suppers were often prolonged by my father insisting on all joining in a catch or glee before dismissing us: himself

because it is singularly illustrative of their respective tastes and habits, shall be here inserted. It is dated 28th March, 1804 :

'My Lord-Last night, before going to bed, it struck me that it would be some amusement to me, to try to imitate an ode of Horace your lordship mentioned at dinner. Accordingly, upon turning up the book, I stumbled upon Ode vii. Book iv., and wrote the following before going to bed. So that if it has no merit, (and I believe it has very little,) it at least did not occupy much time in its composition:

'TO LORD WOODHOUSELEE.

'The snaw is leaving Pentland hills;

The trees are clad again wi' buds;
Unbound frae crystal chains, the rills

Now gaily prattle through the woods.
And soon the Graces will be seen

Upo' the green at Woodhouselee;
Ane bonnier far than Beauty's Queen,
Her sisters-fair as fair can be.'

[Of the five stanzas which follow, I select the third and fourth.]
'Alas! whate'er in Nature flows,

Repairs its waste and soon revives;
But Man soon sinks in dread repose,
And only once on Earth he lives.
Soon we, my friend! in dust must lie,

My place unmarked-yours with a stone;

For Tully did (and Mansfield) die,

Like Robin Hood and Little John.

'What need ye heap for Pate and James?
Your family will hae enow:

Bring out your wine to Phoebus' beams!

'Tis long, my lord, since we 've been fow. What though in Scotia there be nane

That can sae sweet a period turn?

Ah, Eloquence will plead in vain

To save her darling frae the urn!'

[At foot, Mr. Black had written the words of the poet :]—
'Diffugere nives: redeunt jam gramina campis,
Arboribusque comæ;

always leading, 'Hark the merry Christ-Church bells,' 'White sand and grey sand,' and all those well-known catches, which my brother Peter afterwards sang with his own children.-Every morning, whilst my father was in town, Mr. Black used to assemble us in his favourite room, his library in the tower at the top of the house.* The back window looked upon a little dell, through which ran the rippling burn, which Leyden, whilst on a visit to Woodhouselee, has addressed in a beautiful sonnet, written with a diamond upon a pane of glass, in the window of his bedroom, immediately below. + The front window of the library

Non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te

Restituet pietas. (Something tolerable might be made out of the last four lines of Horace; but I have no time at present, and it does not much signify-the thing being entire without it.)'

Since pulled down. See a letter from P. F. Tytler addressed to myself, dated July 16, 1844, which will be found in the latter part of the volume.

Leyden's autograph of the sonnet alluded to by Miss Tytler lies before me. In transcribing it, I venture to punctuate, and to write 'resounds' for ' resound,' in the ninth line :

'Sweet rivulet! as in pensive fit reclined

Thy lone voice talking to the Night I hear,
Now swelling loud and louder on the ear,

Now melting in the pauses of the wind,
A boding sadness shoots across my mind

commanded a most extensive view of the distant country; and in those days, when we knew my father was to be detained in town till late in the evening, we always placed a candle in this window. Often did he remark that he never gained sight of this twinkling light through the trees of the avenue, without feeling his heart raised in gratitude to Heaven for the many blessings by which he was surrounded, and the happy home to which he was returning.

66

In this library, while my father was absent in the mornings, Mr. Black (as I mentioned before) used to assemble us: for there stood the large celestial and terrestrial globes; and every day we had a lecture in geography, astronomy, the nature of the tides, &c., &c.; in all such subjects Mr. Black being deeply versed. How my brother Peter failed to become a little prodigy of learning with such advantages, I know not: but his time for study had not yet come; his reading, (for he did read,) consisting chiefly of Percy's 'Reliques of Ancient Poetry,' Spenser's 'Faëry Queen,' the Arabian Nights' Entertainments,' and de Salis's 'History of the Moors.' This last work took strong hold of his imagination: it was a very old-looking book, a thin quarto, in very large print, which he had poked out from some odd corner in the book-case. There would he lie, stretched all his length on the carpet in the library at Woodhouselee, reading his beloved book for hours together; and if my memory does not deceive me, a history of the

To think how oft the whistling gale shall strew
O'er thy clear stream thy leaves of sallow hue
Before this classic haunt my wanderings find.
That lulling harmony resounds again

That soothes the slumbering leaves on every tree;
And seems to say, 'Wilt thou remember me,
The stream that listened oft to Ramsay's strain ?
Tho' Ramsay's pastoral reed be heard no more
Yet Taste and Fancy long shall linger on my shore!'

Moors begun, but never finished, was his first attempt in composition. Latterly, he took to Shakspeare, which he devoured greedily, and could repeat a great part of many of the plays by heart."

The youthful essay on the history of the Moors, thus alluded to by Miss Tytler, was in progress in the year 1810, when her brother was nineteen; and though it may have been begun at an earlier period, it was certainly preceded by a juvenile performance, which he accidentally met with when he was arranging his papers in 1843, and which he showed to his brother-in-law, with an intimation that he should destroy it. It showed a precocious taste for authorship, if Mr. Hog's impression be correct that the MS. alluded to was produced before his kinsman had attained the age of ten years. It consisted of a metrical version of some of the fables of Phædrus; each fable being illustrated by a penand-ink drawing, framed within a border, in the manner of Bewick. This little work was dedicated to his father.

On being presented to the living of Coylton, in Ayrshire, Mr. Black left Lord Woodhouselee's family; and Peter had for his tutor Mr. Lee, of Edinburgh, who subsequently became Dr., Professor, and Principal, and was a person of high ability. "Mr. Tytler never spoke of him to me," writes his brother-in-law, "but with the highest respect and gratitude; and often told me that he owed his spirit of resolution to work hard, to this gentleman's influence."

"If, however, my brother during most of the time Mr. Black remained with us profited but little in these higher branches of study, his acquaintance with fairy lore became most extensive. That he should have escaped being superstitious with Walter Scott's ghost stories, and Mr. Black's fairies, is wonderful.

"It was while Mr. Black was with us that he composed and published what we thought that beautiful pastoral, ‘The

Falls of Clyde; or the Farewell of the fairies to the Earth.' He used to read the poem to us as it advanced, when seated around the school-room fire, and never had a timid author a more encouraging audience. Mr. Black published after he left us a 'Life of Tasso,' which possessed great interest, and I believe was highly thought of.

"I come now to speak of Walter Scott's frequent visits, for many days at a time, to Woodhouselee. It was a beautiful feature in his character that he required no audience of the learned or the great to draw out the charm of his conversation: he seemed in his element equally with old and young. He frequently assembled us around him after breakfast, and proposed a walk; then, with his joyous look and vigorous step, he would take his way towards what we called the Green hill of Castleawe. It lay to one side of the house. The black hill rose immediately behind. It was rugged of ascent, but the summer wind, as it blew upon us, came laden with the fragrance of the wild thyme and purple heather, with which it was covered to the very top.

"Our guide always halted at one particular spot: it was where the house of Woodhouselee came in view, though still partially hidden by the fine trees which surrounded it. Further in the distance rose Carnathae, the highest of all the Pentlands. In those days it seemed to us towering in the clouds; and we had shrewd suspicions that Mont Blanc was of much inferior height.-Here, seated in the midst of us, he would begin his delightful stories, generally the productions of his fertile brain at the moment, and continued for more than one day at a time. Sometimes they were legends of the old Covenanters; for at no great distance from where we were seated had been discovered several Covenanters' graves, and a report was current in our village, that in our day a funeral procession by torch-light had been seen slowly wending their way amongst the hills towards