A silent terror o'er me stole, A strange unusual dread; His lips were white as bone-his eyes Sunk far down in his head; He gazed on me, but 'twas the gaze Of the unconscious dead. Then suddenly he turn'd him round That hung before my mother's face ;- Had seem'd so ghastly pale. "Come hither, boy!" my uncle said,— I started at the sound, 'Twas choked and stifled in his throat, And hardly utterance found ;— "Come hither, boy!" then fearfully He cast his eyes around. “That lady was thy mother once,— Thou wert her only child ;— O God! I've seen her when she held "He was my brother, but his form Was fairer far than mine; I grudged not that ;-he was the prop And manly beauty was to him "Boy! I had loved her too,-nay more, 'Twas I who loved her first; For months-for years-the golden thought Within my soul was nurst; He came he conquer'd-they were wed ;My air-blown bubble burst. “Then on my mind a shadow fell, And evil hopes grew rife; The damning thought stuck in my heart That she, whom all my days I loved, "By Heaven! it was a fearful thing "I left my home-I left the land- "I came again-I found them here- I've seen him lock'd in her fond arms, "He disappear'd-draw nearer, child ; He died-no one knew how; The murder'd body ne'er was found, The tale is hush'd up now; But there was one who rightly guess'd The hand that struck the blow. "It drove her mad-yet not his death,No-not his death alone, For she had clung to hope when all 'Knew well that there was none;No, boy! it was a sight she saw That froze her into stone! "I am thy uncle, child,-why stare So frightfully aghast ?— The arras waves, but know'st thou not 'Tis nothing but the blast? I too have had my fears like these, "I'll show thee what thy mother saw,- "It has a secret spring; the touch A sudden crash-the lid fell down- That night they laid him on his bed In raving madness tost; He gnash'd his teeth, and with wild oaths And, ere the light of morning broke, LITERARY CHIT-CHAT AND VARIETIES. THE Messrs Laing are on the eve of publishing another posthumous work of the late indefatigable Ritson. It is to be entitled Annals of the Caledonians, Picts, and Scots; and of Strathclyde, Cumberland, Galloway, and Murray." It is particularly interesting on this account, that it commences with the remotest period of Scottish History, and ends with the accession of Malcolm III. just where Lord Hailes begins his Annals," under the impression that the previous history of this country was involved in obscurity and fable. In the present work, Ritson has extended the supposed limit of authentic history for many centuries. We understand that Bishop Jolly, of Fraserburgh, the venerable and pious author of the recently published Remarks on the Sunday Services of the Church," is preparing for publication a work on the Lord's Supper, to be entitled "The Eucharist." Mr David Grant, of Aberdeen, is preparing for the press," The Class-Book of Modern Poetry." This Work, we are informed, is intended principally for the use of schools, but will also form a choice cabinet of poetry for the private library, containing extracts from all the most admired poets of the present age. The pieces are arranged on a plan suggested some time ago in the Edinburgh Review;" those on the same subject follow each other in immediate succession, so as to show the different styles of poetical composition adopted by different authors. Mr Grant is also about to publish" Battles and War Pieces, by the most eminent Modern Poets; now first collected into one volume." Mr Edward Upham, author of " Rameses," an Egyptian Tale, and other works, is preparing, for "Constable's Miscellany," the "History of the Turkish or Ottoman Empire, from its Establishment in 1326 to 1828; comprising a Preliminary Discourse on the Arabs, and also the Life of Mahommed, and his immediate successors in the Khalifat." Mr Derwent Conway is likewise peparing for the Miscellany, "A Personal Narrative through Parts of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway." We observe that there is to be a double Number of "Blackwood's Magazine," for December. We are glad to perceive that one of the Parts is to contain an article from the able and ingenious pen of Charles Lamb, entitled "The Wife's Trial, or the Intruding Widow." This is a coalition, perhaps, scarcely to have been expected, but it is quite as it should be. There ought, if possible, to be no personal animosities among literary men, who are all alike" pressing forward for the prize of their high calling." We rejoice to see the lion at length lying down with the lamb. There are also a Noctes, an article on Sacred Poetry, and another called "Buy a Broom?" which, we have reason to believe, will be found