parallel with his own first principles and preconceived notions; so that, morally speaking, he was exactly in the situation of the Ancient Britonsphilosophy threw him upon the wide ocean of doubt and uncertainty, and his aunts drove him back to the old confines. However, the time arrived when he must decide. The incumbent of Preston was dying, and the gift was in the hands of their immediate patron.

"Sandy,' said his mother, I understand Mr. Shanky is dying: I have written, at least your aunt Matty has written, to our cousin Mr. Clinksale, and he'll write to my lord's doer, who will represent you to my lord, and I have no doubt of your getting the kirk.'

"This communication was like the report of a cannon to the devoted Sandy. Most gladly would he have dreamt out his existence in weighing the different theological theories which have vexed and puzzled mankind for five thousand years; or reading poetry to his aunts, and accompanying them to snug tea-parties, where he argued with little opposition, except when his cousin, Miss Laterta, happened to differ from him.

"Mother,' said he, after a pause, in which he had suffered true sickness of heart, it will be extremely indelicate to use any interest while Mr. Shanky is alive.'

"Nonsense with your delicacy! What new-fashioned word's that? In my young days we never heard of such a thing, but about bits o' ministerial jokes, whun I've heard yen say to anither, that's no very decent afore the leddies; but now I declare, delicate this, and delicate that, is never out of your mouths. What's indelicate about it? The man must dee; and if ye wunna, another wull.'

"But really, mother, I have not made up my mind as to being a clergyman: I have many scruples.'

"Have ye made up ye'er mind to starve then? Will ye'er French philosophy feed ye and clead ye?'

"No; neither am I a French philosopher: I despise their jargon, at least a great part of it; but I cannot, with a safe and clear conscience, subscribe at this time to the rules of the church.'

"I'll tell ye what, Sandy: I'm nae philosopher; but for the last three years of my life, that is, since ye cam frae college, I've listened to as much nonsense as might justly of itself bring down the curses upon our country that fell upon Sodom and Gomorrah; and what I make out is exactly this, that there's no twa of ye'er philosophers that think the same way; and what man of common sense wad tie himself down to sic stuff?

"Mother, are you a Christian?'

"Am I a Christian! What d'ye take me for? A heathen, man, and a publican?'

"But you are not aware,' said he, smiling, that you have just uttered the very sentiment which is the ground-work of pure scepticism. The great Hume

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Sandy, if ye compare me to that sinfu' and sin-creating man, I'll cut ye aff wi' a sixpence.'

"With a good-natured sneer, Sandy assured her he never would be guilty of such a crime.

"Weel then, Sandy, dinna interrupt me again, and hear what I have to say. Your future bread, your very temporal existence, depends upon this application; for many years may elapse before such another chance occurs; and wad ye throw away two hundred pounds a-year, and a good manse and fair glebe, for a parcel of nonsensical notions? I tell ye that not twa o' they fuils agree in one point. Have I not heard ye hammering ye'er nonsense into the heads of ye'er aunts, and have I not observed that ye'er Platos and ye'er Aristotles not only differ frae yen another, but that all the commentators differ about them? Now I desire that ye'll banish a' that stuff out of ye'er head, and shew that ye have a brain by getting yourself licensed forthwith, and be ready whun it pleases the Lord to call Mr. Shanky hence. Ye'll JAN. 1828.

H

be pleased to remember that ye have just five hundred pounds patrimony, and that ye are at this present time living on your aunts and myself, that is, as to board; and unless ye accept o' this kirk, I must be so plain as to say, that ye must provide for yourself elsewhere; and besides that, ye'll bring doon my grey hairs wi' sorrow to the grave.'

"Sandy bit his nails, turned himself round in his seat, and again essayed to rally. Mother, you forget; for surely you know that the same thing may be said with regard to discrepancy-I mean differences in opinion; that hardly two commentators on the Bible give the same exposition; and

"Tell me nothing of the sort-these are mere human differences

"But if the other disagreements are a test of fallacy, so may these ; and were all the various commentators brought together, they would go far to neutralise the Scriptures altogether.'

"There is just one test in the wide world, Sandy, and that's the Bible, Old and New Testament; and unless ye mak that the test of your future conduct, we part.'

"Sandy slept upon it; philosophy vanished before his eyes like a vision of the night; while the manse, glebe, and two hundred a-year, stood in substantial array before him; and in ten months the presentation was sent to him in due form." "-Vol. iii. pp. 23-29.

The next and last quotation we can make is the account of the death and last illness of Mr. Munro.

"She had just returned to the library, when Nancy entered, with a face and manner that indicated a doubt as to how the news which she had to communicate might be received; and after a little hesitation she announced, That Frank had seen a man from Annan Glade, who said, that Mr. Munro had been last night seized with a vomiting of blood, and was this morning in a very weak and dangerous state.'

"It was evident that this intimation was left to chance; but she instantly determined on doing what seemed to be her own duty, and, attended by Clara, did not lose a moment in visiting her husband.

