the stern resistance they met with, quite astounded at the whirlwind of patriotic feeling which swept before it all their hopes and aspirations after an easy occupation of these Provinces. Then, for the first time, they learnt the truth of Mr. Sheffey's warning, "that it would take several campaigns to accomplish the conquest of Canada. THE MAJOR.-I have, and can most confidently pronounce it one of the most razy, and healthful fictions which I have fallen in with, for a twelve month at least. seeing that the last year has by no means bee THE DOCTOR.-That is high commendation, unfruitful in that class of literature. get in a word edgeways, and tell us the name THE LAIRD.-Will you let the honest man of the wark? THE MAJOR.-It is entitled "Reuben Med licott, or the Coming Man," the author being M. W. Savage. but that's a grewsome name! THE MAJOR.-Ah! Doctor, it is a great pity you allow your prejudices to obscure your better judgment. Why can you not do full justice to the patriotic spirit of Canadians without entering on a crusade against Americans, you forget how mixed is the population of that great country, and in common justice you should reflect that people of French and German origin could not be expected to enter into the feelings of the British or their immediate descendants. Pour revenir à nos to fame. His "Bachelor of the Albany," THE MAJOR.-Mr. Savage is not unknown moutons, however, I really think that, without and "My Uncle the Curate," have already pledging ourselves to the compilation of such won him golden opinions from all who could a work as my worthy correspondent recom-appreciate originality of conception, keen, but mends, it would not be amiss to follow your not ill-natured satire, and quaintness of suggestion, and to incorporate, either in the humour. shape of notes or appendix, any anecdotes, that would not be irrelevant with our original merits of these sterling productions. Does THE DOCTOR.-You have not overstated the plans, with the history, guarding of course the present composition sustain the author's against anything like prosiness or details that reputation? would compel us to spin out the history to too great a length. What say you, Captain Ogilvie, and you Mr. O'Connor? BотH.-Aуe! Aye! THE MAJOR.-We will, then, it is settled, bring out in the January No., which commences our second volume, the introductory chapters of the history, which you will bear in mind, Doctor, is to be impartial, and which is to comprise many new details and curious anecdotes. We also engage to make it in teresting to our countrymen, by reason of certain points of difference from the generally received versions of the facts in question by which it will be marked, and we farther declare that if we cannot flatter ourselves with the certainty of getting together every detail worthy of note, on the other hand we will vouch for the correctness of all those that we may set down. Have I spoken well? OMNES.-Like a sage. THE LAIRD.-Your words flow just as cruds and cream slide down a thirsty palate on a het simmer's day. THE MAJOR. This part of our business having been so far settled, we will commence our reviews. CAPTAIN OGILVIE AND MR. O'CONNOR.-We must plead a prior engagement, Major, and leave you, most reluctantly, believe us. We shall, however, endeavour to be with you at your next sederunt, and in the mean time we shall not be idle. Exeunt. THE LAIRD.-Here is a bookie which I have just been taking a keek at during your confabulation. Have ye disgested it? THE MAJOR.-Most emphatically. THE LAIRD.-Wha may this same Reuben Medlicott be? than ordinary ability, but sadly lacking in THE MAJOR.-A young man of no more power to concentrate his abilities, and in fixedness of aim. Like a bee, he skims over the garden of knowledge, tasting a morsel bere, and sipping a drop there, but neglecting to lay in a substantial stock of honey to provision him for the stern campaign of life. Conse quently, he beholds his less showy, but more prudent compatriots outstrip him one after another in the race of fame and fortune; and finally he yields up the ghost, a broken-hearted and prematurely aged man, sighing over wasted opportunities, and hopes conceived but to be blasted. THE DOCTOR.-Alas! the story is not a rare one? Earth's churchyards contain but too many head-stones, upon which such chronicle might be truthfully engraved! THE LAIRD.-Puir Reuben! He minds me o' Peter Pettigrew o' Kelso, who could play on the bagpipes, read Hebrew books backward, write short-hand, and balance tobacco pipes on his nose, and yet had never a coat on his back that was not out of the elbows! THE DOCTOR.-Pray give us a taste of the flavour of "The Coming Man." THE MAJOR.-By all means. Here is a curious sketch of a primitive Welsh parson. Medlicott, along with a company of friends, is making a tour in the land of leeks and goats: "Reuben was not long content to be ignorant of the language of the country he was traversing, At Aberystwith he bought a Welch grammar and vocabulary, in a neat little shop on the skirts of the town, at the door of which, overhung by an elm of great age, was a wooden bench, upon which the old bookseller, a seedy but venerable man, was taking his ease; and Mr. Medlicott got into chat with him, while his wife and son were bargaining for the grammar. He proved to be the parson of the parish as well as the librarian. The Vicar little suspecting this, had been asking him questions about the state of the clergy in Wales, of which he had heard surprising accounts, and among other enquiries had asked what might be the value of the parish they were then in. "Twenty pounds a year," said the old man. "A small living for a man of education and a gentleman," said the Vicar. "There are smaller in the Principality," said the bookseller. "Selling books must be a more profitable fession," said Mr Medilcott. "My shop is the best part of my benefice," said the old man. "No," said the Vicar, smiling, "two hundred a year is nothing to be ashamed of, but the Reverend Hugh Evans would have concluded me to be a second Dives, and the report might have reached the inn, and influenced the landlord in drawing out his bill." THE LAIRD.-What a queer heathenish country, where the Mess Johns sell sealing wax and ballads! THE MAJOR.-There is a quaintness in the following passage which reminds one of Burton and Elia : 66 : A man on first coming into the world is very much in the position of a minor whose affairs are altogether in the hands of his guardians and his lawyers; he has nothing at all to do with what he is most concerned in, but is entirely at the disposal pro-and mercy of other people. We are not at liberty to choose our own fathers and mothers, or even our pastors and masters; and perhaps, on the whole it is so much the better-it is easy to imaThe Vicar went into the shop and communicated gine what would happen were such a privilege to his wife and Reuben the strange discovery he accorded us. Mr. Hudson, for instance, would had made, for such it appeared to him. The pur-probably have more sons than Priam of Troy; chase of the grammar had been effected, but they could not leave the reverend bookseller abruptly, and accordingly, as there was room enough on the bench, they sat down, at his courteous invitation, and passed an interesting half-hour in conversation with him. They found that he was an author and a poet, in addition to his other kindred vocations; he was too simple a man to hide any chapter of his history, and when Reuben questioned him about the bards and their lyric rhapsodies, it soon elicited a confession that in his greener days he had attempted a poetical translation of some of the wildest. Being greatly struck with Reuben, and flattered by the interest he felt in the bards, of whose sacred corporation he considered himself, he rose from the bench, when he saw his customers about to take leave, and, hobbling into his shop (for he was infirm, though not gouty), hunted out a copy of his "Cambrian garland," and, with a trembling hand and a bad pen, wrote on the title-page "The gift of the Reverend Hugh Evans, an old poet,," he paused for our hero to tell him what he should add. "To Reuben Medlicott, a lover of poetry," said Reuben; and the inscription was completed accordingly. "Very neat and very modest," said the old man, as he laid down the pen. "Modest on Reuben's part," said the Vicar, when they were at some distance from the shop. "I cannot say so much for the modesty of Mr. Evans, in dubbing himself a poet so confidently." "Yet he published anonymously, you observe," said Mrs. Medlicott. "Probably," said Reuben, "when he published this volume of poems, he dreamed of afterwards producing something very superior, and never realised his expectations. But why, sir, did you not let the poor old gentleman know that you were a clergyman, like himself?" "Because he had told me his income, and he might have asked to know mine." "You need not to have been ashamed of it, father." the Duke of Wellington would have a prodigious Christmas party atStrathfieldsaye; and our gracious Queen would soon find herself in the same domestic difficulty with