interdict that they break out with double violence, and stop at nothing. Of all blackguards (I use the term for want of any other) a Scotch blackguard is for this reason the worst. First, the character sits ill upon him for want of use, and is sure to be most outrageously caricatured. He is only just broke loose from the shackles of regularity and restraint, and is forced to play strange antics to be convinced that they are not still clinging to his heels. Secondly, formality, hypocrisy, and a deference to opinion, are the "sins that most easily beset him." When therefore he has once made up his mind to disregard appearances, he becomes totally reckless of character, and "at one bound high overleaps all bound" of decency and common sense. Again, there is perhaps a natural hardness and want of nervous sensibility about the Scotch, which renders them (rules and the consideration of consequences apart) not very nice or scrupulous in their proceedings. If they are not withheld by conscience or prudence, they have no mauvaise honte, no involuntary qualms or trémors, to qualify their effrontery and disregard of principle. Their impudence is extreme, their malice is cold-blooded, covert, crawling, deliberate, without the frailty or excuse of passion. They club their vices and their venality together, and by the help of both together are invincible. The choice spirits who have lately figured in a much-talked-of publicaton, with "old Sylvanus at their head,"

"Leaning on cypress stadle stout,”—

in their "pious orgies" resemble a troop of Yahoos, or a herd of Satyrs

"And with their horned feet they beat the ground!"—

that is to say, the floor of Mr. Blackwood's shop! There is one other publication, a match for this in flagrant impudence and dauntless dulness, which is the John Bull. The

Editor is supposed, for the honour of Scotland, to be an Irishman. What the BEACON might have proved, there is no saying; but it would have been curious to have seen some articles of Sir Walter's undoubted hand proceeding from this quarter, as it has been always contended that Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine was too low and scurrilous a publication for him to have any share in it. The adventure of the BEACON has perhaps discovered to Sir Walter's admirers and the friends of humanity in general, that

"Entire affection scorneth nicer hands!"

Old Dr. Burney, about the middle of the last century, called one morning on Thomson, the Author of The Seasons, at a late hour, and on expressing his surprise at the poet's not having risen sooner, received for answer,-"I had no motive, young man!" A Scotchman acts always from a motive, and on due consideration; and if he does not act right or with a view to honest ends, is more dangerous than any one else. Others may plead the vices of their blood in extenuation of their errors; but a Scotchman is a machine, and should be constructed on sound moral, and philosophical principles, or should be put a stop to altogether.

[N. B. A Defence of the Scotch, shortly.}

VIRGIL'S HOSTESS.

Ir is a pity that this and other light pieces of Virgil, are omitted in the ordinary editions. A great man is worth listening to, let him say what he will; and nothing is more agreeable than his trifling. It flatters one's common humanity. It also makes us discover, that things trifling are not such trifling things, in one sense, as we took them for, To omit these little evidences of good-humour and fellowship is not only an injustice even to an epic poet, but helps to confirm a certain vulgar instinct in people, which leads them to draw a line between the sympathy with great things and the sympathy with small,to the great ultimate detriment of both. He is in the healthiest condition of humanity, and best prepared to do it good, who has all his faculties ready for all the perceptions of which it is capable; who has sense at his fingers' ends to touch and feel every possible surface of life, and understanding to judge of its nature and common rights. The greatest genius, it has been said, resembles the trunk of the elephant, which can knock down a tiger and pick up a pin. We should give small things no more value than they are worth; but the end of the very greatest things, what is it but to increase the relish of less? Great rivers send their waters into our houses by means of pipes. The mightiest legislation terminates in making us all comfortable in our every day concerns, and affording us leisure to study and be grateful to mighty things in return. The Æneid relishes

our tea-tables and our evening walks. In short, a great genius encourages us to attend to him by attending to us. It would, undoubtedly, be injurious to the common cause, if a knowledge of a great poet in his lighter moments should do away a proper sense of him in his grave ones; but this is a mistake only liable to be fallen into by those idle men of the world, who in fact really know nothing at all, great or little.

The Battle of the Frogs and Mice has not injured the fame of Homer. We do not think less of Socrates, when he uses his grandest arguments for the immortality of the soul, because he could chat pleasantly at other times. Aristophanes, "a gay fellow about town," might have pretended to do so; and the Athenians might have fancied, for a day, that they agreed with him. But they would only have loved and honoured him the more afterwards; as they did. When we see a man, capable of a good-natured levity, laying so much stress upon things grave, we feel their gravity in proportion. We think they must be interesting indeed, and highly important to all of us, or he would be content with his laughing and seek no further; which on the contrary is the very refuge or vain endeavour of despair. Levity should be the smooth and harmonious buoyancy of things solid, like the lightness of the planets in the æther. To endeavour to shew that there are no things solid, and call that levity, is the madness of Atlas attempting to disprove his burden..

But, whither are we wandering from our poet's invitation, -from mine hostess of the Tiber,-from our ancient, but at the same time young, Mrs. Quickly, when she lived two thousand years ago, and was a buxom little Syrian landlady, who kept a place of entertainment out of the gates of Rome, and danced for the amusement of her customers? There are more genealogies than are dreamt of in Rouge-Lion's philosophy, and this is one of them. Why, here is Falstaff

himself (only not witty) in the shape of a fat gentleman, an acquaintance of Virgil's, whom the commentators want to turn into his prototype Silenus. It is as palpable as Sir William Curtis, another "witless Falstaff," that he was an extremely fat gentleman from the Via Sacra, who cut heavy jokes by riding on donkies, and otherwise imitating the Silenus whom he resembled. Virgil's Hostess, in short, is a good-humoured panegyric of the poet's upon a sort of ancient White-Conduit-House or Chalk-Farm, not quite so "respectable" perhaps in one sense as those sub-urbanities of our beloved metropolis, but quite enough so for the manners of those days, and as good still as people expect in the South. The bread and wine, the gourds, the grapes, vine-leaves, and chesnuts, are the ordinary furniture of similar places of entertainment now existing in Italy; and if the hostesses are not musical or love-making by profession, they are generally amateurs, and the cause of much dancing and singing in others. We learn from ancient writers, that women of this profession were accustomed to be Syrians. They appear to have resembled the modern dancing-girls of the East. As to the opinion of some that Virgil was not the author of these verses, we do not think it worth our while to stop and consider it. The verses are good, the poet was good-natured; and that is enough for us. We shall only take this opportunity of observing, that Virgil was eminent in his private character for benignity and simplicity of manners. "Whiter souls," quoth Horace, “do not exist, than Plotius, Varius, and Virgil, nor ones with whom I feel myself more closely bound." He proceeds to tell us how delighted they all were to meet, on his journey to Brundusium; and that there is nothing equal, in his opinion, to a pleasant friend: