was never in the least impatient to speak, and spoke at all times without any tone of authority; while, so far from wishing to set off what he had to say by any brilliancy or emphasis of expression, it seemed generally as if he had tried to disguise the weight and originality of his thoughts under the plainest form of speech, and the most quiet and indifferent manner; so that the profoundest remarks and subtlest observations were often dropped, not only without any solicitude that their value should be observed, but without any apparent consciousness that they possessed any.

Though the most social of human beings, and the most disposed to encourage and sympathize with the gayety of others, his own spirits were in general rather cheerful than gay, or at least never rose to any turbulence or tumult of merriment: and while he would listen with the kindest indulgence to the more extravagant sallies of his younger friends, and prompt them by the heartiest approbation, his own satisfaction might generally be traced in a slow and temperate smile, gradually mantling over his benevolent and intelligent features, and lighting up the countenance of the sage with the expression of the mildest and most gentle philanthropy.

It was wonderful, indeed, considering the measure of his own intellect, and the rigid and undeviating propriety of his own conduct, how tolerant he was of the errours and defects of other men.. He was too indulgent, in truth, and favoura

ble to his friends-and made a kind and liberal allowance for the faults of all mankind—except only faults of baseness or of cruelty-against which he never failed to manifest the most open scorn and detestation. Independent, in short, of his high attainments, Mr. Playfair was one of the most amiable and estimable of men. Delightful in his manners--inflexible in his principles and generous in his affections, he had all that could charm in society, or attach in private and while his friends enjoyed the free and unstudied conversation of an easy and intelligent associate, they had at all times the proud and inward assurance that he was a being upon whose perfect honour and generosity they might rely with the most implicit confidence, in life and in death,—and of whom it was equally impossible, that, under any circumstances, he should ever perform a mean, a selfish, or a questionable action, as that his body should cease to gravitate, or his soul to live!

&

If we do not, greatly deceive curselves, there is nothing

here of exaggeration or private feeling and nothing with which an indifferent and honest chronicler would not concur. Nor is it altogether idle to have dwelt so long on the personal character of this distinguished individual; for we are ourselves persuaded, that this personal character has almost done as much for the cause of science and philosophy among us, as the great talents and attainments with which it was combined and has contributed, in a very eminent degree, to give to the better society in which he moved, that tone of intelligence and liberality by which it is honourably distinguished.

It is not a little advantageous to philosophy that it is in fashion-and it is still more advantageous, perhaps, to the society which is led to confer on it this apparently trivial distinction. It is a great thing for the country at large-for its happiness, its prosperity, and its renown-that the upper and influencing part of its population should be made familiar, even in its untasked and social hours, with sound and libe ral information, and be taught to respect those who have distinguished themselves by intellectual attainments. Nor is it, after all, a slight or despicable reward for a man of genius to be received with honour in the highest and most elegant society around him, and to receive in his living person that homage and applause which is too often reserved for his memory.

LESSON CLXXII.

The Winter Night.-BURNS.

Now Phoebe, in her midnight reign,
Dark muffled, viewed the dreary plain;
While crowding thoughts, a pensive train,
Rose in my soul,

When on my car this plaintive strain
Slow, solemn, stole.

"Blow, blow, ye winds, with heavier gust!-
And freeze, thou bitter, biting frost!
Descend, ye chilly, smothering snows!
Not all your rage, as now united, shows
More hard unkindness, unrelenting,
Vengeful malice unrepenting,

Than heaven-illumined man on brother man bestows!

See stern Oppression's iron grip,
Or mad Ambition's gory hand,
Sending, like blood-hounds from the slip,
Wo, Want, and Murder o'er a land!

Even in the peaceful rural vale,
Truth, weeping, tells the mournful tale,
How pampered Luxury,-Flattery by her side,
The parasite empoisoning her ear,
With all the servile, wretches in the rear,
Looks o'er proud property, extended wide,
And eyes the simple rustick hind,
Whose toil upholds the glittering show,
A creature of another kind,

Some coarser substance, unrefined,

Placed for her lordly use thus far, thus vile, below.

Where, where is Love's fond, tender throe,
With lordly Honour's lofty brow,

The powers you proudly own?

Is there, beneath Love's noble name,

Can harbour, dark, the selfish aim,
To bless himself alone?

