What Nature could but would not do, And beauty and Canova can! "Beyond imagination's power, Behold the Helen of the heart!" BYRON'S INTENTIONS." If I live ten years longer, you will see, however, that it is not over with me- I don't mean in literature, for that is nothing; and it may seem odd enough to say, I do not think it my vocation. But you will see that I shall do something or other-the times and fortune permitting-that, like the cosmogony or creation of the world, will puzzle the philosophers of all ages.' But I doubt whether my constitution will hold out I have at intervals exercised it most devilishly." ANECDOTES." I'll tell you a story: the other day, a man here, an Englishman-mistaking the statues of Charlemagne and Constantine, (which are equestrian,) for those of Peter and Paul, asked another, which was Paul of these same horsemen?-to which the reply was, I thought, sir, that St Paul had never got on horseback since his accident.-I'll tell you another:-Henry Fox, writing to some one from Naples the other day, after an illness, adds, "and I am so changed that my oldest creditors would hardly know me." BYRON'S OPINION OF THE POETRY OF HIS DAY.-" With regard to poetry in general, I am convinced, the more I think of it, that he and all of us,-Scott, Southey, Words. worth, Moore, Campbell, I,-are all in the wrong, one as much as another; that we are upon a wrong poetical system or systems, not worth a damn in itself, and from which none but Rogers and Crabbe are free; and that the present and next generations will finally be of this opinion. I am the more confirmed in this, by having lately gone over some of our classics, particularly Pope, whom I tried in this way, -I took Moore's poems and my own and some others, and went over them side by side with Pope's, and I was really astonished (I ought not to have been so) and mortified at the ineffable distance in point of sense, learning, effect, and even imagination, passion, and invention, between the little Queen Anne's man and us of the lower empire. Depend upon it, it is all Horace then, and Claudian now, among us; and if I had to begin again, I would mould myself accordingly. Crabbe's the man, but he has got a coarse and impracticable subject; and is retired upon halfpay, and has done enough, unless he were to do as he did formerly." BYRON'S OPINION OF LEIGH HUNT.-" Hunt's letter is probably the exact piece of vulgar coxcombry you might expect from his situation. He is a good man, with some poetical elements in his chaos, but spoilt by the Christ-Church hospital and a Sunday newspaper-to say nothing of the Surry jail, which converted him into a martyr. But he is a good man. When I saw Rimini' in MS., I told him that I deemed it good poetry at bottom, disfigured only by a strange style. His answer was, that his style was a system, or upon system, or some such cant; and, when a man talks of system, his case is hopeless. So I said no more to him, and very little to any one else. "He believes his trash of vulgar phrases tortured into compound barbarisms to be old English; and we may say of it as Aimwell says of Captain Gibbett's regiment, when the captain calls it an old corps'-'the oldest in Europe, if I may judge by your uniform.' He sent out his 'Foliage' by Percy Shelley, and of all the ineffable Centaurs that were ever begotten by self-love upon a nightmare, I think this monstrous Sagittary the most prodigious. He (Leigh Hunt) is an honest charlatan, who has persuaded himself into his own impostures, and talks Punch in pure simplicity of heart, taking himself (as poor Fitzgerald said of himself in the Morning Post) for Vates in both senses, or nonsenses, of the word. Did you look at the translations of his own, which he prefers to Pope and Cowper, and says so? Did you read his skimble-skamble about being at the head of his own profession, in the eyes of those who followed it? I thought that poetry was an art or an attribute, and not a profession; but be it one; is that at the head of your profession in your eyes? I'll be curst if he is of mine, or ever shall be. He is the only one of us (but of us he is not) whose coronation I would oppose. Let them take Scott, Campbell, Crabbe, or you, or me, or any of the living, and throne him; but not this new Jacob Behmen, this whose pride might have kept him true, even had his principles turned as perverted * as his soi-disant poetry. But Leigh Hunt is a good man, and a good father-see his Odes to all the Masters Hunt; a good husband-see his sonnet to Mrs Hunt; a good friend-see his epistles to different people; and a great coxcomb, and a very vulgar person in every thing about him. But that's not his fault, but of circumstances. THE