Of winter, heard the spirits of the wind Growling among their boughs,-how they had grown So high, in such a rough tempestuous place, And when a hapless branch, torn by the blast, Fell down, I mourned, as if a friend had fallen. These I distinctly hold in memory still, And all the desert scenery around. Nor strange, that recollection there should dwell, Where first I heard of God's redeeming love; First felt and reasoned, loved and was beloved; And first awoke the harp to holy song: To hoar and green there was enough of joy. Hopes, friendships, charities,and warm pursuit, Gave comfortable flow to youthful blood. And there were old remembrances of days, When, on the glittering dews of orient life, Shone sunshine hopes, unfailed, unperjured then : And there were childish sports, and schoolboy feasts, And schoolboy spots, and earnest vows of love, Uttered, when passion's boisterous tide ran high, Sincerely uttered, though but seldom kept: And there were angel looks, and sacred hours Of rapture, hours that in a moment passed, And yet were wished to last for evermore; And venturous exploits, and hardy deeds, And bargains shrewd, achieved in manhood's prime; And thousand recollections, gay and sweet. POLLOK'S MUSINGS. Pleasant were many scenes, but most to me Whose minstrels, brooks; whose lamps, the moon and stars; Whose organ-choir, the voice of many waters; Whose banquets, morning dews; whose heroes, storms; Whose warriors, mighty winds; whose lovers, flowers; Whose orators, the thunderbolts of God; Lost now between the welkin and the main, storm. Most fit was such a place for musing men, Happiest sometimes when musing without aim It was, indeed, a wonderous sort of bliss The lonely bard enjoyed, when forth he walked, Unpurposed; stood, and anew not why; sa down, And knew not where; arose, and knew not when; Had eyes, and saw not; ears, and nothing heard ; And sought-sought neither heaven nor earth-sought nought, Nor meant to think; but ran, meantime, through vast Of visionary things, fairer than ought Or give idea of, to those who read." Course of Time. The property of Ó** D**. Saturday, the 16th of September nex, will be sold, or set up for sale, at Skibberdeen, A strong, staunch, steady, sound, stout, safe, sinewy, serviceable, strapping, supple, swift, smart, sightly, sprightly, spirited, sturdy, shining, sure-footed, sleek, smooth, spunky, well-skinned, sized, and shaped, sorrel steed, of superlative symmetry, styled SPANKER; with small star and snip, square-sided, slendershouldered, sharp-sighted, and steps singularly stately; free from strain, sprain, spavin, spasms, stringhalt, sciatica, staggers, strangles, seeling, sellander, surfeit, seams, strumous-swellings, sorrances, scratches, splint, squint, scurf, sores, scattering, shuffling, shambling-gait, or symptoms of sickness of any sort. He is neither stiff-mouthed, shabby-coated, sinew-shrunk, spur-galled, saddle-backed, shell-toothed, slim-gutted, surbated, skiv scabbed, short-winded, splay-footed, or shoulder-slipped; and is sound in the sword-point and stifle-joint. Hus neither sick spleen, sleeping evil, set-fast, snaggle-teeth, sand-crack, subcutaneous sores, or shattered hoofs; nor is he sour, sulky, surly, stubborn, or sullen in temper. Neither shy nor skittish, slow, sluggish, or stupid. He never slips, strips, strays, stalks, starts, stops, shakes, snivels, snuffles, snorts, stumbles, or stocks, in his stall or stable, and scarcely or seldom sweats. Has a showy, stylish, switch tail, or stern, and a safe set of shoes on; can feed on stubble, sainfoin, sheaf-oats, straw, sedge, or Scotch-grass. Carries sixteen stone with surprising speed in his stroke over a six-foot sod or stone wall. His sire was the SLY SOBERSIDES on a sister of SPINDLESHANKS by SAMPSON, a sporting son of SPARKLER, who won the sweep-stakes and subscription-plate last session at Sligo. His selling price sixtyseven pounds, sixteen shillings, and six pence, sterling. Horse-racing was established in the eign of James I., with nearly all the rules for training, physicking, carrying weights, and running for prizes, as at pre A silver bell was the usual prize; hence the proverb "bear the bell." sent. One of my young friends, to whom I had been the day before explaining the structure of some minute vegetables of the fungus kind, called upon me the evening before last, to tell me of a discovery he had just made of a new and beautiful plant of this lowly class, and begged I would direct the succeeding morning walk to the place of its growth. He led me to a brook near Kentishtown; over a narrow part of which an antique willow, declining under the infirmities of age, and robbed of half the earth that used at once to support and supply nourishment to its roots, by the effects of the undermining stream, which extended its slant trunk, and spread every way its tortuous branches. The youth mounted the little ascent to the head of the tree with all that warmth that attends the pride of a discovery, and, pointing to a dropping bough which hung immediately over the water, showed me a multitude of his favorite objects. I discovered at first sight what they were; but, as information always remains longest when it is the effect of the person's own observations, I took out my pocket