admired by the world, that we often wonder he | into the town-all its life seems to do 30-and has not been spoiled. "What a glorious Oc- to leave nothing behind but the bare trees and tober!" "Why, you will surely not leave us hedges. Equipages again go glittering along till October comes!" "October is the month all the streets, squares, circuses, and crescents; of all months-and, till you see him, you have and one might think that the entire "nation of not seen the Lakes." We acknowledge his ladies and gentlemen "—for King George the claims. He is often truly delightful; but, like Fourth, we presume, meant to include the sex, other brilliant persons, thinks himself not only in his compliment-were moving through their privileged to be at times extremely dull, but his metropolis. Amusement and business walk intensest stupidity is panegyrized as wit of the hand-in-hand—you hardly know, from their first water-while his not unfrequent rudeness, cheerful countenances, which is which; for of which many a common month would be the Scots, though a high-cheeked, are not an ashamed, passes for the ease of high-birth, or ill-favoured folk in their features-and though the eccentricity of genius. A very different their mouths are somewhat of the widest, their feeling indeed exists towards unfortunate No- teeth are white as well as sharp, and on the vember. The moment he shows his face, all opening of their ruddy lips, their ivory-cases other faces are glum. We defy month or man, are still further brightened by hearty smiles. under such a trial, to make himself even tol- "Twould be false to say that their figures are erably agreeable. He feels that he is no fa- distinguished by an air of fashion-for we have vourite, and that a most sinister misinterpre- no court, and our nobles are almost all abtation will be put on all his motions, manners, sentees. But though, in one sense, the men are thoughts, words, and deeds. A man or a month ugly customers, as they will find so circumstanced is much to be pitied. Think, look, speak, act as he will-yea, even more like an angel than a man or a month-every eyebrow arches-every nostril distends-every lip curls towards him in contempt, while blow over the ice that enchains all his feelings and faculties, heavy-chill whisperings of "who is that disagreeable fellow?" In such a frozen atmosphere eloquence would be congealed on the lips of an Ulysses-Poetry prosified on those of an Apollo.

"Who chance to tread upon their freeborn toe,"

yet, literally, they are a comely crew, and if formed into battalions in marching order, would make the National Guard in Paris look like

"That small infantry Warr'd on by cranes." Our females have figures that can thaw any frost; and 'tis universally allowed that they walk well, though their style of pedestrianism does not so readily recall to the imagination Edinburgh, during the dead of Summer, is a Virgil's picture of Camilla flying along the far more solitary place than Glenetive, Glen-heads of corn without touching their ears, as evis, or Glenco. There is not, however, so the images of paviers with post-looking mallets much danger of being lost in it as in the Moor driving down dislodged stones into the streets. of Rannoch-for streets and squares, though Intermingling with the lighter and more elastic then utterly tenantless, are useful as land- footsteps of your Southron dames, the on-goings marks to the pilgrim passing through what of our native virgins produce a pleasant variety of motion in the forenoon mêlée that along the Street of Princes now goes nodding in the sun-glint.

seems to be

"A still forsaken City of the Dead!" But, like a frost-bound river, suddenly dissolved by a strong thaw, and coming down in spate from the mountains to the low lands, about the beginning of November Life annually reoverflows our metropolis, with a noise like "the rushing of many chariots." The streets, that for months had been like the stony channels of dried-up streams-only not quite so well paved are again all a murmur, and people addicted to the study of political economy, begin to hold

"Each strange tale devoutly true"

"Amid the general dance and minstrelsy" who would wear a long face, unless it were in sympathy with his length of ears? A din of multitudinous joy hums in the air; you cannot see the city for the houses, its inhabitants for the people; and, as for finding one particular acquaintance in the crowd, why, to use an elegant simile, you might as well go search for a needle in a bottle of hay.

