Of life reach'd ten o'clock: and while a glow, Hectic and brief as summer's day nigh done,

XIV.

The baser sides of literature and life, And nought remains unseen, but much untold, By those who scour those double vales of strife. While common men grow ignorantly old, The lawyer's brief is like the surgeon's knife, Dissecting the whole inside of a question, And with it all the process of digestion.

• Query: suit 1-Printer's Devil.

The Brig of Don, near the Auld Toun' of Aberdeen, with its one arch and its black deep salmon stream below, is in my memory as yesterday. I still remember, though perhaps I may misquote, the awful proverb which made me pause to cross it, and yet lean over it with a childish delight, being an only son, at least by the mother's side. The saying, as recollected by me, was this, but I have never heard or seen it since

I was nine years of age:

'Brig of Balgounie, black's your wa, Wia wife's ae son, and a inear's ae foal Doun ye shall fa'!'

About this time, as might have been anticipated, Seduced by youth, and dangerous examples, Don Juan grew, I fear, a little dissipated;

Which is a sad thing, and not only tramples On our fresh feelings, but as being participated With all kinds of incorrigible samples Of frail humanity-must make us selfish, And shut our souls up in us, like a shell-fish. XXIV.

This we pass over. We will also pass

The usual progress of intrigues between Unequal matches, such as are, alas!

A young lieutenant's with a not old queen, But one who is not so youthful as she was In all the royalty of sweet seventeen. Sovereigns may sway materials, but not matter; And wrinkles, the d-d democrats, won't flatter.

XXV.

And death, the sovereign's sovereign, though the Gracchus of all mortality, who levels, [great With his Agrarian laws, the high estate

Of him who feasts, and fights, and roars, and revels,

To one small grass-grown patch (which must await

Corruption for its crop), with the poor devils Who never had a foot of land till nowDeath's a reformer, all men must allow.

XXVI.

He lived (not Death, but Juan) in a hurry Of waste, and haste, and glare, and gloss, and glitter,

In this gay clime of bearskins, black and furryWhich (though I hate to say a thing thats bitter)

Peep out sometimes, when things are in a flurry,

Through all the purple and fine linen, fitter For Babylon's than Russia's royal hariotAnd neutralize her outward show of scarlet.

XXVII.

And this same state we won't describe: we could Perhaps from hearsay, or from recollection; But, getting nigh grim Dante's 'obscure wood,'t Of human years, that half-way house, that rude That horrid equinox, that hateful section Hut, whence wise travellers drive with circumspection

Life's sad post-horses o'er the dreary frontier Of age, and, looking back to youth, give ant tear;

XXVIII.

I won't describe-that is, if I can help
Description; and I won't reflect-that is,
If I can stave off thought, which, as a whelp
Clings to its teat-sticks to me through the
abyss

Of this odd labyrinth; or as the kelp

Holds by the rock; or as a lover's kiss Drains its first draught of lips :-but, as I said, I won't philosophize, and will be read.

XXIX.

Juan, instead of courting courts, was courted

A thing which happens rarely. This he owed Much to his youth, and much to his reported

Valour; much also to the blood he show d, Like a race-horse; much to each dress he sported, Which set the beauty off in which he glowd, As purple clouds befringe the sun; but most He owed to an old woman and his post.

Tiberius Gracchus, being tribune of the people, demanded in their name the execution of the Agrarian laws; by wi all persons possessing more than a certain number of were to be deprived of the surplus for the benefit of the citizens. + Mi ritrovai ver una selva oscura. inferno, Canto 1.