the notorious little old woman, who, whilom, lived in the shoe. Cobblers and curates would be childless, and infants of the most moderate ambition would be born with silver spoons in their mouths. These points are settled for us; and not only are we provided with readymade parents, but with complete sets of relations, friends, and acquaintances,-not made to any order of ours, and with respect to whom we have not so much as the melancholy choice of Hobson. There is no help for this state of things any more than there is for our not being nearer neighbours to the sun than we are, or qualified to promenade our ceilings like the flics. It is the common law of the world as much as gravitation: we are free to grumble, but not at liberty to disobey. Fortune is but another name for the infinite mass of circumstances in the midst of which we seem to be flung, like Bligh's boat on the Pacific, or the infant Moses in his cradle of rushes upon the flood of the Nile. An unseen Providence steers the ark; but as far as regards the little crew himself, he is absolutely at the mercy of the current and the crocodiles. Or we may be said to be as molten metal poured into the mould of ten thousand pre-existing facts and relationships, all influencing us, and more or less, determining what manner of men we shall be. We take their form and pressure most submissively. There is no option but to take it. Circumstance is like a she-bear who licks her cubs into shape. Some are licked too roughly, some too delicately; a few receive the proper moderate licking which forms the fine animal. After a certain period we come to be old enough to take a part in the process, and lick or educate ourselves; one energetic man in a hundred will recast himself altogether; the majority will continue to the end of the story much what nurseries, schools and colleges, parents, pedagogues and priests, conspired to make them in life's introduc- betrays a man in his early hours, cleaves to him tory chapters." THE DOCTOR.-He who thus writes is no common man. THE MAJOR.-One more extract, and we shall call a new cause. "It is not the phenomenon of a few gray hairs, nor the stolen march of a wrinkle, that marks the melancholy turning of the tide of life, but the first overshadowing of the mind with despondencies and self-upbraidings, the first sense of the difficulty of hoping, and the vanity of intending and designing; when to purpose and to dream, once our easiest and most delightful occupations, have become a Sisyphian labour. Then have we begun to grow old, when the first sigh escapes us for the pledges of youth unredeemed, or when we look into the kingdom within us, and perceive how few of its abuses we have reformed in the palmy days of our power; then shuddering think that the time of the fulfilling of promises and the correction of faults has passed; that the day is far spent and the night is at hand : "When thoughts arise of errors past, Of passion's unresisted rage, Of youth that thought not upon age." These are the reflections that extinguish the purpureum lumen," that put out the youthful fire; he that is acquainted with remorse, whether it comes of folly or of crime, is already stricken in years, as old as Priam, though he may bear himself as gallantly as Paris. But some there are to whom these dreary thoughts come late, and who uphold themselves with wondrous strength and bravery under the weight of misspent hours. Hope is often an Atlas that will bear a world of disappointments on his shoulders; and should he ever totter, Vanity is at hand, like another Hercules, to relieve him. How many men do we not see in the world more confident after a thousand failures, than others after a large measure of success? Men, who never know that they are conquered, but imagine themselves still mounting, and crow and clap their wings, as if the firmament was still their own, when with their heavy or broken pinions the height of the barley-mow is almost beyond their flight. Folly is attended by a troop of spurious merits, the apes of Wisdom's body-guard, a false fortitude which is nothing but a groundless self-assurance, a bastard industry which is only a fatiguing idleness, a magnanimity from which nothing comes that is great. Ardelio grown old, and with one foot in the grave, is Ardelio still. "Tu secanda marmora Locas sub ipsum funus, et sepulcri A species of happiness follows, no doubt, in the train of the mimic virtues, which strutting Folly trails behind her in her conceited progress to the last. The man who has disappointed the world has thoroughly deceived himself, and fancies he is still the admiration and the hope of his age, when he has only earned the "monstrari digito," to be pointed at as one example more of the downcome overweening confidence, with the additional moral of many shining talents lost for the want of a few plain ones. How benevolent is Hope, however, which, if it often so faithfully in his latter days "Hope of all ills that men endure, The only cheap and universal cure! Thou captive's freedom, and thou sick man's health, To every taste a several meat! Thou strong retreat!