But hark! a hollow sound, distant, and as yet referred to no distinct place then a faint in the Malthusian theory of population. What mixture of a clear chime that is almost music swarms keep hovering round the great North--now a tune-and at last, rousing the massy ern Hive! Add eke after eke to the skep, multitude to enthusiasm, a military march, and still seems it too small to contain all the swelling various, profound, and high, with insects. Edinburgh is almost as large as Lon- drum, trombone, serpent, trump, clarionet, fife, don. Nay, don't stare! We speak compara- flute, and cymbal, bringing slowly on (is it the tively; and, as England is somewhere about measured tramp of the feet of men, or the consix times more populous than Scotland, you fused trampling of horses?) banners floating may, by brushing up your arithmetic, and ap- over the procession, above the glitter of steel, plying to the Census, discover that we are not and the golden glow of helmets. "Tis a regi so far wrong in our apparent paradox. ment of cavalry-hurra! the Carbineers! What an Advanced Guard!

Were November in himself a far more wearifu' month than he is, Edinburgh would nevertheless be gladsome in the midst of all his gloom, even as a wood in May with the Gathering of the Clans. The country flows

"There England sends her men, of men the chief," still, staid, bold, bronzed faces, with keen eyes, looking straight forward from between sabres: while beneath the equable but haughty motion

of their steeds, almost disciplined as their | ters-a change wrought for an hour of peace riders, with long black horse-hair flowing in the heart of the hurricane! Therefore the in martial majesty, nod their high Roman sailor enjoys it on the green wave-the shepcasques. The sweet storm of music has been herd on the green sward; while the memory passing by while we were gazing, and is now of mists and storms deepens the enchantment. somewhat deadened by the retiring distance Even so, Idlesse can be enjoyed but by those and by that mass of buildings, (how the win- who are permitted to indulge it, while enduring dows are alive, and agaze with faces!) while the labours of an active or a contemplative troop after troop comes on, still moving, it is life. To use another, and a still livelier image felt by all, to the motion of the warlike tune, see the pedlar toiling along the dusty road, though now across the Waterloo Bridge sound- with an enormous pack on his excursion; and ing like an echo, till the glorious war-pageant when off his aching shoulders slowly falls back is all gone by, and the dull day is deadened on the bank the loosened load, in blessed redown again into the stillness and silence of an lief think ye not that he enjoys, like a very ignoble peace. poet, the beauty of the butterflies that, wavering through the air, settle down on the wildflowers around him that embroider the wayside! Yet our pedlar is not so much either of an entymologist or a botanist as not to take out his scrip, and eat his bread and cheese with a mute prayer and a munching appetitenot idle, it must be confess'd, in that sensebut in every other idle even as the shadow of the sycamore, beneath which, with his eyes half-open-for by hypothesis he is a Scotsman-he finally sinks into a wakeful, but quiet half-sleep. "Hallo! why are you sleeping there, you idle fellow?" bawls some beadle, or some overseer, or some magistrate, or perhaps merely one of those private persons who, out of season and in season, are constantly sending the sluggard to the ant to learn wisdomthough the ant, Heaven bless her! at proper times sleeps as sound as a sicknurse.

"Now all the youth of Scotland are on fire!" All her cities and towns are rejoicing in the welcome Winter; and mind, invigorated by holidays, is now at work, like a giant refreshed, in all professions. The busy bar growls, grumphs, squeaks, like an old sow with a litter of pigs pretending to be quarrelling about straws. Enter the Outer or the Inner House, and you hear eloquence that would have put Cicero to the blush, and reduced Demosthenes to his original stutter. The wigs of the Judges seem to have been growing during the long vacation, and to have expanded into an ampler wisdom. Seldom have we seen a more solemn set of men. Every one looks more gash than another, and those three in the centre seem to us the embodied spirits of Law, Equity, and Justice. What can be the meaning of all this endless litigation? On what immutable principles in human nature depends the prosperity of the Fee-fund? Life is strife. Inestimable the blessing of the great institution of Property! For without it, how could people go together by the ears, as if they would tear one another to pieces? All the strong, we must not call them bad passions, denied their natural element, would find out some channels to run in, far more destructive to the commonweal than lawsuits, and the people would be reduced to the lowest ebb of misery, and raised to the highest flow of crime. Our Parliament House here is a vast safety-valve for the escape of the foul steam that would otherwise explode and shatter the engine of the state, blowing the body and members of society to smash. As it is, how the engine works! There it goes! like Erickson's Novelty or Stevenson's Rocket along a railroad; and though an accident may occur now and then, such as an occasional passenger chucked by some uncalculated collision into the distant horizon, to be picked up whole, or in fragments, by the hoers in some turnip-field in the adjacent county, yet few or none are likely to be fatal on a great scale; and on goes the Novelty or Rocket, like a thought, with many weighty considerations after it, in the shape of wagons of Christians or cottons, while Manufactures and Commerce exult in the cause of Liberty and Locomotion all over the world.

