and we deliver it not as the annals of the new world, but as it belongs to the antiquities of mankind, and delineates the picture of all nations in the rude state.

To the Cuckoo.

Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove!
Thou messenger of Spring!
Now Heaven repairs thy rural seat,

And woods thy welcome sing.

What time the daisy decks the green,

Thy certain voice we hear;

Hast thou a star to guide thy path,
Or mark the rolling year?

Delightful visitant ! with thee

I hail the time of flowers,

And hear the sound of music sweet
From birds among the bowers.

The school-boy, wandering through the wood
To pull the primrose gay,

Starts, the new voice of Spring to hear,

And imitates thy lay.

What time the pea puts on the bloom,

Thou fliest thy vocal vale,

An annual guest in other lands,
Another Spring to hail.

Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
Thy sky is ever clear;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No Winter in thy year!

Oh, could I fly, I'd fly with thee!
We'd make, with joyful wing,
Our annual visit o'er the globe,
Companions of the Spring.

The third line of the fourth verse originally stood:
Starts thy curious voice to hear,'

which was doubtless altered by Logan as defective in quantity, though curious' has been defended as truer to fact than 'new.'

The Complaint of Nature.

'Few are thy days, and full of woe,

O man, of woman born!

Thy doom is written, "Dust thou art,
And shalt to dust return."

'Determined are the days that fly
Successive o'er thy head;
The numbered hour is on the wing
That lays thee with the dead.

'Alas! the little day of life

Is shorter than a span ;

Yet black with thousand hidden ills
To miserable man.

'Gay is thy morning, flattering hope
Thy sprightly step attends;
But soon the tempest howls hehind,
And the dark night descends.
'Before its splendid hour the cloud
Comes o'er the beam of light;

A pilgrim in a weary land,
Man tarries but a night.

'Behold! sad emblem of thy state,

The flowers that paint the field;

Or trees that crown the mountain's brow, And boughs and blossoms yield.

'When chill the blast of Winter blows,

Away the Summer flies,

The flowers resign their sunny robes,
And all their beauty dies.

'Nipt by the year the forest fades;

And, shaking to the wind,

The leaves toss to and fro, and streak The wilderness behind.

'The Winter past, reviving flowers Anew shall paint the plain,

The woods shall hear the voice of Spring And flourish green again.

'But man departs this earthly scene,

Ah! never to return!

No second Spring shall e'er revive
The ashes of the urn.

'The inexorable doors of death, What hand can e'er unfold? Who from the cerements of the tomb

Can raise the human mould?

"The mighty flood that rolls along Its torrents to the main,

The waters lost can ne'er recall
From that abyss again.

'The days, the years, the ages, dark Descending down to night, Can never, never be redeemed

Back to the gates of light.

'So man departs the living scene,

To night's perpetual gloom; The voice of morning ne'er shall break The slumbers of the tomb.

'Where are our fathers? Whither gone The mighty men of old?

The patriarchs, prophets, princes, kings, In sacred books enrolled?

'Gone to the resting-place of man,

The everlasting home,

Where ages past have gone before, Where future ages come."

Thus nature poured the wail of woe,
And urged her earnest cry;
Her voice, in agony extreme,
Ascended to the sky.

The Almighty heard: then from his throne In majesty he rose ;

And from the heaven, that opened wide, His voice in mercy flows:

'When mortal man resigns his breath,

And falls a clod of clay,

The soul immortal wings its flight

To never-setting day.

'Prepared of old for wicked men

The bed of torment lies; The just shall enter into bliss Immortal in the skies.'

The Braes of Yarrow.

'Thy braes were bonny, Yarrow stream!
When first on them I met my lover;
Thy braes how dreary, Yarrow stream!
When now thy waves his body cover!
For ever now, O Yarrow stream!

Thou art to me a stream of sorrow;
For never on thy banks shall I

Behold my love, the flower of Yarrow.

'He promised me a milk-white steed, To bear me to his father's bowers; He promised me a little page,

To 'squire me to his father's towers; He promised me a wedding-ring,—

The wedding-day was fix'd to-morrow ;Now he is wedded to his grave,

Alas, his watery grave in Yarrow !

'Sweet were his words when last we met;
My passion I as freely told him!
Clasp'd in his arms, I little thought
That I should never more behold him!
Scarce was he gone, I saw his ghost;

It vanish'd with a shriek of sorrow;
Thrice did the water-wraith ascend,

And gave a doleful groan through Yarrow.

