sometimes quicker,—but always onward. It may be compared to one of those Alpine rivers, which, notwithstanding the strength and force of the current, may, for a time, be dammed up by the fallen avalanche, and thrown backwards by the magnitude of the apparently insurmountable obstacle, but which only recoils to accumulate greater power for the struggle, and is certain, at last, to burst through the opposing barrier with irresistible fury, scattering, in the first wild rush, terrible evidences of its power.

Nothing is more common among a certain class of sophists than to declaim about the horrors of the French Revolution, and the suffering and misery which attended its march. But persons shut their eyes to the obvious truth, that the wounds it inflicted were temporary, while the benefits it conferred must, from their very nature, be permanent. Pandemonium itself can disgorge nothing more odious or more horrible than the crimes of terrorists. But what then? These fanatical fiends, by their terrific and sanguinary energy, saved France, just as Palafox, or those under him, defended Zaragoza; and not a scar of a wound they inflicted is now discoverable on the fair face of society in France. The military despotism of Napoleon, his exhausting conscriptions, his endless wars, and his bloody battles, were dreadful evils, and no friend of humanity can contemplate such waste of life and living energy, without a shudder. But, again we say, what then? The blanks in the population have long since been filled up; the evil has been repaired and forgotten; while the good which that wonderful man performed, the monuments which he raised, the glory which he won, and the impulse which he gave to all the productive energies of France, remain as a permanent inheritance to that country. Posterity will judge more impartially than we can be supposed yet qualified to do, and strike the balance with a juster hand. One consoling reflection, however, arises from the survey of these disastrous events, and that is, that the onward course of the human mind was never for one instant altogether arrested. The crimes committed in the name of liberty, indeed, shook the wavering faith of some, abated the enthusiasm of others, and forced all, for a time, to pause; while the enemies of freedom greedily seized the opportunity to calumniate that which they hated, by representing the most frightful abuse and prostitution of the name, as its natural and necessary fruits, and thence seeking a pretext for riveting more firmly the fetters of despotism. In the first burst of surprise, astonishment, and sorrow, these men were believed and trusted; but the hollowness of their designs soon awakened reflection and stimulated inquiry. The mind soon recovered its tone and liberty. Liberty again appeared lovely as ever, despotism tenfold more hateful and hideous. But a severe course of experience engendered prudence and watchfulness. Men moderated their ardour in order to nurse their affection. The omnipotence of opinion was revealed, and to that all trusted.

To the execrable Castlereagh policy of England it was owing that the old Bourbon incubus was saddled upon France. He died, however, by his own hand, and with him perished the system which had outlived the natural period of its demise—the system of Pitt, which had entailed upon Europe five-and-twenty years of war, upon England eight hundred millions of debt, and ended in the restoration of a superannuated dynasty, and the formation of the Holy Alliance, or, in other words, in a grand confederacy of sovereigns against the liberty of nations. We still groan and sweat under the weary load of this frightful legacy. But

happily, its pressure forced men to open their eyes to the true nature of that detestable policy, which had laid it on the shoulders of the nation. Public opinion became more concentrated and more powerful. Peace abroad, retrenchment at home, the reform of all administrative abuses, and the extension as well as purification of our institutions, began to be loudly demanded. Green-bags and gagging-bills had been tried, and tried in vain. Nothing could resist the onward march of the spirit which had been awakened in the great mass of the people. Concessions could no longer be withheld. Under the compulsion of the power which now acted upon the government, its policy became insensibly liberalized. The Holy Alliance received its death-blow in England, though not until it had blasted, by its wavering influence, the nascent germs of liberty in Spain, in Naples, in Piedmont, and in Italy. Greece, glorious Greece, cast off the slough which for ages had deformed the fair face of that classic land, and appeared, fresh and vigorous, in the young beauty of independence. Even Turkey became the theatre of change, and Sultan Mahmoud an energetic and fearless reformer. The old Bourbon dynasty still endured in France; but its days were numbered-the prophetic anticipation of Napoleon was about to be realized. A man, Polignac, whom adversity had failed to teach wisdom, and who, cursed with the blindness of infatuation, thought himself secure, while seated as it were on a loaded mine :—this man fired the train, and the terrific explosion instantly followed.