But to us utter idlesse is perfect bliss. And why? Because, like a lull at sea, or loun on land, it is felt to descend from Heaven on man's toilsome lot. The lull and the loun, what are they when most profound, but the transient cessation of the restlessness of winds and wa

We are now the idlest, because once were we the most industrious of men. Up to the time that we engaged to take an occasional glance over the self-growing sheets of The Periodical, we were tied to one of the oars that move along the great vessel of life; and we believe that it was allowed by all the best watermen, that

"We feather'd our oars with skill and dexterity."

shut

But ever since we became an Editor, our repose, bodily and mental, has been like that of a Hindoo god. Often do we sit whole winter nights, leaning back on our chair, more like the image of a man than a man himself, with eyes, that keep seeing in succession all the things that ever happened to us, and all the persons that we ever loved, hated, or despised, embraced, beat, or insulted, since we were a little boy. They too have all an imagelike appearance, and 'tis wondrous strange the stage of that revived drama, which somehow silent they all are, actors and actresses on times seems to be a genteel comedy, and sometimes a broad farce, and then to undergo dreadful transfiguration into a tragedy deep as death.

We presume that the Public read in her own papers-we cannot but be hurt that no account of it has appeared in the Court Journal

that on Thursday the 12th current, No. 99, Moray Place, was illuminated by our annual Soirée, Conversazzione, Rout, Ball, and Supper. A Ball! yes-for Christopher North, acting in the spirit of his favourite James Thomson, "No purpose gay, Amusement, dance, or song he sternly scorns For happiness and true philosophy Are of the social, still, and smiling kind.”

All the rooms in the house were thrown open, | empty and motionless-with us two alone sitexcept the cellars and the Sanctum. To the ting by each other's side affectionately and repeople congregated outside, the building, we spectfully on a sofa. Now it is filled with life, have been assured, had all the brilliancy of the and heard you ever such a happy murmur? Bude Light. It was like a palace of light, of Yet no one in particular looks as if he or she which the framework or skeleton was of white were speaking much above breath, so gentle is unveined marble. So strong was the reflec- true refinement, like a delightful fragrance tion on the nocturnal heavens, that a rumour ran through the City that there was a great fire in Moray Place, nor did it subside till after the arrival and departure of several engines. The alarm of some huge conflagration prevailed during most part of the night all over the kingdom of Fife; while in the Lothians, our illumination was much admired as an uncommonly fine specimen of the Aurora Borealis.

"From the arch'd roof,
Pendent by subtle magic, many a row
Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed
With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light
As from a sky. The hasty multitude
Admiring enter'd."

We need not say who received the company, and with what grace SHE did so, standing at the first landing-place of the great staircase in sable stole; for the widow's weeds have not yet been doffed for the robes of saffron-with a Queen-Mary cap pointed in the front of her serene and ample forehead, and, to please us, a few pearls sprinkled among her hair, still an unfaded auburn, and on her bosom one starbright diamond. Had the old General himself come to life again, and beheld her then and there, he could not have been offended with such simple ornaments. The weeds he would have felt due to him, and all that his memory was fairly entitled to; but the flowers-to speak figuratively-he would have cheerfully acknowledged were due to us, and that they well became both face and figure of his lovely relict. As she moved from one room to another, showering around her serene smiles, we felt the dignity of those Virgilian words,

"Incedit Regina."

