was customary on extraordinary occasions, an extempore piece of music: the pibroch which he now played was called, from the place where it was composed, Cillechrist, and afterwards became the pibroch of the Glengarrie family. At length the flames poured forth from every quarter of the building, the roof fell in, there was one mingled yell, one crash of ruin; the flame sunk in smouldering vapour, and all was silent. Angus had looked on with stern unrelenting determination, but the deed was done, and recollection now warned him of the danger of delay; he immediately gave orders to retreat, and leading off his men, set off with the utmost expedition for his own country. The flames of the church had, however, lighted a beacon of alarm which blazed far and wide: the Mac Kenzies had gathered in numerous bodies, and took the chase with such vigour, that they came in sight of the Mac Donells long before they got to the border of their country. Angus Mac Raonuill, seeing the determination of the pursuit, and the superiority of its numbers, ordered his men to separate, and shift each for himself: they dispersed accordingly, and made every one his way to his own home as well as he could. The commander of the Mac Kenzies did not scatter his people, but, intent on securing the leader of his foemen, held them together on the track of Angus Mac Raonuill, who with a few men in his company fled towards Loch Ness. Angus always wore a scarlet plush jacket, and it now served to mark him out to the knowledge of the pursuers. Perceiving that the whole chase was drawn after himself, he separated his followers one by one, till at length he was left alone; but yet the pursuers turned not aside upon the track of any other. When they came near the burn of Alt Shian, the leader of the Mac Kenzies had gained so much on the object of his pursuit, that he had nearly overtaken him. The river which was before them runs in this place through a rocky chasm, or trough, of immense depth, and considerable breadth: Angus knew that death was behind him, aud gathering all his strength, he dashed at the desperate leap, and being a man of singular vigour and activity, succeeded in clearing it. The leader of the Mac Kenzies, reckless of danger in the ardour of the pursuit, followed also at the leap, but, less athletic than his adversary, he failed of its length, and slipping on the side of the crag, held by the slender branch of a birch-tree which grew above him on the brink. The Mac Donell, looking back in his flight to see the success of his pursuer, beheld him hanging to the tree, and struggling to gain the edge of the bank he turned, and drawing his dirk, at one stroke severed the branch which supported the Mac Kenzie ;—“ I have left much behind me with you to-day," said he, "take that also." The wretched man, rolling from rock to rock, fell headlong into the stream below, where, shattered and mangled by the fall, he expired in the water. Angus Mac Raonuill continued his flight, and the Mac Kenzies, though bereft of their leader, held on the pursuit. Checked, however, by the stream which none of them dared to leap, Angus was gaining fast upon them, when a musquet discharged at him by one of the pursuers, wounded him severely, and greatly retarded his speed. After passing the river, the Mac Kenzies again drew hard after him, and as they came in sight of Loch Ness, Angus perceiving his strength

to fail with his wound, and his enemies pressing upon him, determined to attempt swimming the loch: he rushed into the water, and for some time, refreshed by its coolness, swam with much vigour and confidence. His limbs would, however, in all probability have failed him before he had crossed the half of the distance to the opposite bank; but Fraser of Fyars, a particular friend of the Glengarrie family, seeing a single man pursued by a party out of the Mac Kenzies' country, and knowing that the Mac Donells had gone upon an expedition in that direction, got out a boat, and hastening to the aid of Angus, took him on board, and conveyed him in safety to the east side of the loch. The Mac Kenzies, seeing their foeman had escaped, discontinued the pursuit, and Angus returned at his leisure to Glengarrie. JAN.

THE TRITON OF THE MINNOWs.

"WHY don't you strike out something new?"
Cried fair Euphemia, heavenly blue

Of eye, as well as stocking;

"If shilly-shally long you stand,

You'll feel Time's enervating hand
Your second cradle rocking."

"Ah, Madam! cease your bard to blame;
I view the pedestal of Fame,
But at its base I falter :

On every step, terrific, stand
A troop of Poets, pen in hand,
To scare me from her altar.

