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was attached to it till he saw its demolition: it was his fault, he said; and if he had not exchanged his piece of ground, he should never have lived to see his native place destroyed. He took it deeply to heart; it preyed upon his mind, and he soon lost his senses and died.

I tell the story as it was related, within sight of the spot, by a husbandman who knew the place and the circumstances, and well remembered that many people used to come every morning from the adjacent parts to buy milk there," a quart of new milk for a halfpenny, and a quart of old given with it."

Naboth has been named in relating this, but the reader will not suppose that I have any intention of comparing the great proprietor to Ahab, or to William the Conqueror. There was nothing unjust in his proceedings, nothing iniquitous; and (though there may have been a great want of proper feeling) nothing cruel. I am not aware that any hardship was inflicted upon the families who were ejected, farther than the inconvenience of a removal. He acted as most persons in the same circumstances probably would have acted, and no doubt he thought that his magnificent habitation was greatly improved by the demolition of the poor dwellings which had neighboured it so closely. Farther it may be said in his justification, (for which I would leave nothing unsaid,) that very possibly the houses had not sufficient appearance of neatness and comfort to render them agreeable objects; that the people may have been in no better state of manners and morals than villagers commonly are, which is saying that they were bad enough; that the filth of their houses was thrown into the road, and that their pigs, and their children, who were almost as unclean, ran loose there. Add to this, if you please, that though they stood in fear of their great neighbour, there may have been no attachment to him, and little feeling of good will. But I will tell you how Dr. Dove would have proceeded if he had been the hereditary lord of that castle and that domain.

He would have considered that this village was originally placed there for the sake of the security which the castle afforded. Times had changed, and with them the relative duties of the peer and of the peasantry he no longer required their feudal services, and they no longer stood in need of his protection. The more, therefore, according to his " way of thinking," was it to be desired that other relations

should be strengthened, and the bond of mutual good will be more closely intertwined. He would have looked upon these villagers as neighbours, in whose welfare and good conduct he was especially interested, and over whom it was in his power to exercise a most salutary and beneficial influence; and, having this power, he would have known that it was his duty so to use it. He would have established a school in the village, and have allowed no alehouse there. He would have taken his domestics preferably from thence. If there were a boy who, by his gentle disposition, his diligence, and his aptitude for learning, gave promise of those qualities which best become the clerical profession, he would have sent that boy to a grammarschool, and afterwards to college, supporting him there in part, or wholly, according to the parents' means, and placing him on his list for preferment, according to his deserts.

If there were any others who discovered a remarkable fitness for any other useful calling, in that calling he would have had them instructed, and given them his countenance and support, as long as they continued to deserve it. The Archbishop of Braga, Fray Bartolomeu dos Martyres, added to his establishment a physician for the poor. Our friend would, in like manner, have fixed a medical practitioner in the village-one as like as he could find to a certain doctor at Doncaster; and have allowed him such a fixed stipend as might have made him reasonably contented, and independent of the little emolument which the practice of the place could afford, for he would not have wished his services to be gratuitous where there was no need. If the parish to which the village belonged was too extensive, or the parochial minister unwilling, or unable, to look carefully after this part of his flock, his domestic chaplain (for he would not have lived without one) should have taken care of their religious instruction.

In his own family and his own person he would have set his neighbours an example of "whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report." And as this example produced its sure effects, he would have left the amateurs of agriculture to vie with each other in their breeds of sheep and oxen, and in the costly cultivation of their farms. It would have been-not his boast, for he boasted of nothing;-not his pride, for he had none of

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it was out of the root of Christian humility that all his virtues grewbut his consolation and his delight, to know that nowhere in Great Britain was there a neater, a more comfortable village than close to his own mansion; nowhere a more orderly or more moral, a more cheerful or a happier people. And if his castle had stood upon an elevation commanding as rich a survey as Belvoir or Shobden, that village, when he looked from his windows, would still have been the most delightful object in the prospect.

I have not mentioned the name of the old Quaker in my story; but I will preserve it in these pages, because the story is to his honour. It was Joshua Dickson. If Quakers have (and certainly they have) the quality which is called modest assurance, in a superlative degree, that distinguishes them from any other class of men, (it is of men only that I speak,) they are the only sect who, as a sect, cultivate the sense of conscience. This was not a case of conscience, but of strong feeling, assuming that character under a tendency to madness.