-thou sure entailed estate Which nought has power to alienate. Thou pleasant, honest flatterer, for none Flatter unhappy men, but thou alone." THE LAIRD.-Ye must let me copy thæ rhymes into Girzy's scrap-book, and I'll get oor Dominie to draw a figure o' Time, lying forfochen wi' his sand-glass broken at the tail o' the piece! THE DOCTOR.-I have just concluded the perusal of the fourth and last volume of the Life of Dr. Chalmers, by his son-in law. THE LAIRD.-Chawmers is a man of which auld Scotland has great cause to be proud, and she owes a deep debt o' gratitude to Dr. Hanna, for the manner in which he has performed his wark and labour o' luve. THE MAJOR.—Though I have done little more than dip into the biography, I have read enough to convince me that it is a production of no ordinary merit. I should say that the compiler has diligently avoided the sin of book-making. Dr. Hanna evinces sterling good sense as well THE DOCTOR.-You are perfectly correct. as good taste in dwelling only upon those features of his illustrious relative's outward and spiritual portraiture in which a third party might be supposed to take an interest. Hence, everything in the shape of prose and twaddle is avoided, and a book, appetizing even to the most general and untheological reader, is the result. THE LAIRD.-Thanks, Doctor! It's no every day that an Englishman is sae liberal o' his praise to anything connected wi' the North! THE DOCTOR.-Why, England was no_niggard of her regard to Dr. Chalmers. Even old Oxford, High Church and Tory as she was, conferred the degree of LL.D. upon the eloquent Presbyterian! THE MAJOR.-The book is full of lively and graphic ana. THE DOCTOR.-It is. Permit me to read you a few of them. There is something strangely touching in the following little incidents connected with a visit which the great political economist paid to his native village of Anstruther: "Not a place or person familiar to him in earlier years was left unvisited. On his way to the church-yard, he went up the very road along which he had gone of old to the parish school. Slipping into a poor-looking dwelling by the way, he said to his companion, Dr. Williamson, “I would just like to see the place where Lizzy Green's water-bucket used to stand,"-the said water-bucket having been a favorite haunt of the overheated ball-players, and Lizzy a great favorite for the free access she allowed to it. He called on two contemporaries of his boyhood, one of whom he had not seen for forty-five, the other for fifty-two years, and took the most boyish delight in recognising how the "mould of antiquity had gathered upon their features," and in recounting stories of his school-boy days. "James," said he, to the elder of the two, a tailor, now upwards of eighty, who in those days had astonished the children, and himself among the number, with displays of superior knowledge, you were the first man that ever gave me something like a correct notion of the form of the earth. I knew 66 ness, he stood before it and burst into a flood of tears, accompanied by the warmest expressions of attachment. After leaving the house, he sauntered in silence round the garden, buried in old recollections, heaving a sigh occasionally, and muttering to himself-more than forty years ago!'" THE MAJOR.-That little exclamation, "more than forty years ago," causes the water to stand in the eyes of an auld man like myself! How pleasing to reflect that the wear and tear of life had left the heart of Chalmers so fresh and tender! THE DOCTOR.