'His mother from the window look'd, With all the longing of a mother;

His little sister weeping walk'd

The green-wood path to meet her brother: They sought him east, they sought him west, They sought him all the forest thorough; They only saw the cloud of night,

They only heard the roar of Yarrow.

'No longer from thy window look,
Thou hast no son, thou tender mother!
No longer walk, thou lovely maid!

Alas, thou hast no more a brother!
No longer seek him east or west,

And search no more the forest thorough; For, wandering in the night so dark, He fell a lifeless corse in Yarrow.

'The tear shall never leave my cheek,

No other youth shall be my marrow; I'll seek thy body in the stream,

And then with thee I'll sleep in Yarrow.' The tear did never leave her cheek,

No other youth became her marrow; She found his body in the stream, And now with him she sleeps in Yarrow.

From 'Runnamede.'

He is a traitor to his native land,

A traitor to mankind who in a cause

That down the course of time will fire the world,
Rides not upon the lightning of the sky
To save his country. . .

The voice of freedom's not a still, small voice; 'Tis in the fire, the thunder and the storm

The goddess Liberty delights to dwell.
If rightly I foresee Britannia's fate
The hour of peril is the halcyon hour;
The shock of parties brings her best repose,
Like her wild waves, when working in a storm,
That foam and roar and mingle earth and heaven,

Yet guard the island which they seem to shake. Amongst the poems reprinted, in whole or in part, after the Psalter in Scottish Bibles as 'paraphrases' or 'hymns' are the wellknown ones, O God of Abraham [Bethel] by whose hand,' 'Few are thy days and full of woe' (abridged from the poem quoted above), 'O happy is the man who hears,' 'Behold the mountain of the Lord,' and 'Where high the heavenly temple stands These are all amongst the nine hymns published in 1781 as by Logan. 'O God of Bethel' is, as Lord Selborne said, Dr Doddridge's, 'rewritten and certainly improved by Logan' And it should be noted that the most convinced defender of Logan's right to most of the disputed poems insists that Bruce must have written something on the lines of 'The Complaint of Nature,' though as it stands it is largely or mostly Logan's, the artistic rounding off being certainly his. Mr D. J. Maclagan a The Scottish Paraphrases (1889) takes Logan's side; Dr Julian a his great Dictionary of Hymnology (1892) follows Grosart.

Nathaniel Cotton (1705-88) wrote Visions in Verse, for the Entertainment and Instruction of Younger Minds, which are, on the whole, more likely to instruct than to amuse. He was born in London, the son of a Levant merchant, and as a medical practitioner at St Albans was distinguished for his skill in the treatment of mental disorders. Cowper, a patient in Cotton's happily named 'Collegium Insanorum,' bears evidence to his 'well-known humanity and sweetness of temper.' Both in his nine Visions (Friendship, Happiness, Slander, Marriage, Death, &c.) and in his seven Fables (The Scholar and the Cat' 'The Snail and the Gardener,' &c.) he imitated Gay in verse and manner, though, as a contemporary said, 'with greater forcibleness of the moral spirit.' There are also tales, epitaphs, imitations, and miscellanies, in some of which there are anticipations of the nineteenth-century spirit, though in eighteenth-century words.

To Children listening to a Lark.
See the lark prunes his active wings,
Rises to heaven, and soars, and sings.
His morning hymns, his mid-day lays,
Are one continued song of praise.
He speaks his Maker all he can,
And shames the silent tongue of man.
When the declining orb of light
Reminds him of approaching night,
His warbling vespers swell his breast,
And as he sings he sinks to rest.

Shall birds instructive lessons teach,
And we be deaf to what they preach?
No, ye dear nestlings of my heart,
Go, act the wiser songster's part.
Spurn your warm couch at early dawn,
And with your God begin the morn.
To Him your grateful tribute pay
Through every period of the day.
To Him your evening songs direct;
His eye shall watch, His arm protect.
Though darkness reigns, He's with you still,
Then sleep, my babes, and fear no ill.

preens

The Fireside.

Dear Cloe, while the busy crowd,
The vain, the wealthy, and the proud,
In folly's maze advance;

Though singularity and pride
Be called our choice, we 'll step aside,
Nor join the giddy dance.

From the gay world we'll oft retire
To our own family and fire,

Where love our hours employs;
No noisy neighbour enters here;
Nor intermeddling stranger near,
To spoil our heartfelt joys.