The Revolution of the Three Days-who can name it without inward glorying and exultation ?—achieved by the most heroic valour, unstained by a single crime, furnished an example, as well as a stimulus to opinion, throughout all Europe. Belgium and Poland, with opposite fates, followed the one; while in every civilized nation the force of the other was deeply felt, and soon visible in the demand for reform and regeneration. What has taken place in our own all know; what events we are yet destined to witness Heaven alone can tell. We hope the best; we have confidence in our present rulers, because their being, as such, is identified with the success of that measure which the country, the country at large, has so loudly approved. They must stand or fall with the cause of the people. But the House of Peers!" Ay, there's the rub."—will they adventure still to resist the united wishes of the King, the Commons, and the people of Great Britain and Ireland? Will they force the Sybil to scatter her last leaves to the wind? Will they rush madly in where even angels would fear to tread? Will they dare the wrath of a mighty empire, that rottenness and corruption may still be their portion? Will they compel us to act upon the conviction, daily becoming more general, that we could do very well without the Lords? Above all, will they not, by an act of constitutional energy, be saved "while it is called to-day" from the fate which their own folly would prepare for themselves? Time alone can resolve these mysteries; and as the interval must be brief, we wait with anxiety, but without fear. Meanwhile, Poland-heroic Poland!—has fallen, but not fallen in vain. No "pitying friend" stretched out a hand to help her; no "generous foe" is that which, by impelling its irresistible masses of disciplined barbarism, triumphed in the struggle. But the blood of her brave defenders has not been bootlessly shed. It cries from the earth for vengeance; and its cry will one day be heard. Renovated France and reformed Britain will not always lend a deaf ear to the supplications of men who have shewn that they deserve liberty by consenting to pay

such a price for even a faint chance of obtaining it. We are upon the confines of a new era. "A change has come over the spirit of the time; mighty questions have been stirred; deep interests have been created; vast masses of men, formerly inert and passive, have suddenly begun to heave to and fro with the force of a newly-inspired animation; old things are passing away; all things are becoming new." Meanwhile, let the word be," Fraternization among Freemen all over the World!"

THE PECHLER.

Ir is long since the natural history of such creatures as the lion, the horse, and the elephant, was perfectly ascertained and understood. Every body now knows every thing that can be known about such honest, downright, plain-sailing animals; and zoophytes are all the rage. It would be quite in vain that you busied yourself in the East Indies in the amiable task of catching and stuffing tigers, in order that you might send them home to the Museum of the Edinburgh University, or that of the Wernerian Society. I verily believe that Professor Jameson and Mr. Patrick Neill would not thank you for a shipload of such intelligible stuffery. But mark the eyes of a naturalist when you tell him of some new marine creature, half vegetable half animal, which springs up in the shape of a tumbler, with something like an umbrella and stalk in the middle, and perhaps fixes itself to the ground by a few dozen legs, each with fifteen eyes in a row along the side, like the buttons of a pair of spatterdashes. The man's face kindles at the description, like a coal under a pair of bellows; and, if you can be so patriotic as to transfer the specimen to Canonmills Loch, there to flourish in immortal youth for the benefit of all whom it may concern, why you will find yourself next week with as many initial letters tagged to your name as might qualify you for becoming editor of an encyclopedia.

In the same way as regular proper birds and beasts have now ceased to possess any interest, so have the ordinary characters of society fallen into a kind of contempt in our literature. It was very well for Homer to describe heroes like Achilles and Agamemnon; and for the Spectator to talk of such men as Will Honeycomb or Sir Roger de Coverley. These personages were like the horse and the lion in the infancy of natural history. But any thing like a full-grown, healthy, natural man is now of no use. Every body knew all about him ages ago. If you want proper subjects for the moral museum, you must poke into the holes and corners of human nature, you must dive far beneath the surface, and "pluck up drowned horrors by the locks." In short, it will not do nowadays to describe any thing but nondescripts.

Acting under this impression, I take leave to introduce the genus Pechler to the notice of the world,—a creature who, neither in town nor country, is any thing very decidedly, but yet may be described, I doubt not, in such terms as to awaken a full recollection of him in the mind of every reader.

The Pechler is a character in humble life, who assumes no distinct profession, but contrives to live a curious, irregular life by means of all kinds of out-of-the-way bargainings, and contracts for work; his habits being generally in a considerable degree determined by the accident of

his living in a city or in the country. Burns alluded to the rural class of Pechlers, when, in speaking of his own youthful prospects, he says, that he saw only two modes of bettering his circumstances; first, that of rigid economy, and, second, that of bargain-making. Holy Willie was a Pechler; and, if I am not mistaken, the "bletherin bitch,' "* another of