-He was an enthusiastic lover of fine scenery, as the following passage will prove : --- that it was round, but I thought always that it was round like a shilling, till you told me that it was round like a marble." "Well, John," said he to the other, whose face, like his own, had suffered severely from small-pox in his childhood, "you and I had one advantage over folk with finer faces-theirs have been aye getting the "On Sabbath, the 12th April, 1846, he waur, but ours have been aye getting the better preached in the small but beautifully situated o' the wear!" The dining room of his grand- Free Church, built upon the edge of St. Mary's Loch. Mr. Parker, who had been the chief father's house had a fire-place fitted up behind with Dutch tiles, adorned with various quaint de-agent in the erection of the church, went with vices, upon which he had used to feast his eyes accompanied besides by two of his daughters. I him as his guide and companion, and he was in boyish wonder and delight. These he now like,' said he, as they wended their way through sought out most diligently, but was grieved to find them all so blackened and begrimed by the smoke of half a century, that not one of his old windmills or burgomasters was visible. To one apartment he felt a peculiar tie, as having been appropriated exclusively to his use in his college days, when the love of solitary study was at times a passion. But the most interesting visit of all was to Barnsmuir, a place a few miles from Anstruther, on the way to Crail. In his schoolboy days it had been occupied by Captain Rwhose eldest daughter rode in daily on a little pony to the school at Anstruther. Dr. Chalmers was then a boy of from twelve to fourteen years of age, but he was not too young for an attachment of a singularly tenacious hold. Miss R the bare and treeless, but purely green and beau- 'Meek loveliness is round thee spread, The grace of forest charms decayed, Here is another extract to the same purport: find beauty everywhere; at least he could single out from the most ordinary scene, some feature or other on which his mind could dwell with interest and pleasure. All the points from which the was married (I believe while he was yet at college) to Mr. F, and his opportunities of seeing her in after life were few, but that early impression never faded from his heart. At the time of this visit to Anstruther, in 1845, she had been dead for many years, but, at Dr. Chalmers's particular request, her younger sister met him at "It was scarcely possible to take even one short Barnsmuir. Having made the most affectionate walk with him without perceiving that his capainquiries about Mrs. F- and her family, he in-city of enjoyment was singularly large. He could quired particularly about her death, receiving with deep emotion the intelligence that she had died in the full Christian hope, and that some of his own letters to her sister had served to soothe and comfort her latest hours. Mrs. W -,'scenery of this locality could be viewed to most said he, eagerly, 'is there a portrait of your sister advantage, he knew most thoroughly; and, howanywhere in this house?' She took him to a ever interesting the conversation in which he room, and pointed to a profile which hung upon might be engaged, it was sure to be interrupted the wall. He planted himself before it,-gazed when any one of these points was reached. on it with intense earnestness-took down the would pause for a moment-his eye would wander picture, took out his card, and, by two wafers, over the landscape, and, with a smile mantling fixed it firmly on the back of the portrait, exactly over his countenance, he would give a brief but opposite to the face. Having replaced the like-expressive utterance to his feelings of joy and ad He miration. The unselfishness of his delight in Nature was very noticeable. He seemed to have a positive affection for the scenes and objects from which he drew so much pure enjoyment-it was as if his heart went out to them. On a calm and bright summer day, I happened to be with him in one of his favorite haunts, the small pro montory called Lammerlaws, which forms the eastern portion of the peninsula on which this town is situated-the tide was full, the water rippled gently between the low ledges of rock, and laved the roots of the grass and wild flowers that skirted every little nook. I have a great affection for these nooks,' was the characteristic remark that fell from Dr. Chalmers; and in the tone in which it was uttered there was a warmth, and withal a certain indescribable pathos, which conveyed at once the impression that he spoke from the fullness of his heart." THE MAJOR-Was the doctor not a great admirer of the bard of Avon? THE DOCTOR.