tell you that at once, it was the great papa of the whole world that turned the moon, -he turned every thing in a lathe of his own to answer the good purposes of his children and creatures; and we are all his children and creatures, men, women, children, horses, cows, sheep, and dogs, &c. &c.' Alathea leaps upon my knee, kisses me again and again, and, laughing in tears, cries out, O mamma! this is charming. Then papa is my brother, and you are my sister; and my grandpapa made the moon, and every thing else.""" Pages 42 and 43. This is beautifully naif and simple, and, at the same time, admirably calculated to impress the youthful mind. We can easily conceive, that any little master or miss, after read ing this passage, would next as naturally ask-" And pray, my dear papa, what turned Lord Buchan's head?" We would have wished to extend our extracts to greater length, and could have gratified our readers with numberless others equally edifying, had our limits permitted; but we must defer all further criticism till the happy period when the remaining volumes of this great work shall ap pear. In the mean time, we would refer all our readers, who desire more intimate acquaintance with his lordship's writings, to the admirable portion of it already before the public. It is to be had, we believe, at the colossal statue of Sir William Wallace, erected on the hill above Dryburgh by the patriotic earl, who, by a metamorphosis even still more strange than that of the fair Miss Porter, has converted the warrior into a bookseller, and now makes him the means of disseminating taste and learning over the land he formerly saved by his prowess. IN MY YOUNGER DAYS. MR EDITOR, "WE have heard of the golden and silver age, and have seen a little of the iron age. When I happened to make this observation (trite enough I allow), a friend of mine remarked, that in his apprehension no appellation was more appropriate to the present times than the SELFISH AGE; and truly, upon consideration, I am very much inclined to be of my friend's opinion. That the propensities of human nature, in the main, have undergone any material change in the course of the last century, I am not prepared to maintain, but it certainly appears to me, that a much more disgusting attention to self predominates at present, than existed, or at least was exhibited, forty or fifty years ago,-not only in matters directly connected with money, but in the intercourse and indulgencies of life in general, of which I shall content myself with noticing only two or three slight instances. In my younger days (pray do not write me down Laudator temporis acti) some sort of generosity was practised between man and man. In those days there actually were people who would have put themselves to some personal inconvenience to oblige a friend or neighbour, but now every thing, however trifling, proceeds by way of bargain and sale, and with a quick eye to the quid pro quo. In my younger days, any one who pretended to write gentleman after his name, would have been considered a very shabby fellow had he resorted to the present fashion of selling a terrier, a pointer, or a greyhound, to a friend who happened to want one of these animals; and then, it was more common to send a basket of fruit to a neighbour in the country, as a present, than to a fruit-shop in town for sale. But in our days of economy, the produce of the kennel, and the gardens, even to the little superfluity of flowers, seems destined to augment the family supplies in the same way with the ox-stall or the farm-yard. Indeed I understand that a well-fed puppy is reckoned a toothsome article by some people, and a sort of dainty that frequently supersedes the necessity of purveying a more costly entremet or remove-But this by the way. Under the present system, if one happen to ask a friend for leave to sport over his grounds, whether moor or dale, the request is received, and contemplated pretty much in the same manner, as if you had asked leave to kiss his wife during the honeymoon; that is to say, if he has power to grant the favour;-but it now frequently happens, that gentlemen let their game, as well as their farms, to the best bidder (by-and-by they may let their wives also), only reserving a right for the supply of their own occasions; and when such is the case, sorrow is inexpressible at not being "their able to accommodate a friend with a day's sport." This is a refuge far exceeding the hackneyed pretence of a jubilee, that father of many lies. Now, sir, this fashion of letting game would also have been reckoned a very shabby thing in my younger days. But it is quite unnecessary to multiply instances of the reigning regard to what is vulgarly called the main chance. Those I have already referred to must be obvious, and familiar to every one; and there is no person whose own experience and reflection will not furnish forth many more. From this display of economy in such matters, one would almost conclude that the same spirit pervaded the whole menage, and that our country gentlemen were wallowing in wealth, and proud in independence, at least that they were enabled to live with greater comfort at home, and to appear with more splendour abroad, than it was in the power of their progenitors to enjoy and exhibit in my younger days. I am much afraid, however, that any one venturing on such a conclusion, would find that