep;
In their quick growth, thy fears shall solaced be,
Should the wild storm-wind only threaten thee.

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