When Lord Harcourt, about the same time, removed the village of Nuneham, an old widow, Barbara Wyat by name, earnestly entreated that she might be allowed to remain in her old habitation. The request, which it would have been most unfeeling to refuse, was granted; she ended her days there, and then the cottage was pulled down: but a tree, which grew beside it, and which she had planted in her youth, is still shown on the terrace at Nuneham, and called by her name. Near it is placed the following inscription by that amiable man, the Laureate Whitehead. Like all his serious poems, it may be read with pleasure and profit-though the affecting circumstance, which gives the anecdote its highest interest, is related only in a note.

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"This tree was planted by a female hand,

In the gay dawn of rustic beauty's glow;

And fast beside it did her cottage stand,

When age had clothed the matron's head with snow.

"To her, long used to nature's simple ways,

This single spot was happiness compleat;

Her tree could shield her from the noontide blaze,
And from the tempest screen her little seat,

*Beaumont and Fletcher.

"Here with her Colin oft the faithful maid

Had led the dance, the envious youths among;
Here, when his aged bones in earth were laid,
The patient matron turned her wheel and sung.
"She felt her loss, yet felt it as she ought,

Nor dared 'gainst nature's general law exclaim,
But checkt her tears, and to her children taught

That well-known truth, their lot would be the same.

"The Thames before her flowed, his farther shores
She ne'er explored, contented with her own;
And distant Oxford, tho' she saw its towers,
To her ambition was a world unknown.

"Did dreadful tales the clowns from market bear
Of kings and tumults and the courtier train,
She coldly listened with unheeding ear,

And good Queen Anne, for aught she cared, might reign.

"The sun her day, the seasons marked her year,

She toiled, she slept, from care, from envy free;

For what had she to hope, or what to fear,

Blest with her cottage, and her favourite tree.

"Hear this ye great, whose proud possessions spread
O'er earth's rich surface, to no space confined!
Ye learn'd in arts, in men, in manners read,
Who boast as wide an empire o'er the mind.

"With reverence visit her august domain;

To her unlettered memory bow the knee;
She found that happiness you seek in vain,

Blest with a cottage, and a single tree." *

Mason would have produced a better inscription upon this subject, in the same strain; Southey in a different one; Crabbe would have treated it with more strength; Bowles with a finer feeling; so would his kinswoman and namesake, Caroline, than whom no author or authoress has ever written more touchingly, either in prose or verse. Wordsworth would have made a picture from it worthy of a place in the great Gallery of his Recluse. But Whitehead's is a remarkable poem, considering that it was produced during what has been not un

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* The classical reader will be aware that the author of these lines had Claudian's 'Old Man of Verona' in his mind's eye, as Claudian had Virgil's Corycean Old Man.' -Georg. iv. 127.

justly called the neap-tide of English poetry: and the reader who should be less pleased with it than offended by its faults, may have cause to suspect that his refinement has injured his feelings in a greater degree than it has improved his taste.

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311.-SCOTTISH MUSIC.

BEATTIE.

[JAMES BEATTIE was born at Lawrencekirk, Kincardineshire, in 1735. He was the son of a small farmer; and received his early education in the village school. He entered the Marischal College, Aberdeen, in 1749; and, having passed through the humbler steps of a village schoolmaster, and usher to the Grammar School of Aberdeen, was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic in the Marischal College in 1760. His chief work, as a metaphysician, is his Essay on Truth.' His Minstrel' will give him an enduring place amongst the best of the Minor Poets. In 1773 he received the degree of D.C.L. from the University of Oxford, and obtained a pension from the Crown. He died in 1803.]

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There is a certain style of melody peculiar to each musical country, which the people of that country are apt to prefer to every other style. That they should prefer their own is not surprising; and that the melody of one people should differ from that of another is not more surprising, perhaps, than that the language of one people should differ from that of another. But there is something not unworthy of notice in the particular expression and style that characterize the music of one nation or province, and distinguish it from every other sort of music. Of this diversity Scotland supplies a striking example. The native melody of the Highlands and Western Isles is as different from that of the southern part of the kingdom as the Irish or Erse language is dif ferent from the English or Scotch. In the conclusion of a discourse. on music, as it relates to the mind, it will not perhaps be impertinent to offer a conjecture on the cause of these peculiarities; which, though it should not-and indeed I am satisfied that it will not-fully account for any one of them, may, however, incline the reader to think that they are not unaccountable, and may also throw some faint light on this part of philosophy.

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