"She found him in a languid state, and surrounded by officious relations, who seemed very little calculated to the care of a man labouring under the most severe symptoms of incipient but rapid consumption.

"She approached him kindly, and taking his hand, said, "that she had just heard of his illness, and that she had not lost a single instant in coming to inquire for him, and to bring him the comfort and pleasure of seeing his daughter.'

"He withdrew his hand, and made no reply ; but looked at Clara, as if her presence, in the company of her mother, gave him no satisfaction.

"His wife, who saw and read every look, felt ready to faint; but she roused her whole courage, and, with as little apparent emotion as possible, seated herself; resolving, at whatever price of pain to her best and most honourable feelings, she would abide by her husband in his present situation. However, after a day or two, she began to hesitate as to the propriety of remaining; for it was but too evident that the attentions of any one were more agreeable than hers; and she feared that, instead of being a comfort she might be the reverse. The outrage that was done to her own reason in the whole mode of management, she resolved to overlook, since she saw that it was no way irksome to the patient. She was afraid too that her presence augmented the desire to pour forth exhortations which she thought were like a death-warrant to him; but in this she miscalculated altogether. It is true, he had been much removed at one period from his pristine walk in life; but since his marriage—especially during the last six years of that time-he had been so much in it, as to be entirely accustomed to that which is listened to with no sort of emotion. Many a time she recollected the ostentatious words of the great man, who said, Come, and see how a Christian dies; and of another, Come, and learn to die.' She thought that it would

have been much better, in the first instance, to have been able to say, 'Come, and see how a Christian lives and, in the other, Come, and learn to live.'

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Dreading that her presence occasioned this perpetual recurrence to a talk of his decease, which tended to depress him, she almost resolved on returning to Preston Vale: but again she considered that, as a wife, she had an unalienable right to remain by the death-bed of her husband; and, aware as she was that she had never been guilty of one act which could entitle him reasonably to wish her absence, she resolved in this, as in every other instance, to pursue what seemed to her the broad and direct line of moral conduct. She tried, too, to persuade herself, that unless where the nervous system is very fine, which could not be her husband's case, their mode of treatment could not injure him, even though the vital parts were affected, and if not, it was less likely to do so. But on other important subjects endurance was more difficult. The complacent hypocrisy with which this man of many sins listened to his mother's eulogies on his walk and conversation in life, and on his assurances of acceptance in death, often made her blush when she looked back on his deceits, his neglect of herself, his unkindness to his children, and his daring robbery of Rosanna. Still she persevered, and often winced bitterly, in addition to other annoyances, under the total mismanagement to which, in spite of a skilful physician, she saw him subjected.

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"If she implored, which she often did with tears, that one food might be substituted for another, he replied, My mother knows my constitution best.'

"If she wished to smooth his pillow, or to dress a blister, his mother pushed her aside, saying at the same time, I have been lang practeesed in they matters.'

All this she endured, and still with repressed feeling, until one day, when she wanted to raise his head, seeing that he suffered from the position in which it lay, Clara said, 'My grandmother knows my father's ways best.'. "Great God!' exclaimed she; is this my only daughter?'

"Mr. Munro gave a look of severe and heavy disapprobation; for, in his opinion, that exclamation had in it more of crime than all he had been guilty of.

"His wife retired until she was composed, and then returned to the sick room; but from that moment she desisted to offer any assistance, and the old woman always kept an extra person by, lest any sudden necessity should call forth her daughter-in-law's aid; and there was not even the shadow of a duty left for the poor despised wife.

"In this situation she would have been perfectly justified in leaving the house; and in that case, what would have been the clamour of that very mother-in-law and of the country? That she had deserted her dying husband!' Such is report. Without any view to this, she remained, as a matter of duty and right, until her husband was committed to his kindred dust. Kindred indeed to him!

"Such was the end of Mr. Munro, 'who died, much and justly regretted, on the 28th of February, 1808. A man of such inestimable worth, that whether we consider him as a son, a husband, a father, or a friend, we are at a loss in which character to admire him most.' Such, we again say, is report!" Vol. iii. pp. 312—317,

SIR MICHAEL SCOTT.

Sir Michael Scott, a Romance. By Allan Cunningham. 3 vols. 1827.