FUN AND GRAVITY OF DON JUAN." But, nevertheless, I will answer your friend P-, who objects to the quick succession of fun and gravity, as if, in that case, the gravity did not-in intention, at least-heighten the fun. His metaphor is, that we are never scorched and drenched at the same time.' Blessings on his experience! Ask him these questions about 'scorching and drenching.' Did he never play at cricket, or walk a mile in hot weather? Did he never spill a dish of tea over himself in handing the cup to his charmer, to the great shame of his nankeen breeches? Did he never swim in the sea at noon-day, with the sun in his eyes and on his head, which all the foam of ocean could not cool? Did he never draw his foot out of too hot water, ding his eyes and his valet's? Did he never tumble into a river or lake fishing, and sit in his wet clothes in the boat, or on the bank, afterwards 'scorched and drenched' like a true sportsman? Oh, for breath to utter !'-but make him my compliments; he is a clever fellow for all that-a very clever fellow." EPIGRAM." If for silver or for gold, * You could melt ten thousand pimples MOORE'S LAST NIGHT AT VENICE.-" To return, however, to the details of our last evening together at Venice. After a dinner with Mr Scott at the Pellegrino, we all went, rather late, to the opera, where the principal part in the Baccanali di Roma was represented by a female singer, whose chief claim to reputation, according to Lord Byron, lay in her having stilettoed one of her favourite lovers. In the intervals between the singing, he pointed out to me different persons among the audience, to whom celebrity of various sorts, but, for the most part, disreputable, attached; and of one lady who sat near us, he related an anecdote, which, whether new or old, may, as creditable to Venetian facetiousness, be worth, perhaps, repeating. This lady had, it seems, been pronounced by Napoleon the finest woman in Venice; but the Venetians, not quite agreeing with this opinion of the great man, contented themselves with calling her La Bella per Decreto-adding, (as the Decrees always begin with the word Considerando,') ' Ma senza il considerando.' From the opera, in pursuance of our agreement to make a night of it,' we betook ourselves to a sort of cabaret, in the Place of St Mark; and there, within a few yards of the palace of the Doges, sat drinking hot brandypunch, and laughing over old times, till the clock of St Mark struck the second hour of the morning. Lord Byron then took me in his gondola, and, the moon being in its fullest splendour, he made the gondoliers row us to such points of view as might enable me to see Venice, at that hour, to advantage. Nothing could be more solemnly beautiful, than the whole scene around; and I had, for the first time, the Venice of my dreams before me. All those meaner details, which so offend the eye by day, were now softened down by the moonlight into a sort of visionary indistinctness; and the effect of that silent city of palaces, sleeping, as it were, upon the waters, in the bright stillness of the night, was such as could not but affect deeply even the least susceptible imagination. My companion saw that I was moved by it, and, though familiar with the scene himself, seemed to give way, for the moment, to the same strain of feeling; and as he exchanged a few remarks, suggested by that wreck of human glory before us, his voice, habitually so cheerful, sunk into a tone of mournful sweetness, such as I had rarely before heard from him, and shall not easily forget. This mood, however, was but of the moment; some quick turn of ridicule soon carried him off into a totally different vein, and at about three o'clock in the morning, at the door of his own palazzo, we parted, laughing, as we had met,-an agreement having been made, that I should take an early dinner with him next day, on my road to Ferrara.” EPIGRAM." In picking up your bones, Tom Paine, Will. Cobbett has done well; You visit him on earth again, He'll visit you in Hel." Though we do not intend to enter upon the subject at present, we may as well warn our readers, that we look upon the second volume of this work as decidedly inferior in interest to the first; our reasons for so thinking, it will not be difficult to point out next Saturday. Pitcairn's Criminal Trials. Part VIII. August 28, 1616, to Nov. 1624. Edinburgh. William Tait. 1831. THIS Number brings to an end the Record of Criminal Trials during the reign of James VI. The contents are pretty much alike in character with those which have preceded it. The black list of slaughters and oppressions, deadly feuds, and superstitious cruelties, is any thing but diminished. If there is aught