he had reckoned without his host, and that there is neither so much real comfort within doors, nor so much dignity displayed without, as in the days that have gone by. Then, when one went to visit a friend in the country, although the courses at dinner were not so numerous, yet the fare was equally abundant, and to the full as savoury; and although there was not the same endless, and I must say teazing, variety of shilpit wines produced, a good many more bottles of substantial claret were put upon the table, fully atoning for the absence of their more feckless and fashionable brethren. Then, gentlemen of two thousand a-year drove four good cattle in their carriage, attended by a brace of outriders" armed for war complete ;" but now very few commoners in Scotland drive more than a pair of horses, and the poor animals are so loaded with dickies before, and barouche-seats behind the vehicle, that it looks more like a first rate Newcastle waggon than a gentleman's equipage. I actually saw a baronet of my acquaintance get under way at Cheltenham, for his seat in the north of Scotland, with a cargo of thirteen souls stowed away in, and on, his coach, viz. Yet, Mr Editor, these wonderful efforts of, or rather at, economy, seem to answer no proportionate end. In my younger days, country gentlemen, with few exceptions, made a shift to continue in the management of their own affairs during life; but now the prevailing fashion, or rather passion, is to get TRUSTEED with all possible expedition;—a landlord, whose estate is not at nurse, is as great a show as a live author was in my younger days, previous to our being afflicted with the writing typhus; and a country gentleman selects for the nonce a few of his friends, assisted by the disinterested labours of a city and a country-writer, who underlie all the trouble of managing his affairs at an expense not much exceeding that of a stud of running horses, and a crack pack of fox-hounds. From this arrangement, one evident advantage results, viz. that the trusteed, from employing these legal characters, these aucupii, secures all the pleasure, as well as the profit, arising from the sport, entirely to himself-no mean consideration in this selfish age. 66 In my humble opinion, six or seven years may be considered a reasonable allowance of time for a man of middling fortune to outrun the constable;" but a man of very large estate will probably accomplish the object much sooner, especially if the lady of the mansion be a woman of business, who starts at six o'clock in the morning, and piques herself on being a notable. In that case I have known the object very decently achieved in about half the time. It invariably happens, that the progress of incumbrance, as observed above, advances with increased rapidity in proportion to the largeness of the estate, a circumstance doubtless arising from the proprietor being sensible of the necessity of using despatch, when so great a mass of business lies before him; and if his pecuniary difficulties happened to be great, previous to his succession, the greater seems to be the impulse to hasten the return of similar embarrassments,-a prepossession for which I confess myself unable to account satisfactorily, unless by admitting the force of habit, which we all know" is prodigious and unaccountable." Should you, Mr Editor, consider this sketch worthy of appearing in print, it may, however slight, afford a cud for rumination to some of your readers, and may perhaps induce me, in a future Number, to consider, a little more at large, a subject which I have only touched SKIN DEEP. Of all the manias of this mad age, the most incurable, as well as the most common, seems to be no other than the Metromanie. The just celebrity of Robert Burns and Miss Baillie has had the melancholy effect of turning the heads of we know not how many farm-servants and unmarried ladies; our very footmen compose tragedies, and there is scarcely a superannuated governess in the island that does not leave a roll of lyrics behind her in her band-box. To witness the disease of any human understanding, however feeble, is distressing; but the spectacle of an able mind reduced to a state of insanity is of course ten times more afflicting. It is with such sorrow as this that we have contemplated the case of Mr John Keats. This young man appears to have received from nature talents of an excellent, perhaps even of a superior order-talents which, devoted to the purposes of any useful profession, must have rendered him a respectable, if not an eminent citizen. His friends, we understand, destined him to the career of medicine, and he was bound apprentice some years ago to a worthy apothecary in town. But all has been undone by a sudden attack of the malady to which we have alluded. Whether Mr John had been sent home with a diuretic or composVOL. III. ing draught to some patient far gone in the poetical mania, we have not heard. This much is certain, that he has caught the infection, and that thoroughly. For some time we were in hopes, that he might get off with a violent fit or two; but of late the symptoms are terrible. The phrenzy of the "Poems" was bad enough in its way; but it did not alarm us half so seriously as the calm, settled, imperturbable drivelling idiocy of "Endymion." We hope, however, that in so young a person, and with a constitution originally so good, even now