MR. CUNNINGHAM considers himself ill treated by a paragraph which we some time ago printed, concerning his Paul Jones, and the unreadableness and unreasonableness of the same. He opines, that

neither as an author, nor as a man, does he deserve to be treated with a sneering levity. As to Mr. Cunningham, as a man, we have neither said nor do we know any thing of him: as an author, otherwise than as a song-writer, levity is out of the question: one of his novels is a serious thing. In Sir Michael Scott, the author has excluded himself from any court of criticism where the laws of rationality are respected, and where to be deemed readable is esteemed a merit. We at least never denied to Mr. Cunningham the power of spinning ideas to an unlimited strength: his mind is a loom, and his supply of materials as endless as his power of weaving. But does it follow that wild inventions are pleasant to pursue, simply because they are inventions? Does a fiction, merely as a fiction, possess the power of interesting the attention? Imagination is Mr. Cunningham's forte; but he lacks the secret of combining his images in such a sort as to excite the sympathy of any human being. Sir Michael Scott goes through every superstition that has ever made a part of the northern mythology, and re-creates it wholly, and with an elaborate display of beauty and grace: and, if beauty and grace alone were capable of exciting attention, Mr. Cunningham would not fall short of Walter Scott in popularity. They are, however, but cold things, when unconnected with human interest. No man would love a creature of moonshine, though every beam which went to her composition should fall in the true line of beauty. In this romance, it was Mr. Cunningham's intention to produce a kind of Gothic Arabian Nights; in which he has wholly failed, by taking the accidents of the eastern stories for their substance. Because the agency of many of these tales is superhuman, and much of their scenery and many of their incidents marvellous, Mr. Cunningham has given us nothing but a bale of superstitious wonders. Michael Scott is the well known wizard, who takes a fancy, for no earthly purpose, to resuscitate the body of James, king of Scotland, as it lies a corpse on the field of Flodden, and leads him through every world of uncreated being that has ever been imagined, dreamed, or thought of, pretty much after the manner of Dante, in his great poem; but not like him, mixing up human sympathy and worldly experience with the imaginations of the poet. But perhaps Mr. Cunningham cares little about popularity, if he prefers the estimation of a few persons, who have such a love of art that the contemplation alone of an artist's power is a sufficient satisfaction; he may be certain of a few, and a very few, such readers. Onc short example of the cold splendour of Mr. Cunningham's production will be as good as a thousand: the whole work is a tissue of such inventions:

"As he spoke, ten thousand jasper couches, which were empty when he entered, were filled with forms of surpassing loveliness; ten thousand sea-maidens, in the bloom of youth, came with the speed of light from the seacoves and chambers, and set the whole palace in a glow with their beauty. He could not but gaze in-silence for a minute's space or more on the splendour of the palace, and the beauty of its inhabitants. There they sat on their glittering couches, their locks shedding a light like that of the sun, and their snowy necks and shoulders looking like wreaths of snow, touched by the light of the morning; while on all sides, underfoot and overhead, architecture had

wrought its miracles, uniting marbles and spars of all colours, and blending them into one curious and harmonious whole. On the walls were shown many wondrous scenes, painted from the processions and ceremonies-the joys and the loves, of the sea-maids; the colours in which they were limned seemed those of heaven. On one side a monster stretched out his immense and scaly train, while two laughing sea-maids sat on his back, and with wreaths of shells and pearls crowned his dark head, and truck on his sides, to urge him through the sea; the monster threw a river from his nostrils high into the sunny air, and glanced back his small and swarthy eyes with pleasure on the maidens.

"Elsewhere a secluded and sunny nook of ocean was painted, the waves all around the quiet bay seemed sleeping in gold, while in the middle six sea-nymphs were sporting amid the element; their snowwhite bodies shone brightly amid the brine. One swam freely along, and her long tresses flowed amid the agitated water, like melted gold amid silver. Another maiden stood up amid the sea, and shed her long hair into ringlets, showing, through the abundance of her locks the brightness of her brow, the whiteness of her bosom, and the dark sparkling of a pair of very deluding eyes. A third threw herself at full-length on the pale-green sea, and lay motionless and still, sleeping like the light of the sun, which gleamed in long straggling lines through a neighbouring grove on the water, nor did she move but with the impulse of the sea.

"A-fourth dived perpendicularly down into the flood: the body descended like a sunbeam, and with its white beauty seemed to stain the element; while a fifth sprung upward into the air, and the brine flew from her tresses in showers. The sixth sat on a rock, which sprang up amid the sea, shading the sun from her dark eyes with her hands, and smiling in gladness with the delicious warmth of the luminary. Upon this scene of freedom and beauty two eyes were seen to intrude from a neighbouring thicket; but whether they were those of man or woman, the artist had left undefined.”

THE RED ROVER.

The Red Rover, a Tale. By the Author of the Spy, the Pilot, the Prairie, &c. &c. 3 vols. London. Colburn. 1828.

THE Red Rover is a tale of the sea, by an author who has taken the ocean for his element. A ship is the heroine of his stories, and men and women are merely accessories in his plot. He invests a vessel with life; he describes its walk on the waters with the enthusiasm of a lover; and dwells on its manifold perfections with an enjoyment that ensures the warm sympathy of his reader. After ship, Mr. Cooper is great in his conception of a sailor-a true seaman; an amphibious creature, that only lives and breathes in connexion with the boards he treads, and the sail he handles-an animal incapable of a separate existence. This writer's Tom Coffins, Ben Boscawens, and Dick Fids, are made to sink with their ships, but to exist eternally in