from attempting any more of this Turkish crambo. We shall therefore conclude with specimens of a billet and its probable answer as follows:A fig, some plaited straws, a branch of cypress, a lock of hair, a rose, a pear, a piece of myrtle, all bound with an Aurora coloured ribbon, might be read thus, "Your chains fetter me, I am your slave, I adore you, Oh relieve me, Your love consumes me, Give me hope, Heaven grant you to me, or take my life which is a burden to me."

If the lady to whom such a billet is addressed be cruel, she will answer it by sending a carrot, a lock of hair, a bottle, a bean, and some silk; which would signify, "It is not so easy to give one's heart,-Get hence, wretch,-I shall not listen to you, but smile as you die,-Let me never see you more.

A kind answer might be conveyed by a violet tied with a bit of wire to ahyacinth and some jasmin. "We are of the same stature,-come this evening and we will complain of fate with the bulbul,-Love me well, my love will equal your's."

GREAT SEA SNAKE.

EVER since the publication of the History of Norway, by the laborious and generally accurate Bishop of Bergen, naturalists have been divided in opinion concerning the reality of the existence of a marine animal, in shape resembling a snake, and in length equalling, if not surpassing, the largest whale. The details given by Pontoppidan are circumstantial, and evidently delivered with perfect sincerity; so that every candid reader must be convinced, that they had some foundation in fact. Perhaps the ridiculous fables so long circulated about the enormous kraken, moving about like a floating island in the ocean, have greatly tended to throw discredit on more reasonable and better founded statements. It is likewise true, that the accounts of such animals reported by remote fishermen, and by sea-faring people in general, should be received with due caution. They have not been in the habit of describing objects of natural history; and at the moment of their witnessing the appearance of the living monster of the ocean, their minds must have been filled with wonder, and greatly

VOL. II.

incapacitated for estimating the size, or marking the precise shape or motions of the animal. Their declarations, therefore, though made in perfect good faith, may convey no clear idea of what they really saw.

It is to be expected, however, that the question will in a few years be put to rest; the attention of naturalists, both in the Old and New World, having of late been called to the subject, by the appearance of vast sea snakes in the seas of both hemispheres.

In October 1808, an extraordinary animal, 55 feet in length, was cast ashore on the island of Stronsa, one of the Orkneys. Before it could be examined by any naturalist, it was unfortunately broken to pieces by the violence of the surge. But the declarations of a number of persons were taken before a magistrate in Kirkwall, and transmitted to Edinburgh. These have been printed; the Wernerian Natural History Society having thought it proper to preserve them as documents in their Memoirs. * From examining a few of the vertebra which were sent to London, and from considering the descriptions given, Sir Everard Home did not hesitate to pronounce the animal to be a Squalus maximus, and to publish a figure of a great shark by way of illustration. † A very cautious observer and distinguished anatomist, Dr Barclay of this place, from the examination of other vertebræ, and also of other parts of the same animal, transmitted to the Wernerian Society by Mr Urquhart, advocate, drew very different conclusions; and particularly shewed, that the animal could not be a Squalus maximus. To mention only one instance of discrepancy; the head of Sir Everard Home's Squalus measured in length five feet and a half; that of the Stronsa animal only one foot : in width likewise, the head of the squalus measured five feet; that of the Stronsa animal only seven inches! It was, however, admitted by the Edinburgh naturalists, that, owing to the ruin of the specimen, there did not remain sufficient evidence for asserting, that the Orkney animal belonged to an absolutely new and nondescript genus, and far less did there

Vol. I. p. 431-440. Phil. Trans. 1809.

E

remain sufficient data for fixing a new generic character.

It may here be noticed, that a wellinformed clergyman of the church of Scotland, the Reverend Donald Maclean, minister of Small Isles, communicated to the Wernerian Society a very distinct account of a remarkable and unknown marine animal, which he, and some companions, had seen off the island of Coll, one of the Hebrides, in the month of June of the same year. This animal was observed, about the same time, by the crews of thirteen different fishingboats on that coast. Mr Maclean's description agrees very closely with several of the accounts given by Pontoppidan of the sea-snake of Norway; and he particularly states, that its progressive motion was rapid, and appeared to depend on an undulatory movement up and down. Its length he estimated at 70 or 80 feet. It seems, at least, not an improbable conjecture, that this might be the same animal which was wrecked on the rocks of Stronsa, in the month of October following.