Surely there is something very poetical in the gradual flowing in of the tide of grace, elegance and beauty, over the floors of a suit of regal-looking rooms, splendidly illuminated. Each party as it comes on has its own peculiar picturesqueness, and affects the heart or imagination by some novel charm, gently gliding onward a little while by itself, as if not unconscious of its own attractions, nor unproud of the gaze of perhaps critical admiration that attends its progressive movement. We confess ourselves partial to plumes of feathers above the radiant braidings of the silken tresses on the heads of virgins and matrons-provided they be not "dumpy women" --tall, white, blue, and pink plumes, silent in their wavings as gossamer, and as finely delicate, stirred up by your very breath as you bend down to salute their cheeks-not with kisses-for they would be out of order both of time and place-but with words almost as tender as kisses, and awakening almost as tender a return a few sweet syllables breathed in a silver voice, with blushing cheeks, and downcast eyes that, when again uplifted, are seen to be from heaven.

A long hour ago, and all the mansion was

"From the calm manners quietly exhaled."

Oh! the atrocious wickedness of a great, big, hearty, huge, hulking, horse-laugh in an assemblage of ladies and gentlemen, gathered gracefully together to enjoy the courtesies, the amenities, the urbanities, and the humanities of cultivated Christian life! The pagan who perpetrates it should be burnt alive-not at a slow fire-though that would be but justicebut at a quick one, that all remnants of him and his enormity may be instantly extinguished. Lord Chesterfield has been loudly laughed at with leathern lungs for his anathema against Lordship was right, and for that one single laughter. But though often wrong, there his rule of manners he deserves a monument, as having been one of the benefactors of his species. Let smiles mantle-and that sweet, soft, low sound be heard, the susurrus. Let there be a many-voiced quiet music, like that of the its breast. But laughter-loud peals of laughsummer moonlight sea when the stars are in

ter-are like breakers-blind breakers on a

blind coast, where no verdure grows except that of tangle, and whatever is made into that vulgarist of all commodities, kelp.

gentle reader; for we leave that to S. T. Cole"Tis not a literary conversazzione, mind ye, ridge, the Monarch of the Monologue. But all speak-talk-whisper-or smile, of all the ble little interesting affairs, incidents, and ocspeakable, talkable, whisperable, and smileaCurrences, real or fabulous, of public, private, demi-public, or demi-semi-private life. Topics are as plentiful as snow-flakes, and melt away as fast in the stream of social pleasure,

"A moment white, then gone for ever!"
Not a little scandal-much gossip, we dare
say; but as for scandal, it is the vulgarest er-
ror in the world to think that it either means,
or does, any harm to any mortal. It does in.
finite good. It ventilates the atmosphere, and
prevents the "golden-fretted vault" from be-
coming "a foul congregation of vapours." As
for gossip, what other vindication does it need,
than an order for you to look at a soirée of
swallows in September on a slate-roof, the
most innocent and white-breasted creatures
that pay

"Their annual visits round the globe,
Companions of the sun,"

but such gossipers that the whole air is
a-twitter with their talk about their neighbours'
nests-when-whew! off and away they go,
winnowing their way westwards, through the
setting sunlight, and all in perfect amity with
themselves and their kind, while

"The world is all before them where to choose, And Providence their guide."

And, madam, you do not matronize-and, sir, you do not patronize-waltzing? "Tis very O

fie-fieish, you think—and in danger of becom- | Hebrew Melody! And now your heart feels ing very, very faux-pa-pa-ish! the utter mournfulness of these words,

"Oh! the great goodness of the knights of old," whose mind-motto was still

"Honi soit qui mal y pense!"