microscope, and, desiring the youth to cut off a piece of the branch on which what he called the plants were placed, separated one of them from it, and, adapting it to the glass, gave it into his hand for examination. It was not half a minute before he burst out into an exclamation, "How have I been deceived! As I am alive, the egg of some animal!" While he was yet speaking, I had fixed my eye upon a fly employed on another part of one of the branches, already loaded with these bodies, in a manner that perfectly explained what was going forward. I led him to the properest place for making the necessary observations, and we had the pleasure to see the whole process of their formation. The creature presently applied the extremity of her tail, to which, at that instant, there hung a drop of a glutinous fluid, close to the branch. She by this means lodged a particle of liquid glue, as it were, on its bark: from this, raising her hinder part, very slowly, to the height of three quarters of an inch, she drew after her a thread of the liquid, which almost immediately hardened in the air into a firm and solid substance, capable of supporting itself erect. She paused a few moments, while it acquired a sufficient firmness for her purpose, and then deposited upon its summit an egg of an oblong figure, milk-white in color, and covered with the same gluey moisture. The egg became fixed in an instant on the top of its slender pedestal, and the fly went on depositing more in the same manner. A cluster of these eggs, regularly supported on pedicles of the length of small pins, and arising each from a broad shining base on the bark, had given my young botanist the idea of a set of little fungi; but, on examining the first that came to hand before the microscope, it proved to be big with life: an egg just disclosing a fine white worm. Nature has so provided for the winged ribe of insects, that they all of them pass a part of their lives, and that, indeed, much the greatest part, in form of reptiles; their wings, their eyes, and the rest of their wonderful apparatus, are too delicate and tender to be trusted to the air immediately from the egg: the creature is therefore covered with a peculiar skin, under which it wears the form of a maggot, a worm, or a caterpillar, till, at the destined period, when all the parts are grown firm, and ready to perform their several offices, the perfect animal appears in the form of its parent, out of the disguise of its reptile state. The worms that are thus produced from the eggs of beetles, and are the disguised forms of the beetle brood, feed on wood: the caterpillars, which are the reptile state of the butterflies, feed on different substances. It is the fate of the worm, hatched from the egg of this peculiar species, to live under water, protected by the covert of a clay shed in the bank, and there to feed on lesser insects that inhabit the mud; when the time of its appearing under the fly state approaches, it leaves the water, and the perfect insect bursts from its case on dry land. The life of the creature in this winged state is but of a few hours' duration; the continuation of the species is all the office to which the economy of the animal is destined. The female is prompted by nature to get rid of her load, and instinct points out to her that the young to be hatched from her eggs should find their support in the water; but, were she to endeavour to lay them upon the surface of the fluid, she would probably be drowned in the attempt. If she even succeeded, their thin coats would be rotted by the moisture, or become a prey to fish and a thousand other devourers. She therefore artfully suspends them on trees that grow over waters. If they were deposited close upon the bark, they would be in the way of mites, and other destroyers; and if, until the hatching, they es caped these, the young worms might remain upon the branches till they perish ed of hunger, from ignorance that the food for their necessities was below. Whereas, in this careful disposition of the eggs, they are out of the reach of all the insect tribe that crawl upon the tree; and are no sooner hatched than the eggs the tiny worms necessarily fall into the water, where every thing requisite i ure vided for their sustenance. Cicero, in the first book of his Tusculan Questions, finely exposes the vain judg ment we are apt to form of the duration of human life. In illustrating his argument, he quotes a passage of natu.al nistory from Aristotle, concerning a species of insects on the banks of the river Hypanis, which never out-live the day wherein they are born. To pursue the thoughts of this elegant writer; let us suppose that one of the most robust of these Hypanians (so famed in history) was in a manner coeval with time itself; that he began to exist at the break of day; and that, from the uncommon strength of his constitution, he had been able to show himself active in life through the numberless minutes of ten or twelve hours. Through so long a series of seconds, he must have acquired vast wisdom in his way, from observation and experience. Looking upon his fellow-creatures, who died about noon, to have been happily delivered from the many inconveniences of old age; he can perhaps recount to his grandson a