new in this history of crime, it is the revolting confirmation of the heartless cruelty of James, afforded by the trial and execution of the poor maniac Thomas Ross, for a libel against the Scottish nation. Of all tyrants, we confess we have least patience with this monarch. There is something so paltry and grotesque intermingled with all his acts of oppression. When we read of a Herod or a Richard III., the fierce sway of their passions, their conscious pride of superior intellect, afford a spectacle poetically, if not morally, beautiful; which, against our better judgment, softens the asperity of our indignation at their criminality. But in the character of James we find no such redeeming feature. His anger is in its origin and nature essentially ludicrous. It is awakened by trivial and burlesque occasions; it is in itself cold, feeble, and impotent. The tyrannical actions to which it impels him, do not terrify, for they leave no impression of energy and power upon the mind-they are simply revolting as indicative of callousness to human suffering on the part of the monarch, and cold-blooded, reckless sycophancy and self-seeking on the part of his tools. We have met, however, in the Number now before us, with one gratifying instance of the progress of reasonof the growth of a manly and dignified policy among the magnates of Scotland. The indictment against John Brown, a Burntisland shipmaster and his crew, tried for piratical murder, is, with the exception of some few rude phrases, an eloquent and impressive document. It is like the voice of a solitary human feeling crying aloud in a moral wilderness. We present our readers with a modernised copy of it; retaining, however, its naïveté of expression, wherever we could do so with any prospect of being intelligible. "John Brown, &c.-You are indicted and accused: Forasmuch as the traffic and commerce between merchant and merchant, in exporting commodities from one country to another, has, in all well-governed kingdoms and cominonwealths, been esteemed the ground and fundamental cause, not only of great wealth and riches to the inhabitants, but also a great help and furtherance to entertain friendship and correspondence between princes; on which account, many laws, upon ripe reflection and deliberation, have been published and set forth by them and their states for advancement of their trade, the equipping of vessels, and the better preservation of them; and the art of navigation, and the persons expert in it, have become famous throughout the world, as well for skill and dexterity in sailing, as for fidelity in the safe conduct of merchants and passengers with their merchandise and goods committed to their trust: And, moreover, the sailors of this kingdom being, for their skill and fidelity, nothing inferior to any other country or nation, have commonly been so respected by strangers, that they, with their ships, have been preferred for that service to those of any other people whatever: Notwithstanding, it is true and of verity, that you, and each of you, shaking off all fear of the Almighty God, regard to the ancient good fame of this country and kingdom of Scotland, whereof ye are namet most unworthily to be inhabitants and native born people; as also to the great obloquy, shame, and reproach, and open discredit of the whole sailors of this realm, resorting to foreign parts, prejudice of all lawful trade and commerce with the merchants there, and employment of our sea-faring men with their ships and barks, in all time coming, being about a year ago in St John's, a seaport, within the kingdom of Spain, together with the ship called of which you were respectively owners and master, freighted by one G. F. a Spaniard, to pass to Calais with a loading of chestnuts, walnuts, and Spanish iron; and having taken in the said lading, together with three young Spaniards, who were to act as supercargoes; you, before your coming aboard, plotted, contrived, and devised the cruel and barbarous murder of the said three strangers, and the appropriation to yourselves of the whole goods and merchandise within your ship; and drew up a bond to that effect, to which all of you put your hands; and thereafter coming aboard, you hoisted sail, and passed to the sea: And being in the middle of the sea, far from any land, you, instigated by shameful and damnable covetousness, with the all-seeing eye of God did not look down, nor would set purpose and forethought felony, foolishly deeming that bring to light your most horrible and detestable murder and piracy, cruelly and unnaturally, against the laws of nations, having the said three strangers in your power, violently, and without pity or commiseration, threw