the disease is not utterly incurable. Time, firm treatment, and rational restraint, do much for many apparently hopeless invalids; and if Mr Keats should happen, at some interval of reason, to cast his eye upon our pages, he may perhaps be convinced of the existence of his malady, which, in such cases, is often all that is necessary to put the patient in a fair way of being cured. The readers of the Examiner newspaper were informed, some time ago, by a solemn paragraph, in Mr Hunt's best style, of the appearance of two new stars of glorious magnitude and splendour in the poetical horizon of the land of Cockaigne. One of these turned out, by and by, to be no other than Mr John Keats. This precocious adulation confirmed the wavering apprentice in his desire to quit the gallipots, and at the same time excited in his too susceptible mind a fatal admiration for the character and talents of the most worthless and affected of all the versifiers of our time. One of his first productions was the following sonnet," written on the day when Mr Leigh Hunt left prison." It will be recollected, that the cause of Hunt's confinement was a series of libels against his sovereign, and that its fruit was the odious and incestuous Story of Rimini." "What though, for shewing truth to flat- Kind Hunt was shut in prison, yet has he, did see, Till, so unwilling, thou unturn'dst the key? Ah, no! far happier, nobler was his fate! In Spenser's halls! he strayed, and bowers fair, Culling enchanted flowers; and he flew 3 U With daring Milton! through the fields of air; When thou art dead, and all thy wretch- The absurdity of the thought in this sonnet is, however, if possible, surpassed in another, "addressed to Haydon" the painter, that clever, but most affected artist, who as little resembles Raphael in genius as he does in person, notwithstanding the foppery of having his hair curled over his shoulders in the old Italian fashion. In this exquisite piece it will be observed, He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake, The social smile, the chain for Freedom's sake: And lo!-whose stedfastness would never A meaner sound than Raphael's whispering. Upon the forehead of the age to come; a glorious denizen of the wide heaven "Why so sad a moan? "O for ten years, that I may overwhelm To woo sweet kisses from averted faces,—— ders white Into a pretty shrinking with a bite mon; Till in the bosom of a leafy world We rest in silence, like two gems upcurl'd In the recesses of a pearly shell." Having cooled a little from this "fine passion," our youthful poet passes very naturally into a long strain of foaming abuse against a certain class of English Poets, whom, with Pope at their head, it is much the fashion with the ignorant unsettled pretenders of the present time to undervalue. Begging these gentlemens' pardon, although Pope was not a poet of the same high order with some who are now living, yet, to deny his genius, is just about as absurd as to dispute that of Wordsworth, or to believe in that of Hunt. Above all things, it is most pitiably ridiculous to hear men, of whom their country will always have reason to be proud, reviled by uneducated and flimsy striplings, who are not capable of understanding either their merits, "not yet or those of any other men of power Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb. The nations are to listen and be dumb! and why, good Johnny Keats? be cause Leigh Hunt is editor of the Examiner, and Haydon has painted the judgment of Solomon, and you and Cornelius Webb, and a few more city sparks, are pleased to look upon yourselves as so many future Shakspeares and Miltons! The world has really some reason to look to its foundations! Here is a tempestas in matula with a vengeance. At the period when these sonnets were published, Mr Keats had no hesitation in saying, that he looked on himself as fanciful dreaming tea-drinkers, who, without logic enough to analyse a single idea, or imagination enough to form one original image, or learning enough to distinguish between the written language of Englishmen and the spoken jargon of Cockneys, presume to talk with contempt of some of the most exquisite spirits the world ever produced, merely because they did not happen to exert their faculties in laborious affected descriptions of flowers seen in window-pots, or cascades heard at Vauxhall; in short, because they chose to be wits, philosophers, patriots, and poets, rather than to found the Cockney school of versification, morality, and politics, a century before its time. After blaspheming himself into a fury against Boileau, &c. Mr Keats comforts himself and his readers with a view of the present more promising aspect of affairs; above all, with the ripened glories of the poet of Rimini. Addressing the manes of the departed chiefs of English poetry, he informs them, in the following clear and touching manner, of the existence of "him of the Rose," &c. "From a thick brake, "Yet I rejoice: a myrtle fairer than screen, Creep through the shade with jaunty flut- Nibble the little cupped flowers and sing. Yeaned in after times, when we are flown, Between two hills. All hail delightful hopes! Ere the dread thunderbolt could reach ? If I do hide myself, it sure shall be From some verses addressed to va rious amiable individuals of the other Who will dispute that our poet, to So much for the opening bud; now |