Judging by ourselves, 'tis a wicked world we unwillingly confess; but be not terrified at trifles, we beseech you, and be not gross in your censure of innocent and delicate delights. Byron's exquisitively sensitive modesty was shocked by the sight of waltzing, which he would not have suffered the Guiccioli, while she was in his keeping, to have indulged in

even with her own husband. Thus it is that sinners see sin only where it is not-and shut their eyes to it when it comes upon them openarmed, bare-bosomed, and brazen-faced, and clutches them in a grasp more like the hug of a bear than the embrace of a woman. Away with such mawkish modesty and mouthing morality-for 'tis the slang of the hypocrite. Waltzing does our old eyes good to look on it, when the whole Circling Flight goes gracefully and airily on its orbit, and we think we see the realization of that picture (we are sad misquoters) when the Hours

"Knit by the Graces and the Loves in dance, Lead on the eternal spring!

But the Circling Flight breaks into airy fragments, the Instrumental Band is hushed, and so is the whole central Drawing-room; for, blushingly obedient to the old man's beck, THE STAR OF EVE-SO call we her who is our heart'sease and heart's-delight-the granddaughter of one whom hopelessly we loved in youth, yet with no unreturned passion-but

"By Babel's streams we sat and wept!" How sudden, yet how unviolent, the transitions among all our feelings! Under no other power so swift and so soft as that of Music. The soul that sincerely loves Music, offers at no time the slightest resistance to her sway, but yields itled captive by each successive strain through self up entire to all its moods and measures, the whole mysterious world of modulated air. Not a smile over all that hush. Entranced in listening, they are all still as images. A sigh -almost a sob-is heard, and there is shedding of tears. The sweet singer's self seems as if she felt all alone at some solitary shrine

"Her face, oh! call it fair, not pale!"

Yet pale now it is, as if her heart almost died within her at the pathos of her own beautiful lament in a foreign land, and lovelier in her captivity never was the fairest of the daughters of Zion!

How it howls! That was a very avalanche. The snow-winds preach charity to all who have roofs over-head-towards the houseless and them who huddle round hearths where the fire is dying or dead. Those blankets must have been a Godsend indeed to not a few families, Yet that is good too-nor do we find fault with and your plan is preferable to a Fancy-Fair. them who dance for the Destitute. We sanction amusements that give relief to miseryand the wealthy may waltz unblamed for behoof of the poor.

Again what a howling in the chimney! What a blattering on the windows, and what a cannonading on the battlements! What can the "The course of true love never yet ran smooth". Night be about? and what has put old Nox comes glidingly to our side, and having heard into such a most outrageous passion? He has our wish breathed whisperingly into her ear-driven our Winter Rhapsody clean out of our a rare feature when small, thin, and delicate as a leaf-just as glidingly she goes, in stature that is almost stateliness, towards her Harp, and assuming at once a posture that would have charmed Canova, after a few prelusive touches that betray the hand of a mistress in the divine art, to the enchantment of the white motions of those graceful arms and fingers fine, awakes a spirit in the strings accordant to the spirit in that voice worthy to have blended with St. Cecilia's in her hymning orisons. A

noddle-and to-morrow we must be sending for the slater, the plumber, and the glazier. To go to bed in such a hurly-burly, would be to make an Ultra-Toryish acknowledgment, not only of the divine right, but of the divine power, of King Morpheus. But an Ultra-Tory we are not-though Ultra-Trimmers try to impose upon themselves that fiction among a thousand others; so we shall smoke a cigar, and let sleep go to the dogs, the deuse, the devil, and the Chartists.

STROLL TO GRASSMERE.

FIRST SAUNTER.