them overboard, one after another, into the middle of the raging seas; and thereby, under trust, credit, and assurance, bereft them of their natural lives: Which being done, you, in plain mockery and scorn of the Almighty, as if his divine majesty had approved of your horrible deed, made a prayer, and sung a psalm: And thereafter diverted your course from Calais," &c. &c. If, however, there is a sameness in the matter of which this fasciculus treats, such is not the case with the manner. The pleadings, and indeed the whole form of process, is much more fully developed and recorded than in the trials formerly reported by Mr Pitcairn. The work, in other words, has reached a period when it may be studied with advantage by the mere lawyer, who, anxious to obtain more than a meagre and practical knowledge of his profession, seeks to trace its rise and progress. To this subject we propose reverting, as soon as Mr Pitcairn's concluding Number has appeared. One word at present as to the encouragement which Mr Pitcairn's spirited and meritorious undertaking has met with. He has, we may premise, been employed for several years by the Commissioners on the Public Records of the kingdom, to form a regular chronological digest of the entire register of the great seal, commencing with A. D. 1424, when James I. returned from his captivity in England. This work he is to carry down, at all events, to the period of the Union, possibly to the present reign; and it is to be printed for public use, as a Parliamentary work. Yet, amid the drudgery of this laborious and fatiguing avocation, has he found time to commence, and almost to finish, a truly national work, which will extend, when completed, (and one number more will do so,) to three large quarto volumes. It is at present exactly a year and a half since we reviewed the first number. We call it a national work, for we have had occasion to remark before, and we now repeat it, that Mr Pitcairn's "Criminal Trials in Scotland, during the reign of James VI." throw more light upon the moral and intellectual condition of our country at that period, than any book that has yet been published. To the disgrace of a nation and age which make great pretensions to science and literature, we must add, that there is no doubt he will lose money as well as labour by his pub lication. ever for the inherent difference of disposition which might exist. The spirit of the boy was thus broken, and, in self-defence, he was taught duplicity. When at length he is sent to college, and freed from the immediate surveillance of his parent, he runs into courses and commits extravagancies which he would otherwise have avoided; and to escape from the indignation of his father and the reproaches of his own conscience, he finally alienates himself entirely from the paternal roof, and, entering the army as a volunteer, proceeds to the peninsula. Some of the most interesting scenes in the narrative are laid in Spain. It is here that Earnshaw is driven into the necessity of fighting a duel with the brother of her he loves most, and shoots him dead on the spot. When at length he returns, a heart-broken man, to his native land, he finds his father in the grave, and the girl of his heart wedded to another. He retires into a distant county, to ruminate over the bitter lessons which experience has taught him, and to learn to moralize his lot. blood. Before I could recover, the door of the apartment whither we were hurrying, opened, and two soldiers of my own company discharged their muskets at us, slightly blinded the ruffians, and frustrated their murderous intenwounding one of the gallant Scots. Intemperance had tions. We felled them to the ground, and penetrated into the chamber. There I had a hair-breadth escape from falling, by the fury of another of the desperadoes. Parrying his bayonet, which he aimed at my breast, I could not prevent it taking a less dangerous course, and lacerating my left cheek, nearly from the lip to the eye. The gash, though ugly scar. Surgical knowledge enabled me to perceive this, frightful, threatened no consequences more serious than an as well as to apply the remedies within reach. It was a light matter, compared to the accumulated wretchedness visible around me. "The room wherein we stood had been devoted to the festivities of a retired family of moderate fortune. It conappertain to the strangers' apartment' in a dwelling of tained the remnants of those decent elegancies that properly the middle class. Mutilated pictures, and fragments of expensive mirrors, strewed the floor, which was uncarpeted, and formed of different kinds of wood, curiously tesselated. An ebony cabinet, doubtless a venerable heir-loom, had