If solid happiness we prize,
Within our breast this jewel lies;

And they are fools who roam :
The world has nothing to bestow;
From our own selves our joys must flow,
And that dear hut, our home.

Of rest was Noah's dove bereft,
When with impatient wing she left
That safe retreat, the ark;

Giving her vain excursion o'er,
The disappointed bird once more

Explored the sacred bark.

Though fools spurn Hymen's gentle powers, We, who improve his golden hours,

By sweet experience know,
That marriage, rightly understood,
Gives to the tender and the good,
A paradise below.

Our babes shall richest comforts bring;
If tutored right, they'll prove a spring

Whence pleasures ever rise:

We'll form their minds with studious care To all that 's manly, good, and fair,

And train them for the skies.

While they our wisest hours engage,
They'll joy our youth, support our age,
And crown our hoary hairs:

They'll grow in virtue every day,
And thus our fondest loves repay,

And recompense our cares.

No borrowed joys! they're all our own,
While to the world we live unknown,
Or by the world forgot:
Monarchs! we envy not your state;
We look with pity on the great,
And bless our humble lot.

Our portion is not large, indeed;
But then how little do we need!
For nature's calls are few:

In this the art of living lies,
To want no more than may suffice,

And make that little do.

We'll therefore relish with content Whate'er kind providence has sent,

Nor aim beyond our power; For, if our stock be very small, 'Tis prudence to enjoy it all,

Nor lose the present hour.

To be resigned when ills betide,
Patient when favours are denied,

And pleased with favours given;
Dear Cloe, this is wisdom's part:
This is that incense of the heart,

Whose fragrance smells to heaven. We'll ask no long-protracted treat, Since winter-life is seldom sweet; But when our feast is o'er, Grateful from table we 'll arise, Nor grudge our sons with envious eyes The relics of our store.

Thus hand in hand through life we 'll go; Its checkered paths of joy and woe

With cautious steps we'll tread; Quit its vain scenes without a tear, Without a trouble or a fear,

And mingle with the dead: While conscience, like a faithful friend, Shall through the gloomy vale attend, And cheer our dying breath; Shall, when all other comforts cease, Like a kind angel, whisper peace,

And smooth the bed of death.

His works, Various Pieces in Prose and Verse, published after his death by his son, fill two volumes (1791), and are included in some of the collections of the poets.

Samuel Bishop (1731-95), born in London and educated at Merchant Taylors' School and St John's, Oxford, became, after taking orders, master of his old school. His poems (which fill two volumes quarto!) are none of them long, and deal with subjects as miscellaneous as spring, the man of taste, cricket, the library, Sunday, the privateer, the easy-chair, arithmetic, landscape painting, and the English sailor. Many of his happiest verses were addressed to his wife and daughter.

To Mrs Bishop, on the Anniversary of her
Wedding-day, with a Ring.
'Thee, Mary, with this ring I wed '—
So, fourteen years ago, I said.
Behold another ring!— For what?'

To wed thee o'er again?' Why not? With that first ring I married youth, Grace, beauty, innocence, and truth; Taste long admired, sense long revered, And all my Molly then appeared.

If she, by merit since disclosed,
Prove twice the woman I supposed,
I plead that double merit now,
To justify a double vow.

Here, then, to-day, with faith as sure, With ardour as intense, as pure,

As when, amidst the rites divine,

I took thy troth, and plighted mine,
To thee, sweet girl, my second ring
A token and a pledge I bring:
With this I wed, till death us part,
Thy riper virtues to my heart;
Those virtues which, before untried,
The wife has added to the bride;
Those virtues, whose progressive claim,
Endearing wedlock's very name,

My soul enjoys, my song approves,
For conscience' sake as well as love's.

And why? They shew me every hour Honour's high thought, Affection's power, Discretion's deed, sound Judgment's sentence, And teach me all things-but repentance. Two hundred and ninety-seven short poems are classified-oddly enough, some of them-as 'epigrams,' of which these are specimens:

John Bull.

John Bull whene'er the maggot bites,

Cropsick with ease and quiet,

Raves about wrongs, roars about rights,
All rumpus, rage, and riot.

But if a foreign foe intrudes,

John tells a different story;

Away with fears! away with feuds !
All's Union, Triumph, Glory!

He scorns Dons, Dutchmen, and Mounseers,
And spite of their alliance,

With half the world about his ears,

Bids t' other half defiance!

When England's foes her follies view,
Each day, each hour shews something new;
But let them try in arms their skill,

And England is-Old England still!

Plus Ultra.