I first essay'd to write in prose,
Plot, humour, character disclose,

And ransack heaths and hovels :
But, when I sat me down to write,
I sigh'd to find that I had quite

O'erlook'd the Scottish Novels."
Well," cried Euphemia, with a smile,
"Miss Austin 's gone: assume her stile;
Turn playmate of Apollo-

But, hold! how heedless the remark!
Miss Austin's gone-but Mansfield Park
And Emma scorn to follow."

A bolder flight I'd fain essay,

The manners of the East pourtray,

That field is rich and spacious:

Greece, Turkey, Egypt-what a scope !
There too I'm foil'd-why will not Hope
Un-write his Anastasius?

Forestall'd in prose, I took to verse,

Note by the Editor.-For the gap that ensues, I make the writer of the stanzas himself accountable. He is a writer well and pleasantly known to the public. Obliged as I am at this instant to send a certain quantum of prose and verse to the press, I cannot discharge my duty without accepting any contribution that comes in the shape of lively verse; and the scarcity of that material is not to be appreciated by any but the editors of journals. I could not publish the omitted lines, because their author's taste has erred from the partiality of friendship; and in the hurry of the moment, I cannot change the stanzas, so as to make this omission imperceptible.

T. C.

Rogers, in calm and even sense,
Byron, in ecstasy intense,

Made my dim flame burn denser :

Shall I in Fashion's corps enlist,

A light gay epigrammatist?

No!-there I'm marr❜d by Spencer.

Thus "cribb'd and cabinn'd"—" poor indeed!"
I canter'd on my winged steed

Toward scenes of toil and tillage :

But there, alas! my weary hack

Hit on another beaten track,

Encountering Crabbe's Village.

Two pathways still to me belong,
Come, poignant Satire! amorous Song!
Beware, ye state empirics!-

Anticipated hideous bore!
I quite forgot Hibernian Moore,
His Fudges, and his Lyrics.

Great Jove! compassionate my lot!

On

-, Byron, Moore, and Scott,
Point thy celestial cannon:

Sew Crabbe and Rogers in a sack,
Tie Hope and Spencer back to back,
And souse them in the Shannon.

So shall I, with majestic tread,
My doughty predecessors dead,

Up Pindus stretch my sinews:

And leave all lesser bards behind,
"The one-ey'd monarch of the blind,"
"The Triton of the Minnows."

DIRGE FOR MUNGO PARK.

Air, "Rousseau's Dream."

HOPE no more-in peace he sleepeth—
All his pains and toils are o'er;
'Tis thine eye alone that weepeth,
His is clos'd, to ope no more.
He hath gain'd that unknown river,
He hath found a hero's grave;
There his head in peace for ever
Rests beneath the dashing wave.
We, like him, our barks are guiding
Swiftly to an unknown shore,
Here, we know, is no abiding,
There is rest for evermore.

Pilot through this mighty ocean!
Lord of earth, and air, and sea!

Thou canst still the wild wave's motion;

All our hopes are fix'd on thee.

E. T.

ON THE NOVELS OF LA FAYETTE.

MADAME LA FAYETTE is the reputed, and certainly the principal author of the " Princesse de Cleves" and " 'Zayde,"-fictitious compositions, which are justly considered to form an era in literature, and to have been the first of our modern novels. It was owing to the modesty of the fair author, that they did not appear under her name. 'Zayde" was published under that of her friend Segrais, who has yielded the merit to its right owner. "The Princess of Cleves,"" says he, in his Mémoires Anecdotes, "is by Madame La Fayette, who disdained answering the Père Bouhours' critique upon it. Zayde,' which appeared with my name, is also her's. It is true I had some part in it; but this was solely the arrangement of the romance, in which the rules of art are observed with great exactness."

Mademoiselle de la Vergne was born in 1633, of a parent noble both by birth and military achievements. Every care was bestowed on her education: Menage and Rapin were her instructors in the study of the classics, for which she retained a predilection even to her latest days; and a story is related of her early acuteness in correcting both her instructors as to the construction of a passage in some Latin author. She nevertheless seems to have been a favourite with them; and Menage has chosen his pupil for the goddess of his verse, perhaps, like many of his literary brethren, for want of a less ideal love.