suffered as if from the stroke of a sledge. Its contents, conboard lay overturned; a torn mantilla drooped on a sofa morials, were scattered about at random. An antique sideripped and stained with wine. The white drapery, on which fingers steeped in gore had left their traces, hung raggedly from the walls. Pinioning our prisoners, we barricadoed the doors against intrusion, and proceeded to offer all the assistance and consolation in our power to the inmates of the desecrated mansion. The narrative, as a whole, is interesting and wellsustained, and many passages indicate talents of a high order. We like Mr Kennedy in his reflective and philosophical moods. He is no surface thinker. We insisting of household documents and touching domestic metended to have quoted his disquisition concerning courage and cowardice, but abstain from doing so in order to make way for the following fine observations on THE HORRORS OF WAR. "Happy in her insular situation, England knows not by experience the multitudinous calamities of the devoted territory on which kings and conquerors celebrate their "On investigation, the sergeants found the dead body of sanguinary revels. Perhaps she had been morally wiser and better for receiving one fearful lesson from the dea domestic, whose fusil and dagger showed that he had stroyers. Peace might then bave been to her a word of fought for the roof which covered him. His beard had holier import. Yet I cannot, from any hope of ulterior been burnt in derision with gunpowder. One of his ears was cut off, and thrust into his mouth. In a garret recess good, wish her the possession of knowledge at so heavy a price. Fancy shudders at the thought of foreign legions who could scarcely be persuaded that they had nothing to for the storage of fruit, two female servants were hidden, polluting our domestic sanctuaries, recklessly converting fear. Having flown thither at the approach of the ferocious whatever is most dear to virtuous tranquillity to the black intruders, they had suffered neither injury nor insult. They purposes of havoc and spoliation. We refuse to admit the horrid possibility of our churches being turned into loop-scious, alas! of my commiseration, and, in accents half came to the room where I lingered over an object, unconholed defences, or ruinous shelters for the drowsy soldiery; choked by sobs, called upon Donna Clara! I pointed to our spacious highways, noble bridges, and magnificent the alcove where the heart-broken lady had flung herself streets, broken and blown up in the retreat or the siege; our fruit-trees and ornamental shrubs cut down for watchfires; on the bleeding corpse of her grey-haired father. She, too, our hoarded treasures prodigally scattered among the ruf- might have had a sheltering-place, could her filial piety fian followers of the camp; the privacy of our most hallow- have permitted her to remain there when her high-spirited ed retirements laid bare to every ribald musketeer; the sire feebly strove to repel the violators of his hearth. sacred hearth, where the embers have shed their cheerful dressing some words of comfort to the ill-starred girl. They "Master of a few Spanish phrases, I used them in adlight on honoured ancestral faces, flooded with kindred blood; were to her as the songs of the summer bird, carolled in the recesses to which wives, sisters, and daughters have despair. Her sole return was a faintly recurring plaint, that flown in the tremendous hour of the assault, burst open seemed to say, Let my soul depart in peace!' by wretches veiling the passions of hell under the features of humanity: we arm the spirit against the intrusion of such hideous imaginings; but we contemplate without regret, not unfrequently with satisfaction, our agency in bringing the scourge of war upon other nations, and read of the extermination of thousands of our fellow-creatures with an interest as inconsiderate as that excited by the perusal of the fantastic combats in a poetic tale." To this passage we shall subjoin an episodical story, which admirably illustrates the sentiments stated above. It is written with the graphic force of a soldier who had seen, and of a poet who had filt, the incidents it describes: A SCENE AT THE STORMING OF CIUDAD RODRIGO. "Passing through a narrow street with two Scottish sergeants, I heard the shriek of a female. Looking up, we saw at an open lattice, by the light of a lamp she bore, a girl about sixteen, her hair and dress disordered, the expression of her olive countenance marked by anguish and extreme terror. A savage in scarlet uniform dragged her backward, accompanying the act with the vilest execrations in English. We entered the court-yard, where the