When Johnson the lives of our poets composed, [closed.
He scarce thought how his own would be hacked when it
We've had life upon life without end or cessation,
A perfect biographical superfetation :

Male, female, friend, foe have had hands in the mess,
And the paper announces still more in the press--
Not a cat, though for cats fate spins ninefold the thread,
Has so many lives, living, as Johnson has dead.

Hugh Blair (1718-1800), an Edinburgh minister, was long regarded as the most famous exponent of 'sacred eloquence' both in theory and in practice. The number of sets of volumes of his sermons still to be seen in book-stalls and at book-auctions testifies not less strongly to the popularity he once enjoyed than to the change of taste in that depart

ment. He was at first minister of a country church in Fifeshire, but was successively preferred to the Canongate, Lady Yester's, and the High Church in Edinburgh. In 1759 he commenced a course of lectures on rhetoric and belles-lettres, becoming professor of that subject at the university in 1762; and in 1763 he published his Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian, in which he zealously defended the authenticity of Macpherson's Ossianic discoveries. In 1777 appeared the first volume of his Sermons, which was so well received that the author published three other volumes, and a fifth was printed after his death. A royal pension of £200 further rewarded the author. Blair next published his university Lectures (1783), and they also met with a favourable reception. Though somewhat feeble in style and manner, they were accepted

as

a supreme code of the laws of taste that prevailed at the time. The sermons are writtes with taste and elegance, wholly without fervour, force, or profundity, and, after the manner of the 'Moderates,' inculcate Christian morality without allusion to controversial topics.

On the Cultivation of Taste.

Such studies have this peculiar advantage, that they exercise our reason without fatiguing it. They lead to inquiries acute, but not painful; profound, but not dry or abstruse. They strew flowers in the path of science; and while they keep the mind bent in some degree and active, they relieve it at the same time from that more toilsome labour to which it must submit in the acquisition of necessary erudition or the investigation of abstract truth. The cultivation of taste is further recommended by the happy effects which it naturally tends to produce on human life. The most busy man in the most active sphere cannot be always occupied by busines Men of serious professions cannot always be on the stretch of serious thought. Neither can the most gay and flourishing situations of fortune afford any man the power of filling all his hours with pleasure. Life must always languish in the hands of the idle. It will frequently languish even in the hands of the busy, if they have not some employment subsidiary to that which forms their main pursuit. How, then, shall these vacant spaces, those unemployed intervals, which more or less occur in the life of every one, be filled up? How can we contrive to dispose of them in any way that shall be more agreeable in itself, or more consonant to the dignity of the human mind, than in the entertainments of taste and the study of polite literature? He who is so happy as to have acquired a relish for these has always at hand an innocent and irreproachable amusement for his leisure hours, to save him from the danger of many a pernicious passion. He is not in hazard of being a burden to himself. He is not obliged to fly to low company, or to court the riot of loose pleasures, in order to cure the tediousness of existence.

Providence seems plainly to have pointed out this useful purpose to which the pleasures of taste may be applied, by interposing them in a middle station between the pleasures of sense and those of pure intellect. We were not designed to grovel always among objects so low as the former; nor are we capable of dwelling constantly in so high a region as the latter. The pleasures of taste refresh the mind after the toils of the intellect and the labours of abstract study; and they gradually raise it above the attachments of sense, and prepare it for the enjoyments of virtue. So consonant is this to experience, that, in the education of youth, no object has in every age appeared more important to wise men than to tincture them early with a relish for the entertainments of taste. The transition is commonly made with ease from these to the discharge of the higher and more important duties of life. Good hopes may be enter tained of those whose minds have this liberal and elegant turn. It is favourable to many virtues. Whereas, to be entirely devoid of relish for eloquence, poetry, or any of the fine arts, is justly construed to be an unpromising symptom of youth; and raises suspicions of their being prone to low gratifications, or destined to drudge in the more vulgar and illiberal pursuits of life.

There are indeed few good dispositions of any kind

with which the improvement of taste is not more or less connected. A cultivated taste increases sensibility to all the tender and humane passions, by giving them frequent exercise; while it tends to weaken the more violent and fierce emotions.

'Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes

Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros.'

