sloping uplands, with here and there a farm-house and trees,— and in the distance hill-tops quite clear, and cutting the sky, wreathed with mists, or for a time hidden in clouds. It set the imagination and the heart at work together, to look on the young hedge-rows and plantations, belts, clumps, and single trees, hurdled in from the nibbling sheep. Ay, some younger brother, who twenty, or thirty, or forty years ago, went abroad to the East, or the West, to push his fortune, has returned to the neighbourhood of his native vale at last, to live and to die among the braes, where once, among the yellow broom, the school-boy sported gladsome as any bird. Busy has he been in adorning,—perhaps the man who fixes his faith on Price on the Picturesque, would say in disfiguring, -the inland haven where he has dropt anchor, and will continue to ride till the vessel of life parts from her moorings, and drifts away on the shoreless sea of eternity. For our own parts, we are not easily offended by any conformation into which trees can be thrown -the bad taste of another must not be suffered to throw us into a bad temper-and as long as the trees are green in their season, and in their season, purple, and orange, and yellow, and refrain from murdering each other, to our eye they are pleasant to look upon,to our ear it is music, indeed, to hear them all a-murmur along with the murmuring winds. Hundreds-thousands of such dwellings have, in our time, arisen all over the face of Scotland; and there is room enough, we devoutly trust, and verily believe, for hundreds and thousands more. Of a people's prosperity what pleasanter proof! And, therefore, may all the well-fenced woods make more and more wonderful shoots every year. Beneath and among their shelter, may not a single slate be blown from the blue roof, peering through the trees, on the eyes of distant traveller, as he wheels along on the top of his most gracious Majesty's mailcoach;-may the dryads soon wipe away their tears for the death of the children that must, in thinnings, be "wede away;"—and may the rookeries and heronries of Scotland increase in number for the long space of ten thousand revolving years! Not that we hold it to be a matter of pure indifference, how people plant trees. We have an eye for the picturesque, the sublime, and the beautiful, and cannot open it, without seeing at once the very spirit of the scene. O ye! who have had the happiness to be born among the murmurs of hereditary trees, can ye be blind to the system pursued by that planter-Nature? Nature plants often on a great scale, darkening, far as the telescope can command the umbrage, sides of mountains that are heard roaring still with hundreds of hidden cataracts. And Nature often plants on a small scale, dropping down the stately birk so beautiful, among the sprinkled hazels, by the side of the little waterfall of the wimpling burnie, that stands dishevelling there her tresses to the dew-wind, like a queen's daughter, who hath just issued from the pool of pearls, and shines aloft and aloof from her attendant maidens. But man is so proud of his own works, that he ceases to regard those of Nature. Why keep poring on that book of plates, purchased at less than half price at a sale, when Nature flutters before your eyes her own folio, which all who run may read,—although to study it as it ought to be studied, you must certainly sit down on mossy stump, ledge of an old bridge, stone-wall, stream-bank, or broomy brae, and gaze, and gaze, and gaze, till woods and sky become like your very self, and your very self like them, at once incorporated together and spiritualized. After a few years' such lessons-you may become a planter-and under your hands not only shall the desert blossom like the rose, but murmur like the palm, and if southward through Eden goes a river large," and your name be Adam, what a sceptic not to believe yourself the first of men, your wife the fairest of her daughters Eve, and your policy Paradise! Blackwood's Magazine. SONG. FROM THE GERMAN. THE Rhine! the Rhine!-may on thy flowing river The sun for ever shine! And on thy banks may Freedom's light fade never!- The Rhine! the Rhine!-my fancy still is straying, Of auburn locks in balmy zephys playing :- The German knight the lance has bravely broken The German maid the tale of love has spoken With patriot zeal the gallant Swiss is fired, The dull Batavian, on thy banks inspired, Shouts -Freedom! and the Rhine. And shall we fear the threat of foreign foemen ?→→ The fiery Frank, the Gaul, the haughty Roman, Germania's sons, fill, fill your foaming glasses And drink, while life, and love, and beauty passes,- PARTICULAR PEOPLE* READER! did'st ever live with a particular lady? One possessed, not simply with the spirit, but the demon of tidiness?-Who will give you a good two hours' lecture upon the sin of an untied shoe-string, and raise a hurricane about your ears on the enormity of a fractured glove!-Who will be struck speechless, at the sight of a pin in the place of a string; or set a whole house in an uproar, on finding a book on the table instead of in the book-case! Those who have had the misfortune to meet with such a person, will know how to sympathise with me. Gentle reader! I have passed two whole months with a particular lady. I had often received very pressing invitations to visit an old schoolfellow, who is settled in a snug parsonage, about fifty miles from town; but something or other was continually occurring to prevent me from availing myself of them. "Man never is, but always to be 'cursed.'" Accordingly, on the 17th of June, 1826 (I shall never forget it, if I live to the age of old Parr,) having a few spare weeks at my disposal, I set out for my chum's residence. He received me with his wonted cordiality; but I fancied he looked a little more care-worn than a man of thirty might have been expected to look, married as he is to the woman of his choice, and in the possession of a liberal fortune. Poor fellow! I did