hand of rapine had spared us the necessity of forcing a passage. My companions were humane, conscientious men, with the resoluteness that in military life almost invariably accompanies these qualities. Armed for whatever might ensue, they kept steadily by me, until we arrived at a sort of corridor, from the extremity of which issued the tones of the same feminine voice, imploring mercy, in the Spanish tongue. Springing forward, my foot slipped in a pool of beloved source of her unutterable sorrow. They could not "I motioned to her attendants to separate her from the comply without the application of force, bordering upon violence. Bidding them desist, I signified a desire that they should procure some animating restorative. A flask the women held the lamp; the other gently elevated her of wine was brought. The sergeants withdrew. One of mistress's head. Kneeling by the couch in the alcove, I poured a little of the liquor into a glass, applied it to her lips, then took it away, until I had concealed my uniform beneath the torn mantilla. hast smitten to the core of my being with a frequent and a "Affliction, thou hast long been my yoke-fellow! Thou heavy hand; but I bless an all-wise, an all-merciful God, who tries that he may temper us, that I have not a second time been doomed to witness aught so crushing to the soul, so overwhelming in woe, as the situation of the young creature over whom I watched on the baleful midnight of our victory! "She had battled with a might exceeding her sex's strength, against nameless indignities, and she bore the marks of the conflict. Her maiden attire was rent into shapelessness; her brow was bruised and swollen; her abundant hair, almost preternaturally black, streamed wildly over her bosom, revealing in its interstices fresh waving streaks of crimson, which confirmed the tale of ultra-barbarian outrage; her cheek had borrowed the same fatal hue from the neck of her slaughtered parent, to whom, in her insensibility, she clung with love strong as death.' Daughter of Spain! well was it for thy sire that he was gone from a polluted world; well was it for him to whom thou wouldst have flown in thy desolateness, that his place was filled by a stranger to his wounded dove,-one who, though devoted as a brother, could better bear up under the bitter ministrations of that hour! "Through the means adopted, she gave token of revival. Her hand had retained a small gold cross, and she raised it to her lips. The clouded lids were slowly expanded from her large dark eyes. A low agonizing moan followed. I hastened to present the wine. In the act, the mantilla fell from the arm which conveyed the glass. Appallingly she shrieked,—became convulsed,-passed from fit to fit,-ex"I called the sergeants. We are here!' they answered. ،،، Spurn those monsters, bound as they are, into the court-yard; remain in the house until morning-I must pired. hence." “ ، It will be dangerous, sir, to venture into the streets to-night-consider your wound.' "It may be so I wish it may; help me to clear the passage-I do not feel a wound!' “ I plunged into the darkness. The black ensigns of the Almighty's wrath were unfurled over the earth, of which all lovely and holy things had taken an eternal farewell, and resigned it to the dominion of demons. There was to be no future resurrection of the morning. Thus spoke my tempestuous emotions. But morning came at last; and its grey eye saw me, like a shipwrecked mariner, pacing mournfully near the gate of St Jago. " There is more strong light and shade, and what a painter would call effective grouping, in the above passage, than in any other part of the volume. The author avoids-perhaps too scrupulously-any thing that might be considered over-strained and unnatural. He is anxious to stick closely by human life as it really exists; but we do not think his work would have lost in interest had he here and there introduced a still greater degree of contrast among his characters, and a little more brilliancy of colouring. Several very pretty pieces of poetry are interspersed; the stanzas with which the volume concludes appeared originally in this Journal. an old woman incapable of bearing children, hence applied as a term of reproach ;-we have an objection to this in common with all the Gaelic Dictionaries which we have seen, viz. that it does not sufficiently distinguish between words truly Celtic, and others which have merely crept into provincial use from the Lowlands, or which have been compounded hastily, often inelegantly, and almost always unnecessarily, to render words which the Celts have hitherto been content to express by a periphrase. This may serve the purpose of Drs Macleod and Dewar