yet for not a few years we bore the name of "The Man of the Mountains ;" and, though no COMPANION of the Crutch! hast thou been a great linguists, we hope that we know someloving observer of the weather of our island- what more than the vocabulary of the lanclime? We do not mean to ask if you have guages of calm and storm. Remember that from youth been in the daily practice of rising we are now at Ambleside-and one week's from your study-chair at regular intervals, residence there may let you into some of the and ascertaining the precise point of Mercury's secrets of the unsteady Cabinet of St. Cloud. elevation on the barometrical scale. The One advice we give you, and by following it idea of trusting, throughout all the fluctuations you cannot fail to be happy at Ambleside, and of the changeful and capricious atmosphere in everywhere else. Whatever the weather be, which we live, to quicksilver, is indeed pre-love, admire, and delight in it, and vow that posterous; and we have long noticed that you would not change it for the atmosphere of meteorologists make an early figure in our a dream. If it be close, hot, oppressive, be obituaries. Seeing the head of the god above thankful for the faint air that comes down fitthe mark "fair," or "settled," out they march fully from cliff and chasm, or the breeze that in thins, without great-coat or umbrella, when ever and anon gushes from stream and lake. such a thunder-plump falls down in a deluge, If the heavens are filled with sunshine, and that, returning home by water and steam, they you feel the vanity of parasols, how cool the take to bed, and on the ninth day fever hurries silvan shade for ever moistened by the murthem off, victims to their confidence in that murs of that fairy waterfall! Should it blow treacherous tube. But we mean to ask, have great guns, cannot you take shelter in yonder you an eye, an ear, and a sixth sense, anony- magnificent fort, whose hanging battlements mous and instinctive, for all the prognosticat- are warded even from the thunder-bolt by the ing sights and sounds, and motions and shapes, dense umbrage of unviolated woods? Rainof nature? Have you studied, in silence and rain-rain-an even-down pour of rain, that solitude, the low, strange, and spirit-like whis- forces upon you visions of Noah and his ark, perings, that often, when bird and bee are and the top of Mount Ararat-still, we beseech mute, come and go, here and there, now from you, be happy. It cannot last long at that rate; crag, now from coppice, and now from moor, the thing is impossible. Even this very afterall over the sultry stillness of the clouded land- noon will the rainbow span the blue entrance scape? Have you listened among mountains into Rydal's woody vale, as if to hail the westerto the voice of streams, till you heard them ing sun on his approach to the mountainsprophesying change? Have you so mastered and a hundred hill-born torrents will be seen the occult science of mists, as that you can flashing out of the up-folding mists. What a foretell each proud or fair Emergency, and the delightful dazzle on the light-stricken river! hour when grove, precipice, or plain, shall in Each meadow shames the lustre of the emsudden revelation be clothed with the pomp of erald; and the soul wishes not for language sunshine? Are all Bewick's birds, and beasts, to speak the pomp and prodigality of colours and fishes visible to your eyes in the woods, that Heaven now rejoices to lavish on the wastes, and waves of the clouds! And know grove-girdled Fairfield, who has just tossed off ye what aerial condor, dragon, and whale, re- the clouds from his rocky crest. spectively portend? Are the Fata Morgana as familiar to you as the Aberdeen Almanac! When a mile-square hover of crows darkens air and earth, or settling loads every tree with sable fruitage, are you your own augur, equally as when one raven lifts up his hoary blackness from a stone, and sails sullenly off with a croak, that gets fiercer and more savage in the lofty distance? Does the leaf of the forest twinkle futurity? the lonely lichen brighten or Forgive us, loveliest of Mornings! for havpale its lustre with change? Does not the gifting overslept the assignation hour, and allowed of prophecy dwell with the family of the violets and the lilies? The prescient harebells, do they not let drop their closing blossoms when the heavens are niggard of their dews, or uphold them like cups thirsty for wine, when the blessing, yet unfelt by duller animal life, is beginning to drop balmily down from the rainy cloud embosomed in the blue of a midsummer's meridian day!

Forgive these friendly interrogatories. Perhaps you are weather-wiser than ourselves;

You will not imagine, from any thing we have ever said, that we are enemies to early rising. Now and then, what purer bliss than to embrace the new-wakened Morn, just as she is rising from her dewy bed! At such hour, we feel as if there were neither physical nor moral evil in the world, The united power of peace, innocence, and beauty subdues every thing to itself, and life is love.

thee to remain all by thyself in the solitude, wondering why thy worshipper could prefer to thy presence the fairest phantoms that ever visited a dream. And thou hast forgiven usfor not clouds of displeasure these that have settled on thy forehead; the unreproaching light of thy countenance is upon us a loving murmur steals into our heart from thine-and pure as a child's, daughter of Heaven! is thy breath.

In the spirit of that invocation we look