surprising tradition of actions, before any records of their nation were extant. The young swarm, who may be advanced one hour in life, approach his person with respect, and listen to his improving discourse. Every thing he says will seem wonderful to this short-lived generation. The compass of a day will be esteemed the whole duration of time; and the first dawn of light will, in their chronology, be styled the great æra of their creation." Let us now suppose that this venerable insect, this Nestor of Hypanis, should a little before his death, and about sun-set, send for all his descendants, his friends, and his acquaintance; out of the desire he may have to impart his last thoughts to them, and admonish them with his departing breath. They meet, perhaps, under the spacious shelter of a mushroom; and the dying sage addresses himself to them after the following manner : "Friends and fellow-citizens! I perceive the longest life must have an end; the period of mine is now at hand: neither do I repine at my fate, since my great age has become a burden, and there is nothing new to me under the sun. The calamities and revolutions I have seen in my country; the mat ifold private misfor unes to which we are all liable; and the atal diseases incident to our race; have abundantly taught me this lesson-that no happiness can be secure nor lasting which is placed in things that are out of our power. Great is the uncertainty of life! a whole brood of infants has perished in a moment by a keen plast; shoals of our straggling youth have been swept into the waves by an unexpected breeze: what wasteful deluges have we suffered from a sudden shower! our strongest holds are not proof against a storm of hail; and even a dark cloud makes the stoutest heart quail. "I have lived in the first ages, and conversed with insects of a larger size and stronger make, and (I must add) of greater virtue, than any can boast of in the present generation. I must conjure you to give yet farther credit to my latest words, when I assure you that yonder sun, which now appears westward beyond the water, and seems not to be far distant from the earth, in my remembrance stood in the middle of the sky, and shot his beams directly upon us. The world was much more enlightened in those ages, and the air much warmer. Think it not dotage in me if I affirm that glorious being moves: I saw his first setting out in the east; and I began my race of life near the time when he began his immense career. He has for several ages advanced along the sky with vast heat, and unparalleled brightness; but now, by his declension, and a sensible decay (more especially of late) in his vigor, I foresee that all nature must fail in a little time, and that the creation will lie buried in darkness in less than a century of minutes. "Alas! my friends, how did I once flatter myself with the hopes of abiding here for ever! How magnificent are the cells which I hollowed out for myself! What confidence did I repose in the firmLess and spring of my joints, and in the strength of my pinions! But I have lived enough to nature, and even to glory: neither will any of you whom I leave behind have equal satisfaction in life, in the dark, declining age, which I see is already begun." This fiction, founded upon the thought of Cicero, will not seem extravagant to those who are acquainted with the manner of instruction practised by the early teachers of mankind. Solomon sends the sluggard to the ant; and, after his examnle, we may send the ambitious or the covetous man, who seems to overlook the shortness and uncertainty of life, to the little animals upon the banks of the Hypanis let him consider their transitory state, and be wise. We, like the ephemeri, have but a day to live; the morning, and noon, and the evening of life, is the whole portion of our time. many perish in the very dawn; and the man, out of a million, who lingers on to the evening twilight, is not accounted happy.* September 17.-Day breaks h. m. 3 46 5 45 September 18. 18th of September, 1830, died, at the age of 52 years, William Hazlitt, a writer of great eminence and ability. He was a native of Maidstone. His boyhood was chiefly spent in Shropshire, Devonshire, and Wiltshire. At an early age he came to London, and employed much time in painting, or rather in attaining to a knowledge of the art, than in perseveringly applying it. He soon relinquished the pencil for the pen, which he wielded with distinguished power; yet, when he saw the works of the great masters assembled at Paris, a fondness for his first pursuits came over him, and he occupied an easle at the Louvre in copying portraits by Titian. He brought his pictures to England. They obtained unqualified praise from Northcote, and for a time were possessed by Haydon; but were seen by few other artists, and are now dispersed. Mr. Hazlitt wrote to live, and therefore his pen was never idle. His life will be published by his son, who is collecting and arranging materials for that purpose. It is to be accompanied by his father's unpublished pieces, and a portrait of him from an excellent likeness. The latter years, and especially the last months of his existence, were marked by circumstances of peculiar interest. September 18.-Day breaks. h. m. 3 49 546 |