very well. They seem to wish that the Gaelic may become a classical language, and they are anxious to supply its deficiencies; but this must prove an idle expectation. The Gaelic is rapidly passing away, and as a spoken language will soon be forgotten. We do not regret this; and even though we were Highlanders, and naturally attached to the language as well as to all the other interests of our native mountains, we should not regret it. The literature of England is that which must amuse, instruct, and enlighten the Celts. They have scarcely any literature of their own, and what little they have is calculated rather to debase their taste, and to impede the progress of moral and intellectual improvement, than to direct their emulation to proper objects, or to promote useful knowledge. We are not ungrateful for the boon of the Gaelic Scrip tures-this was a necessary work, and will yet be necessary for some generations; we are not even unthankful for Gaelic Messengers and Gaelic Sermons,-we doubt not they have amused and instructed many; and we are certainly very far from regretting that much learning, and research, and labour, and expense, have been bestowed on Gaelic Dictionaries;-the philologist, the historian, the philosopher, will now and in after ages derive much useful information from these valuable repertories of the language of ancient Europe. What we deprecate, is the attempt to foist upon us words of arbitrary editorial coinage as the genuine language of the Gael,-thus making a new language, when we only wish to ascertain, and understand, and preserve, the old. We have chosen rather to animadvert on the folly of the system, than to bring the charge home to Drs Macleod and Dewar, by quoting instances of such compounds and substitutes from their work. They are to be found, however, almost in every page; but the charge lies almost equally against the larger Dictionaries, so we may make the observation general. A Dictionary of the Gaelic Language, in Two Parts; 1st, Gaelic and English; 2d, English and Gaelic. By the Rev. Dr Norman Macleod, and the Rev. Dr Daniel Dewar. Glasgow. W. R. M'Phun. 1831. 8vo. WHEN the first number of this work was published, we took an opportunity of stating our opinion of its general plan, and, so far as we were then enabled to form In a few instances, we are disposed to question the a judgment, of its execution. We have now the com- authority by which the Editors give the preference to plete work before us, and we are much pleased to find, certain words over others, which they are pleased to that instead of cause to retract, we have rather to add to, mark as obsolete. We suspect the authority is frequently the praise which we formerly felt it our duty to bestow nothing more than that the favoured word happens to be on the labours of Drs Macleod and Dewar. At the same the Argyleshire dialect, though the rejected one is equally time, we are not disposed by any means to acknowledge, pure perhaps, and in more general use over the Highthat the work which they have executed so creditably lands. Even if the less favoured word should be a corwas one of much difficulty. So much has been done of ruption, it ought not to be marked as obsolete, but should late in the department of Celtic lexicography, that a very either be rejected altogether, or noticed as corrupt. For moderate share of learning, and no very extraordinary example, "easgann" is an eel, while "eascu," most unportion even of industry, were quite sufficient for the questionably in very general use, whether properly or not, accomplishment of such a task. The editors take credit is marked as obsolete. In justice to the Editors, we to themselves for the addition of many words which are must, however, confess, that in our hasty glance at their not to be found in the larger lexicons, by Armstrong and Dictionary, we find few instances of this kind, while we by the Highland Society. We readily take this fact upon see much to praise. In a cheap form, and in moderate their authority, but as we do not happen to have either compass, the Gaelic student has here a most excellent and of the larger Dictionaries lying near us at present, we valuable work. We cannot, however, help regretting, have not the means of ascertaining the value and import- that the Editors did not give an additional value to their ance of the new additions. We hope they do not consist Dictionary, (which might have been done at little or no in such un-Celtic adjectives as "prothaisteach" (corpulent,) additional expense,) by giving the pronunciation on the from the word provost, or in such instances of repov plan of Walker's English Dictionary. In a language poTEpy as aol-chlach," (limestone.) But