The elevated sentiments and high examples which poetry, eloquence, and history are often bringing under our view naturally tend to nourish in our minds public spirit, the love of glory, contempt of external fortune, and the admiration of what is truly illustrious and great. I will not go so far as to say that the improvement of taste and of virtue is the same, or that they may always be expected to coexist in an equal degree. More power

ful correctives than taste can apply are necessary for reforming the corrupt propensities which too frequently prevail among mankind. Elegant speculations are sometimes found to float on the surface of the mind, while bad passions possess the interior regions of the heart. At the same time, this cannot but be admitted, that the exercise of taste is, in its native tendency, moral and purifying. From reading the most admired productions of genius, whether in poetry or prose, almost every one rises with some good impressions left on his mind; and though these may not always be durable, they are at least to be ranked among the means of disposing the heart to virtue. One thing is certain, that without possessing the virtuous affections in a strong degree, no man can attain eminence in the sublime parts of eloquence. He must feel what a good man feels, if he expects greatly to move or to interest mankind. They are the ardent sentiments of honour, virtue, magnanimity, and public spirit, that only can kindle that fire of genius, and call up into the mind those high ideas, which attract the admiration of ages; and if this spirit be necessary to produce the most distinguished efforts of eloquence, it must be necessary also to our relishing them with proper taste and feeling.

Dugald Stewart (1753-1828), by his essays and treatises no less than by his lectures, gave lucidity and popularity to the Scottish Philosophy. The son of the Professor of Mathematics in the University of Edinburgh, he was born in the college buildings there. While yet a youth he was appointed his father's assistant and successor; and in 1785, when Dr Adam Ferguson retired from the Moral Philosophy chair, Stewart was appointed his successor, and discharged the duties of the office till 1810. The latter years of his life were spent in literary retirement at Kinneil House near Bo'ness. His political friends, the Whigs, when in office in 1806, created for him the sinecure office of Gazette writer for Scotland. Few lecturers have ever been more popular than Dugald Stewart-his eloquence, taste, and dignity rendered him both fascinating and impressive. His writings are marked by the same characteristics, and can be read with pleasure even by those who have no very keen interest in metaphysical studies. This, indeed, the secret of their success then, has helped to render them obsolete now. They deal not merely with meta

physics, but with logic, psychology, ethics, natural theology, the principles of taste, politics, and political economy. He considerably developed the Scottish Philosophy, improving on its founder, Reid, by the fuller and more systematic exposition of the powers of the mind; and his contribution to the philosophy of taste was a notable advance. The works include The Philosophy of the Human Mind (1792-1827), Philosophical Essays (1810), a Dissertation on the Progress of Metaphysical and Ethical Philosophy (originally for the Encyclopædia Britannica), and The Active and Moral Powers of Man, published a few weeks before his death. Stewart also published Outlines of Moral Philosophy, and wrote colourless Memoirs of Principal Robertson, of Adam Smith, and of Reid. 'All the years I remained about Edinburgh,' said James Mill, I used, as often as I could, to steal into Mr Stewart's class to hear a lecture, which was always a high treat. I have heard Pitt and Fox deliver some of their most admired speeches, but I never heard anything nearly so eloquent some of the lectures of Professor Stewart. The taste for the studies which have formed my favourite pursuits, and which will be so to the end of my life, I owe to him.' Other notable men who were taught by Stewart were Lords Jeffrey and Cockburn, Francis Horner, Sir Walter Scott, Lord Brougham, Sir James Mackintosh, the future Marquis of Lansdowne, Lord Palmerston, and Earl Russell-for Stewart's fame and his philosophic Liberalism, as much as the Toryism of the English universities, attracted to Edinburgh many scions of the great English Whig houses. Sydney Smith was an admiring auditor; and the Scottish metaphysician contributed in no small degree to the training of the next generation of English Whig statesmen and publicists. His sympathy with the Americans and, in the earlier stage, with the French Revolution provoked irritation and opposition amongst those of another way of thinking. He had occasionally American colonials amongst his hearers; thus the father of James Russell Lowell studied under the Edinburgh philosopher.

as

On Memory.

It is generally supposed that, of all our faculties, memory is that which nature has bestowed in the most unequal degrees on different individuals; and it is far from being impossible that this opinion may be well founded. If, however, we consider that there is scarcely any man who has not memory sufficient to learn the use of language, and to learn to recognise, at the first glance, the appearances of an infinite number of familiar objects, besides acquiring such an acquaintance with the laws of nature and the ordinary course of human affairs as is necessary for directing his conduct in life, we shall be satisfied that the original disparities among men in this respect are by no means so immense as they seem to be. at first view; and that much is to be ascribed to different habits of attention, and to a difference of selection among the various events presented to their curiosity.

It is worthy of remark, also, that those individuals