We have now to mention, that there has lately been published at Boston in America, the Report of a Committee of the Linnean Society of New England, relative to a large marine animal, shaped like a serpent, repeatedly seen near Cape Ann, Massachusets, in August last (1817). Like the animal of Coll, it is described as moving with wonderful rapidity through the water, by means of a vertical undulatory motion, so that its vast body had the appearance of a number of buoys or casks following each other in a line. The committee applied for information to Mr Lonson Nash, chief magistrate of Gloucester, near Cape Ann; and this gentleman seems to have shewn not only great alacrity, but great caution and judgment, in making the necessary investigation. Besides, he himself saw the animal for some time, at the distance of about 250 yards.

The witnesses, as might be expected, vary considerably in their estimates of the length of the snake; some making it 50 or 60, and others 70 or 80 feet long. They agree in saying that it swam with great velocity; at the rate, perhaps, of

* Memoirs of Wernerian Society, Vol. 7. p. 442.

a mile in three minutes, which is much faster than any kind of whale or shark is known to go. It occasionally raised its head above the water; and occasionally it wholly disappeared below the surface; but its progress was easily traced, by the remarkable wake which it left in the water, and which was nearly half a mile long. One witness describes the head as being larger than any dog's; another, as being nearly as big as a horse's, and in shape resembling that of the rattlesnake. There seemed to be a kind of protuberance above each eye. When the animal carried its head above water, it moved it gently from side to side; and it frequently threw out its tongue, and drew it in again. The body appeared to be round, and of the thickness of a half barrel." The back was of a brown colour; and one witness thought that he observed the belly to be whitish. One man fired a musquet at the snake; and, "being a good shot," (as he himself tells us,) he thinks he hit him; but the monster nevertheless made off. A sailor youth passed so near in a boat, that he could have touched him with his oar, had not a regard to his own safety prevented him. All the witnesses concur in describing the mode of the animal's turning or changing its course; it brought its head and its tail very close together, and the two extremities were seen moving rapidly in opposite directions. This fact alone affords complete proof that the animal was no Squalus; certainly not the Squalus maximus of Sir Everard Home. When the snake disappeared, he did not force his way down, like a shark, but sunk at once like a stone.

A similar animal had been seen near Plymouth, also in Massachusets, in June 1815; and others are described, as having been observed, in 1809, on the coast of the district of Maine, in the same State. Last of all, so late as October 1817, an animal of the same general appearance was between Long Island and Connecticut, "progressing rapidly up sound,” as the American writer expresses it, at the astonishing rate of six or seven miles in ten minutes.

seen

In the latter part of the report, a description is given of a new kind of serpent, about three feet long, disCovered in the neighbourhood of Glou

cester shortly after the appearance of the great snake, and which has been considered as its progeny, not only by the common people, but by many members of the Linnean Society of New England. This non-descript serpent is remarkably distinguished by a row of protuberances along the back, formed by undulations of the spine. That these undulations are natural and permanent, is proved by the structure of the vertebræ, which varies in order to accommodate itself to this configuration. The back is covered with hexagonal scales; the abdomen with scuta or plates; the tail with scutella, or plates divided in the middle. It closely resembles the Coluber constrictor, which was exhibited by M. Polito in Edinburgh, last year, excepting in the dorsal protuberances. The Committee have considered this feruous structure of the spine as sufficient to constitute a generic character; and have established a genus called Scoliophis, from oxoxos flexuous, and ⚫ a serpent. A figure is given of the complete animal, unless where the head has been injured; accompanied with representations of the dissections made. They examined the stomach, and found in it the skin and scales of another serpent; but they do not tell us whether any ovarium was observed, or any appearance of eggs, -an important point in endeavouring to ascertain whether the animal was very young, or had nearly attained its natural size. It was apparently perfect in all its external parts; but the Committee remark, that all young serpents

are so.

The evidence of identity between the great snake and this small one, it may be remarked, depends almost entirely on the circumstances of proximity of place, and coincidence of time, in the appearance of the two animals. Some objections may, doubtless, be urged against the probability of their belonging to the same species. The small serpent was found on the land, coiled up like an ordinary snake, beside some whortleberry bushes; the great snake has only been seen at sea, and has not afforded any decided in dication of its being an amphibious animal. If the great snake had gone ashore at Gloucester to deposit its eggs, it seems likely that these must have been numerous, and that more of

its progeny would have appeared in that neighbourhood.