without like the Gaelic, which is pronounced so differently from dwelling upon such instances, or the far more numerous the written form, this is absolutely necessary, and scarcely ones in which the editors have given us a deficient, and less to the native student than to strangers. The prosometimes even a false, explanation of particular words, nunciation of Argyleshire, or, still better, of Inverness, "cailleach," for instance, they render only in the vulgar | might have been adopted as a standard. We do not deacceptation, an old woman—an old wife; omitting alto-spair of seeing this done, some time or other, in a pocket gether its true meaning,—an useless old woman,—strictly, edition. The Shamrock; a Collection of Irish Songs, many of them And my head, you must know, Och! it's how, &c. "Like a bird I could sing I'm quite bother'd and dead; Och! it's how," &c. If we are to judge of Irish songs by this collection, we must say, that the words in general are by no means worthy of the music. The simple Irish melodies are perhaps superior even to those of our own Scotland, in rich and varied pathos, sweetness, and refinement of sentiment. This is probably to be attributed to the deeper tone of feeling which pervades the native Irish airs. "In listening to Irish music," Mr Weekes has remarked It has been the misfortune of Irish songs to be subin his preface, "we are struck with an exquisite melancholy in its character-a melancholy so profound, that jected to the inroads of the spurious offspring of a set of the finest feelings of the human heart must indeed have wretched Cockneys, whose imagination, as Mr Weekes been grievously wrung to produce such an inimitable observes, went only the extent of supposing that "to pathos." Yet, with all the strange inconsistency which dress a flat contradiction in rhyme was to make a comic All such abortions are detestable. In a so particularly distinguishes Irishmen, we frequently find Irish song.” the saddest airs wedded to words of a light and gro- few instances, however, successful attempts have been tesquely humorous kind. The truth is, music, especially of made by nous autres Anglois to infuse into a song the gea simple character, starts more spontaneously into exist-nuine spirit of Paddyism, as, for example, in the followence, and flows more directly from the heart, than poetry, ing clever verses by Mr Atkinson of Glasgow, who has which is more indicative of previous study and intellec- contributed several songs to the present volume: tual exertion. Now, the native bards of Ireland,-Heaven help them!-have never been conspicuous either for their studious habits, or the strength of their intellectual faculties; and, to speak plainly, their indigenous song-writers, of course with the splendid exception of Moore, are most Yet now and deservedly a nameless and unknown herd. then we do meet with a few verses that please us, from their being full of the genius of the people. scription is the song entitled MA COLLEENOGE. "Oh! sure thus great is my tribulation, Of this de To mourn the loss of my beauteous fair. "The sweet carnation her cheek adorning, Blushes like the morning on the mountain snows, In sweet confusion, and rich profusion, The pride of nature to contemplate her, Oh Death! you traitor! take me to meet her, Our old acquaintance Molly Malone is also redolent of the Emerald Isle. MOLLY MALONE. "By the big hill of Howth- To the heart of a stone; "Och! it's how I'm in love, That sits cooing above For myself I'll soon smother Your heart to love me, Sweet Molly, sweet Molly Malone, "I can see if you smile, Keep along with my head; PADDY MAGINN. "O, you'd laugh, if 'twere a sin, "He's a gentleman every bit, "I wish there were more of his kin, 'Tis the man, not the dirt, Oh, the devil a pride has Maginn! "But what has become of Maginn? That he should them baulk, "And has he to the devil ta'en a spin? And the black ones, his revels On the whole, though the materials he had to work upon were but rude, we must express our approbation of the manner in which Mr Weekes has executed his task. Travels and Researches of Eminent English Missionaries; including an Historical Sketch of the Progress and Present State of some of the Principal Protestant Missions of Late Years. By Andrew Picken. London. William Kidd. 1831. Pp. 508. THE subject of Foreign Missions is one which has created no slight sensation in the religious world; and we are sorry to add, that it is one which has commanded less unanimity of sentiment among the pious and the intelligent than perhaps might have been expected, and certainly wished. With regard to the object of such missions, there can, of course, be only one opinion among good |