She married the Conte de la Fayette, at the age of twenty-two, and was soon courted and admired in the fashionable and literary circles, which epithets were at that time synonimous. She soon became intimate with Madame de Rambouillet, and her coterie then on the decline. "Madame La F.," says a writer of that day, "a beaucoup appris de Madame R., mais elle avoit l'esprit bien plus solide." It was in this society that she formed her intimacies and friendships, particularly that with the Duc de la Rochefoucault, which connexion seems to have had great influence upon both. Throughout her writings the bold and original sentiments of her friend appear, strengthening her feminine tenderness and sensibility; and there are some sayings of her's recorded, of a spirit altogether different from her natural character, as well as that of her sex, and which are completely of the school of Rochefoucault. "C'est assez que d'être," mentioned by Segrais as an oft-repeated sentiment of her's, was evidently derived from the author of the "Maxims." Their friendship lasted till the death of the latter. "Monsieur de la Rochefoucault is dead," writes Madame de Sevigné : "Monsieur de Marsillac is afflicted beyond all description; nevertheless, my child, he will find solace in the presence of the king and the amusements of the court; but where shall Madame La Fayette find such a friend, such a companion? Where shall she seek such sweetness and agreeability, -one who will so esteem herself and her son? She is infirm, and

It was not Bouhours who wrote the criticism, but his pupil, M. de Valincourt.

confined to her chamber. M. de Rochefoucault was also fond of a sedentary life. This rendered them necessary to one another. Nothing can be compared to the confidence and the delights of their friendship."

The plot of the "Princess of Cleves" is simple, but the tale begins in a very perplexing way. All the characters are introduced to us one by one-all full-length portraits, and not a link between them; so when we do meet, and become interested with them in the novel, we are compelled to look back to the commencement, as to an index, for their character. This fault she has avoided in "Zayde," or rather over-avoided, by plunging at once too deep in medias res, and converting the principal story into a kind of episode.

The Princess of Cleves marries without a stronger sentiment for her husband than that of esteem, and afterwards meets with an object of love in the Duc de Nemours; the resisting and concealment of which passion with singular firmness and delicacy, even after the death of her husband, forms the gist of the novel. The story, though one of interest, is often made unpleasantly subordinate to the sentiment and political memoir, of which it is made the vehicle. The casuistries of love, which filled so many pages of the ancient, as well as of the heroic romances, could not be dispensed with; and was as essential to the taste of the age, as a trap-door to the followers of Mrs. Radcliffe, or fate to the German dramatists and tale-writers. The political memoir scattered through the "Princess of Cleves," though often irrelevant, is at times lively and interesting: we will make choice of the description of the state of the court of Henry the Second, as a solitary extract.

"Madame de Chartres, who had taken so much pains to inspire her daughter with virtue, did not neglect the same care in a place where it was so necessary, and where there were so many dangerous examples. Ambition and gallantry were the soul of this court, and occupied equally men and women. There were so many interests and so many different cabals, in which females always mingled, that love was confounded with business, and business with love. Neutrality or indifference was impossible; each meditated the elevation of themselves and friends, and the destruction of others. Ennui or indolence was not to be found; intrigue or pleasure filled up every moment of leisure. The ladies of the court had each their particular attachments for the Queen, for the Queen Dauphine, for the Queen of Navarre, for Madame, sister of the King, or for the Duchess of Valentinois. Those who were of an advanced age, and professed austerity of morals, attached themselves to the Queen. Those who were younger, and thought but of pleasure and gallantry, paid their court to the Queen Dauphine. The Queen of Navarre had her favourites; she was young, and had an ascendancy over the King her husband, who, by his connexion with the Constable, had acquired much importance. Madame, the King's sister, had also her followers. And the Duchess.. of Valentinois had all whom she deigned to notice, but those were few; and, except those who possessed her familiarity and confidence, she received no company, unless on those days when it was her pleasure to hold a court like the Queen.