The Committee of the New England Society do not seem to have been aware of the recent labours of their brethren on this side of the Atlantic: for they take no notice of the Orkney animal, nor of the judicious remarks of our eminent townsman Dr Barclay; nor of the great snake seen by the Reverend Mr Maclean, although the description of this last, it may be noticed, agrees completely with that given by Mr Nash, and the more accurate of the American witnesses. N.

LIFE AND WRITINGS OF JAMES HOGG.

NOTHING is so destructive of that spirit of adventure, which leads the mind into new and unexplored regions of intellect, as the pride of learning, which considers its own attainments as the limits of human knowledge, and looks down from its fancied elevation on all those who have not been taught to prate, in trim phrase, of the philosophical creed that happens to be in fashion, or of certain books written in languages that have ceased to be spoken for many centuries. To an acquaintance with them every one must be trained, and on them his opinions must be formed, or he can hardly expect to be admitted into good society any more than he should if his coat were not in fashion. Nothing is so rare as originality of genius; and, according to the modes of education that have long prevailed, and are still in use, in our public institutions, the little that exists is in danger of being extinguished in its very dawning. Every boy is required to perform the same tasks, and in the same manner, without the slightest regard to the original bent of the mind; and if, unfortunately, he is either unfit or disinclined, he must be breeched into the knowledge of what he justly perhaps considers useless, or sink into a listless lethargy, and be degraded in his own eyes, and in those of his fellows, as an incorrigible dunce. Wo to the poor child whose fancy wanders to the clear waters where the little fishes twinkle in his mental vision like beams of light, in freedom and in beauty, or to the heathery slope where his soul dances to the melody of the

lark overhead; he will soon be recalled from the dream of delight, in bitterness and tears, to the hated volume from which he is doomed to hear one dull sentence rung in his ears a hundred times. By this mode of treatment, the soul is stunted, and prevented from putting forth its shoots and blossoms in the uncontrolled energy of nature; and rather resembles a tree which creeps along a garden wall, than the magnificent oak that has not been profaned by the axe of the woodman. Men bred under such discipline, are precisely what education has made them. They passively receive what is poured into their minds, and give it out again unchanged by meditation and reflection; or, if any change has taken place, it is a weakening and dilution. Their intellectual range is confined to the narrow circle that has been trode on by the men of many generations; yet they fold the academic stole around their infirmities, and pace it with a degree of self importance that is quite ridiculous. By their own unaided strength, they would never have raised themselves above the level of hewers of wood, and drawers of water; and those unascended steeps where alone true science is to be found, have never once entered their minds. Yet their vanity is harmless, and might be tolerated, if they did not imagine themselves equal to the great poets of antiquity; be cause they understand the structure of their verse, and have sometimes feloniously dared to substitute their own worthless dross for their fine gold; or deem themselves the rivals of the father of Greek philosophy, because they have learned from him to construct a syllogism. It is not such men, that, by the ingenuity and the splendour of their inventions, shed a lustre on our common nature, or by the originality of their imaginations, add to the stock of immortal poetry. Bacon looked through the philosophy of his age only to discover its utter worthlessness, and to substitute something better in its place; and the gigantic genius of Shakespeare was never subjected to the shackles of the schools.

It is not our purpose to lament that Mr Hogg was denied the advantages of a school education, which he could not have enjoyed but at such a risk, hut to trace the progress of his genius

in what we conceive to be the most favourable situation for its developement. It was his high privilege, that, even in boyhood, his eye was familiar with the elements of poetry ;-that even then, his soul soared to heaven on the wing of the eagle, and grew giddy over the cataract, and drank inspiration in the breezes of the hill, and worshipped nature on her mountain throne-that the first music to which he listened was the sound of the brooks, and the winds, and the thunders, with which he held mysterious communings;-that he was nursed in the solitude of the deep glens, and amid the sublime drapery of the mists and the clouds, where nature and superstition alike dispose the mind to lofty musings;-and that he was left undisturbed to the wildness and the grandeur of his own imaginations, where every object administered to his favourite propensities, and where he moulded each into a thousand combinations that never existed but in his own mind. He was in truth a student of nature, before he was aware of her influences, or could give utterance to his feelings in language; and fortune placed him in a situation where she was unveiled to his eye in all her infinitude and omnipotence.