his heroes, survives a Pechler to this day. The Pechler is usually a short, active-looking man, with coarse grey stockings, corduroy breeches, and a seven-days beard.. His neckcloth is one hard roll of red or blue cotton, enclosing a collar, which, evidently, has never yet been made acquainted with the mysterious process invented by Brummell. His watch is a little spherical silver one, with Roman numerals; its chain is steel, and consists of a series or congeries of chains, interrupted every two or three inches by little flat plates, and garnished at the end with an oldfashioned pebble seal, a George-the-Second sixpence, a small Indian shell, and a key formed on three angles, like the human figure when sitting. The town-pechler lives about such places as the Cowfeeder Row —the back of the Canongate—and a certain terra Australis incognita, which bears, I believe, the name of the Causeway-side. He has generally a concern in some grass park in the neighbourhood, where he keeps a cow or horse when he happens to buy one. He is always a married man, with a vast number of children, whom he is rigorous in setting to work as soon almost as they are able to walk. Though invariably rather wealthy than otherwise, he is a great economist in his household. He buys the most of his provisions in a growing or living state. In June, you find him attending a sale of standing grain, where, if he does not bid largely in a wholesale capacity, he at least purchases an acre or two for his own meal. This is reaped by his own children—put into sheaves by himself, (for he is a capital bandster)—threshed also by himself— ground at a mill in which he has some concern, and brought home by his own horse and cart. In October you see him attending a sale of growing potatoes,-perhaps he buys a whole field on speculation,-possibly only an acre for his family. At the very worst, he sees how potatoes are going,-enjoys the honour of having his advice asked by the less experienced, and partakes, however fruitlessly, of the bottle which has been paraded for the purpose of encouraging the sale. The Pechler frequents all kinds of markets. At Dalkeith he goes from sack to sack as a bee does from flower to flower. He dives his hand deep into every bag, feels the meal with a knowing air between his finger and thumb,tastes it with an air still more knowing; and, after asking the price, remarks, if he does not mean to buy, that it is "a good meal." He has all the technical abbreviated language of markets at his finger-ends. "What's barley?" Six-and-thirty.' "How's lead?" "Heavy."Poultry looking up," and "pigs looking down." When he has made

* The person here alluded to is the subject of an epitaph as follows :—

Beneath thir stanes lie Jamie's banes;

O, Death, it's my opinion,

Ye ne'er took sic a bletherin bitch
Into your dark dominion.

Not long ago an admirer of Burns, visiting Mauchline, had the subject of this jest pointed out to him in the street—a poor old broken-down man, the ruins of a Pechler. "Are ye the bletherin bitch ?" inquired the stranger, at the same time putting his hand into his pocket for money. "Oo, 'deed ay, sir," answered the immortalized wretch, his eye keenly watching the pocket of his intending benefactor, "I'm the bletherin bitch." The man had evidently come to feel the burlesque of Burns as an honour, and one of a profitable kind.

a purchase, he pays it either in notes drawn from a huge worn pocketbook, which seems almost in itself a bank, or by what he calls “ check on Sir Willie."*

a bit

In his capacity of corn-factor upon a small scale, the Pechler is a great adept in all matters connected with farm produce, and whatever may increase or depress its value. Not a cloud can cross the horizon, but he knows what effect it is to have next Friday at Haddington. He will, by a mysterious algebra peculiar to himself, weigh off the depth of water at the observatory, or, what is more in his way, the pools which he finds in the morning before his door, against the scale of prices at Dalkeith, and you would be astonished at the accuracy of the calculation. I once came upon a Pechler in the course of a country walk. He was leaning over the gate of a barley field; and, if he had not borne all the external marks of a declared and licensed Pechler, I could have known him by the considerate calculating air with which he marked the rising braird. I entered into conversation with him, and remarked that that was a fine field of barley. "Yes," he said drily, "it's gude beare; but, man, ye dinna ken hoo it is gude." The Pechler, I saw, approved of the grain, by virtue of his intimate and actual acquaintance with the subject: he knew it to be good, perhaps, from his certainty as to the goodness of the soil, the sufficiency of the manure, the excellent labour which had been bestowed upon it, besides a minute examination of all the outward symptoms. But he saw, from my city aspect, that I only thought it good, because the field bore a verdant appearance. He thought me, in short, as green as the barley; and his conscious skill could not respond even to my humble remark, without letting me see that he did so upon different and deeper principles. "Yes-it's gude beare; but, man, ye dinna ken hoo it is gude!" The Director-General of the fine arts could not have more expressively marked his contempt for some raw exclamation about a picture,—such as " How pretty!" Verily, thought I, there is no department of knowledge without its pride of skill.

But the Pechler is a person of multiform appearance, and endless varieties of employment. Sometimes he steps into a place where turnpikes are rouping; and, if the thought strikes him, he will take a few tolls, into which, next week, he has planted off almost all the grown up members of his family. You have perhaps left off acquaintance with a particular Pechler, as contractor for building a dyke near your residence in the country; and, the next time you see him, he is ascending from a hole in the street, literally a man of straw, being busied in forming a new drain. Some days afterwards, when you are in quest of a house against next Whitsuntide, you find yourself waited upon by this identical Pechler, as an emissary of the landlord. It is a great employment of the Pechler to let houses. This is just one of those irregular kinds of business which the city Pechler rejoices in. He is indeed so fond of it, that he often sinks his own gains in house property. You find him at a sale of what are called "old materials," namely, the stone and wood-work of a house about to be taken down, to admit, perhaps, of some public work. He is flying along crazy joists, while pulverised lime wraps him all around, the very demon of dust! He buys the whole for a few pounds, and, some weeks after, a house perhaps occupied in former times by "lords and ladies gay," rises in a new shape in the

*It is necessary to explain to the southern reader that Sir William Forbes and Co. were, for a long time, the bankers in highest consideration in Scotland, especially among the rural classes.