-Yes. Listen: "The single passage of Shakspeare which he most frequently recited, was that one in Henry IV., which commences I saw young Harry-with his beaver on, His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly armed,' &c. ; and the single play in which he took most pleasure was Midsummer Night's Dream, among the fairy pictures of which he delighted to revel. I look,' he would say, after laying down the book, 'I look on Shakspeare as an intellectual miracle; I would put him before Milton from his exhaustless variety.' One of his students once told him of the enthusiasm of the Germans about Shakspeare, and related the anecdote of Goethe's comparison between Tieck, Shakspeare, and himself, in which, with a singular mixture both of pride and humility, he said, 'That relation which Tieck holds to me, I hold to Shakspeare. I regard Shakspeare as a being of a superior nature.' 'Well, Sir, do you know,' said Dr. Chalmers, after hearing the anecdote, I like that very much. I dare say Shakspeare was the greatest man that ever lived-greater perhaps even than Sir Isaac Newton.' THE LAIRD.-Try if ye can find a queer bit aboot a wedding at Buckhaven. THE DOCTOR.-I know what you refer to. Here it is. A country minister with whom the doctor was residing is the spokesman : "Towards the end of our walk, a person having passed without any sign of recognition, Dr. Chalmers observed, I perceive your people don't all recognise you yet. This brings to mind a story connected with Buckhaven, which, you know, is a peculiar sort of place. It was long, and is yet, to some extent, behind other places in point of civilization, but some few of the inhabitants got a little in advance of the rest. The minister of the parish went one day to solemnize a marriage; he made the bridegroom, of course, promise to be a faithful, loving, and indulgent husband-at least, he put the question to that effect, but could not get him to alter his stiff, erect posture. Again and again he repeated the form, but the man remained silent and stiff as ever. A neighbor was present who knew more about the forms and footsteps of the thing, and was considered to have advanced more in civilization than the rest. Enraged at the clownishness of the bridegroom, he stepped forward, gave him a vigorous knock on the back, and said to him with corresponding energy, 'Ye brute, can ye no boo to the minister!" Dr. Chalmers's commentary on this scene was brief but emphatic-'The heavings of incipient civilization, you know.' THE MAJOR. Did you ever hear Chalmers preach? THE DOCTOR.-Once only, whilst I was attending the medical classes at the University of Edinburgh. It was a great occasion, being the funeral sermon of Dr. Andrew Thompson, himself a divine of no mean pow ers. THE LAIRD.—And what did ye think o' the orator? THE DOCTOR.-My primary sensations were those of intense disappointment. He shambled awkwardly into the pulpit, and read out the verses of the preliminary psalm, in a drawling, hesitating manner. Matters were not much mended by his prayer, which I may mention was written and tacked by a pin to the cushion of the rostrum; it was solemn enough, but sufficiently common-place to damp the expectations of a stranger, who had come to church to behold a clerical lion. THE LAIRD.-But the sermon! What was the main point? THE DOCTOR.-For a season it appeared "flat, stale, and unprofitable." The preacher slavishly read from his manuscript, following each line with his finger, and the exordium was not calculated to produce any marked impression of greatness or originality. But anon the speaker warmed in his theme. His face assumed an intensely intellectual expression. Flashes of intelligence darted from his eyes, as if some slumbering electricity in the brain had been suddenly awakened, and ere long the whole of that great congregation were spell-bound by the mighty master! I was at that time a gay, thoughtless young fellow, but I hung upon the words of that magnificent speaker, without either the power or him for one instant. Never have I forgotten the inclination to withdraw my attention from the impression made upon me, that memora ble Sunday forenoon! The elder Kean have I witnessed, in the third act of "Othello," and the terrific concluding scene of "A new way to pay old debts," a scene, I may mention, which threw Lord Byron into a convulsive fit; but the wild eloquence of Chalmers affected me with equal potency! I left St. George's Church in a species of stupor which I cannot describe, and deeply do I regret that never again had Í an opportunity of enjoying a similar treat? THE MAJOR.-What book is that Laird, which you have just taken from your pocket! THE LAIRD.-It is " Amelia," by my favour ite, Henry Fielding. Field THE MAJOR.-I thought I recognised the effigy of the author upon the cover. ing, though coarse, is far from being an immoral writer, and as for genius, I rank him only second to Shakspeare and Cervantes. |