But, fully to understand the circumstances that kindled his genius into activity, and developed the extraordinary powers of his mind, it will be necessary to make a few remarks on the features of the country where he was born, and the moral and intellectual character of the peo~ ple among whom he passed his early days. The glens and the mountainsof Etterick and Yarrow combine almost all the soft beauty and wild sublimity that Highland scenery exhibits. In the lower district of Yarrow, that lovely stream winds among hills of no great height, gently swelling, and green to the summits; in some places finely wooded, but generally naked, and well suited to the pasture of flocks. This is their common character, but some miles from the mouth of the valley, dark heathy mountains are seen towering to a considerable height above the surrounding hills, and give an interesting variety to the scene. Towards the head, the glen widens, and embosoms St Mary's Loch, and the Loch of the

Lowes; and above these sweet lakes, terminates in a wild mountain-pass, that divides it from Moffatdale. In the loftiest and most rugged regions of this pass, the Grey-Mare's Tail, a waterfall 300 feet in perpendicular height, dashes and foams over stupendous rocks. This celebrated fall is formed by a stream that flows from Loch-Skene, a dark mountain-lake about a mile above it, surrounded by inaccessible heights on all sides save one, and that is strewed by a thousand black heathery hillocks of the most grotesque and irregular forms. This place is so solitary, that the eagle has built her nest in an islet of the lake for ages, and is overhung by the highest mountains in the south of Scotland. The character of Etterick is similar to that of Yarrow, except, perhaps, that its tints are softer and inore mellow, and it is destitute of lakes. These valleys, so celebrated in Border legend and song, are skirted by hills, extending many miles on both sides, and, as there is no great road through them, the people have long lived shut out from the rest of mankind, in a state of pastoral simplicity and virtuous seclusion, alike remote from the vices of boorish rusticity, and fawning servility. Among the wild mountains at the head of Etterick and Yarrow, the sturdy champions of the Covenant found an asylum when they were chased like wild beasts, by a relentless persecution, from every other part of the country. Their preachers held their conventicles in the most sequestered glens, and made many converts, from whom a number of the present race are descended; but, while they cherish the memory of these glorious men, and as well they may, retain all the noblemindedness that arises from the consciousness of an illustrious ancestry, their moral features have lost much of the sternness of their fathers, and are softened down into the gentler virtues of more peaceful times; yet, if we were asked what people of Britain had suffered least from the evil consequences of excessive refinement, we should answer, without hesitation, the inhabitants of Etterick and Yarrow. In these interesting valleys, there is hardly a cottage that has not its legend, or a cleugh that is not famed for some act of romantic chivalry, or tenanted by some supernatu

ral being, or sanctified by the blood of some martyr. In such a country, full of chastened beauty, and dark sublimity, and visionary agency, and glorious recollections, it was the good fortune of Hogg to be born, and to spend the greater part of his life.

His mother, Margaret Laidlaw, was, like himself, a self-taught genius. Her mother had died while she was yet young; but, being the eldest of several children, and her father far from wealthy, she was kept at home to superintend the household affairs, and assist in bringing up her younger brothers and sisters, during those years when the children of the Scottish peasantry, even the poorest, are sent to school; and they at the proper age enjoyed the usual advantages. About the age of twelve or thirteen she began to feel her inferiority to them; and on the Sabbath, her only day of rest, she used to wander out alone to a solitary hill side, with a Bible under her arm, and, humbled by a sense of her ignorance, to throw herself down on the heath, and water the page with bitter tears. By the ardour of her zeal, she soon accomplished the object of her dearest wishes, and supplied the deficiencies of her education. The race of wandering minstrels was not then extinct in her native glens; and from the recitations of one of them, an old man of ninety, she stored her memory with many thousand lines of the old Border ballad, which he alone knew. To his knowledge shè succeeded; and there is reason to fear that much of it died with her.

This woman, herself of an imaginative and enthusiastic mind, soon discovered in her son James a kindred spirit, and laboured in its cultivation with an earnestness greatly honourable to her, and to which, perhaps, the world is indebted for the Queen's Wake. In the remote and solitary glens of these mountain districts, the cottages of the shepherds are often situated at great distances from other dwellings, and their tenants pass the winter months with no other society than that of their own family. Nothing can be conceived humbler in the way of human habitations than these cottages then were; yet they were frequently lighted by a brilliancy of imagination, and cheered by a gentleness of affection, and an enthusiasm of feeling, that Grecian sofas