not know that his wife was a precisian-I do not employ the term in a religious sense. The first hint I received of the fact was from Mr S. who, removing my hat from the first peg in the hall to the fourth, observed, "My wife is a little particular in these matters; the first peg is for my hat, the second is for William's, the third for Tom's, and you can reserve the fourth, if you please, * From "Scenes of Life, and Shades of Character," 1831. for your own; ladies, you know, do not like to have their arrangements interfered with." I promised to do my best to recollect the order of precedence with respect to the hats, and walked up stairs impressed with an awful veneration for a lady who had contrived to impose so rigid a discipline on a man, formerly the most disorderly of mortals, mentally resolving to obtain her favour by the most studious observance of her wishes. I might as well have determined to be Emperor of China! Before the week was at an end, I was a lost man. I always reckon myself tolerably tidy; never leaving more than half my clothes on the floor of my dressing-room, nor more than a dozen books about any apartment I may happen to occupy for an hour. I do not lose more than a dozen handkerchiefs in a month; nor have more than a quarter of an hour's hunt for my hat or gloves, whenever I am going out in a hurry. I found all this was but as dust in the balance. The first time I sat down to dinner I made a horrible blunder; for, in my haste to help my friend to some asparagus, I pulled the dish a little out of its place, thereby deranging the exact hexagonal order in which the said dishes were arranged-I discovered my mishap, on hearing Mr S. sharply rebuked for a similar offence. Secondly, I sat half the evening with the cushion a full finger's breadth beyond the canework of my chair-and what is worse, I do not know that I should have been aware of my delinquency, if the agony of the lady's feelings had not, at length, overpowered every other consideration, and at last burst forth with, "Excuse me, Mr- -9 but do pray put your cushion straight; it annoys me beyond measure to see it otherwise." My third offence was displacing the snuffer-stand from its central position between the candlesticks; my fourth, leaving a pamphlet I had been perusing on the piano-forte, its proper place being a table in the middle of the room, on which all books in present use were ordered to repose; my fifth,-but in short I should never have done, were I to enumerate every separate enormity of which I was guilty. My friend S.'s drawing room had as good a right to exhibit a placard of" Steel Traps and Spring Guns," as any park with which I am acquainted. In one place you were in danger of having your legs snapt off, and in another your nose. There never was a house so atrociously neat, every chair and table knew its duty; the very chimney ornaments had been "trained up in the way they should go," and woe to the unlucky wight who should make them "depart from it." Even those "chartered libertines," the children and dogs were taught to be as demure and hypocritical as the matronly tabby cat herself, who sat with her fore-feet together and her tail curled round her as exactly as if she had been worked in an urn-rug, instead of being a living mouser. R It was the utmost stretch of my friend's marital authority to get his favourite spaniel admitted to the honours of the parlour; and even this privilege is only granted in his master's presence. If Carlo happens to pop his unlucky brown nose into the room when S. is from home, he sets off with as much consciousness in his ears and tail as if he had been convicted of a larceny in the kitchen, and anticipated the application of the broom-stick. As to the children, heaven help them! I believe that they look forward to their evening visit to the drawing-room with much the same sort of feeling. Not that Mrs S. is an unkind mother, or, I should rather say, not that she means to be so; but she has taken it into her head, that "preachee and floggee too" is the way to bring up children; and that, as young people have sometimes short memories, it is necessary to put them verbally in mind of their duties, From night till morn, from morn till dewy eve. So is it with her servants; if one of them leaves a broom or a duster out of its place for a second, she hears of it for a month afterwards. I wonder how they endure it! I have sometimes thought that from long practice, they do not heed it as a friend of mine, who lives in a bustling street in the city, tells me he does not hear the infernal noise of the coaches and carts in the front of his house, nor of a confounded brazier, who hammers away in his rear from morning till night. The worst of it is, that while Mrs S. never allows a moment's peace to husband, children, or servants, she thinks herself a jewel of a wife!-but such jewels are too costly for everyday wear. I am sure poor S. thinks so in his heart, and would be content to exchange half a dozen of his wife's tormenting good qualities, for the sake of being allowed a little common-place repose. I shall never forget the delight I felt on entering my own house, after enduring her thraldom for two months. I absolutely revelled in disorder, and gloried in my litters. I tossed my hat one way, my gloves another; pushed all the chairs into the middle of the room, and narrowly escaped kicking my faithful Christopher, for offering to put it "in order" again. That cursed "spirit of order!" I am sure it is a spirit of evil omen to S. For my own part, I do so execrate the phrase, that if I were a Member of the House of Commons, and the order of the day were called for, I should make it a rule to walk out. Since my return home, I have positively prohibited the use of the word in my house; and have nearly quarrelled with an honest poulterer, who has served me for the last ten years, because he has a rascally shopman, who will persist in snuffling at my door (I hear him now from my parlour window,) |