*

O ye! who, sunk in beds of down,
Feel not a want but what yourselves create,
Think, for a moment on his wretched fate

Whom friends and fortune quite disown! Ill satisfied keen nature's clamorous call,

Stretched on his straw he lays himself to sleep, While, through the ragged roof and chinky wall, Chill, o'er his slumbers, piles the drifty heap:

Think on the dungeon's grim confine,
Where guilt and poor misfortune pine!
Guilt, erring man, relenting view!
But shall thy legal rage pursue
The wretch, already crushed low
By cruel fortune's undeserved blow?
Affliction's sons are brothers in distress,
A brother to relieve how exquisite the bliss!"

I heard no more; for Chanticleer
Shook off the powdery snow,

And hailed the morning with a cheer,
A cottage-rousing crow.

10w]

thed

may

But deep this truth impressed my
Through all his works abroad,
The heart benevolent and kind
The most resembles God.

mind

LESSON CLXXIII.

The American Eagle.-NEAL.

THERE'S a fierce gray BIRD, with a bending beak,
With an angry eye, and a startling shriek,
That nurses her brood where the cliff-flowers blow,
On the precipice-top, in perpetual snow;
That sits where the air is shrill and bleak,
On the splintered point of a shivered peak,
Bald-headed and stripped,-like a vulture torn
In wind and strife-her feathers worn,
And ruffled and stained, while loose and bright

Round her serpent-neck, that is writhing and bare,
Is a crimson collar of gleaming hair,
Like the crest of a warriour, thinned in fight,
And shorn, and bristling:-See her! where
She sits, in the glow of the sun-bright air,
With wing half poised, and talons bleeding,
And kindling eye, as if her prey
Had suddenly been snatched away,
While she was tearing it and feeding.-
Above the dark torrent, above the bright stream
The voice may be heard
Of the thunderer's bird

Calling out to her god in a clear, wild scream,
As she mounts to his throne, and unfolds in his beam;
While her young are laid out in his rich, red blaze,
And their winglets are fledged in his hottest rays.

Proud Bird of the cliff! where the barren yew springs,
Where the sunshine stays, and the wind-harp sings,
She sits, unapproachable, pluming her wings.-
She screams! She's away!-over hill top and flood,
Over valley and rock, over mountain and wood,
That Bird is abroad in the van of her brood!

'Tis the Bird of our banner, the free bird that braves When the battle is there, all the wrath of the waves:

That dips her pinions in the sun's first gush;
Drinks his meridian blaze, his farewell flush;
Sits amid stirring stars, and bends her beak,
Like the slipped falcon, when her piercing shriek
Tells that she stoops upon her cleaving wing,
To drink at some new victim's clear, red spring.
That monarch Bird! she slumbers in the night
Upon the lofty air-peak's utmost height;
Or sleeps upon the wing, amid the ray
Of steady, cloudless, everlasting day :-
Rides with the Thunderer in his blazing march,
And bears his lightnings o'er yon boundless arch;
Soars wheeling through the storm, and screams away,
Where the young pinions of the morning play;
Broods with her arrows in the hurricane;
Bears her green laurel o'er the starry plain,
And sails around the skies, and o'er the rolling deeps,
With still unwearied wing, and eye that never sleeps.

LESSON CLXXIV.

Reply of Rob Roy Mac Gregor to Mr. Osbaldistone.-ROB ROY.

You speak like a boy-like a boy, who thinks the old gnarled oak can be twisted as easily as the young sap. ling. Can I forget that I have been branded as an outlaw, stigmatized as a traitor, a price set on my head as if I had been a wolf, my family treated as the dam and cubs of the hill-fox, whom all may torment, vilify, degrade, and insult;

-the very name which came to me from a long and noble line of martial ancestors, denounced, as if it were a spell to conjure up the devil with ?

And they shall find that the name they have dared to proscribe that the name of Mac Gregor is a spell to raise the wild devil withal. They shall hear of my vengeance, that would scorn to listen to the story of my wrongs.-The miserable Highland drover, bankrupt, barefooted, stripped of all, dishonoured and hunted down, because the avarice of others grasped at more than that poor all could pay, shall burst on them in an awful change. They that scoffed at the grovelling worm, and trod upon him, may cry and howl when they see the stoop of the flying and fiery-mouthed dragon. But why do I speak of all this?-only ye may