excellent. The Author of "Waverley" is about to give us another Novel in three volumes, entitled "Anne of Geierstein, or the Maiden of the Mist." The scene is principally laid in Switzerland, but the hero, we believe, is a Scotchman. "Tales of the Great St Bernard" have just appeared from the pen of Mr Croly. Mr Croly is a poet, the author of "Salathiel," (an Eastern Romance, in three volumes, which has not sold,) a minister of the Gospel, and an expounder of the Apocalypse. The Tales of the Great St Bernard are spoken of as possessing various degrees of merit. The "Literary Remains" of the late Henry Neele, author of the "Romance of History," have just appeared. Mr Neele was an amiable and voluminous writer. His recent melancholy fate gives an additional interest to his "Literary Remains." Hamilton, whom the "Edinburgh Review" pronounced a sort of Newton among pedagogues, whom other sensible men thought a quack, and whose system made a blaze for six months, and then went out, has been publishing more int rlinear translations; but their day, we suspect, is past. We have seen a little book, entitled, "Liber Honorum, or Mirror of the Peerage," which contains, 1st, an alphabetical list of the mottos of the Peers, followed by the titles of those bearing them; and, 2d, an alphabetical list of the titles, followed by the mottos. It is executed in the new and beautiful style we noticed last Saturday, as introduced here by Messrs Smith and Co., and is a very elegant little work. Among the principal Memoirs which will appear in the "Annual Biography and Obituary for 189," are the following:Archbishop Sutton-Dugald Stewart, Esq.-Sir J. E. Smiththe Hon. Mrs Damer-the Margravine of Anspach-Captain Clapperton-Archdeacon Coxe-Lady Caroline Lamb-the Rev. Edward Forster-Sir Henry Torrens-Henry Neele, Esq.-Dr Mason Good-Harry Stoe Van Dyk, Esq.-Vice-Admiral Nowell, &c. &c. We regret to announce the death of Mr Matthews, author of the "Diary of an Invalid." He died at Ceylon of water in the chest, on the 20th of last May. Scottish Academy.-We perceive by the first Report (just published) of the "Scottish Academy of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture," that this Insti ution is in a flourishing condition. The clear profits arising from the first exhibition in 1827, were L.317, and pictures were sold to the amount of L.506. The profits of the second exhibition in 1828, were L.535, and pictures were disposed of to the amount of L.190. At this exhibition, there were 309 pictures, and 16 pieces of sculpture; these were furnished by 101 different artists. The Academy has not yet been able to procure a Charter of Incorporation, on the plea, that "it would not be expedient," as Mr Peel expresses it, to constitute by Royal Charter, two bodies politic, for the promotion of the fine arts in Scotland." We may have some remarks to make on this subject soon. The Ayrshire Sculptor.-A self-taught genius, if any one of influence happens to take an interest in him, is very apt to get himself puffed for a week, and forgotten for the rest of his life. The compliment of a ticket, and an invitation to a private exhibition, secure the good will of Newspaper Editors; and without knowing any thing about the subject, all they have to do is to write a flattering paragraph. We hope Mr Thom, whose two free stone figures of Tam o' Shanter, and Souter Johnny, we have seen with much pleasure, will not allow himself to sacrifice solid pudding for empy praise. There is a great deal of spirit and talent in his productions, considered not as works of art, but as the creations of a strong and original mind. We hope he will set about studying the severer beauties of sculpture, and with steady perseverance doubt not of his attaining eminence; but he has a long road before him, which is not to be shortened by taking a cross-cut of his own. He has already, we understand, received an order from one nobleman for a group of four figures, for which he is to be paid two hundred guineas, and from another, an order for a group of two figures, for which he is to be paid one hundred guineas. This is excellent encouragement to begin with; and it remains with Mr Thom himself whether he may not make himself a wealthy and a celebrated man-an honour to his native town, and to Scotland.-As an instance of local enthusiasm, it may be mentioned, that the "guid folks" of Ayr escorted these statues in triumphant procession, when they were carried on board the steam-boat, which brought them up, free of expense, to Glasgow. Mons Meg.-This is the largest, most ancient, and most cele brated piece of ordnance which Scotland seems ever to have possessed. It is thirteen feet long, seven feet in circumference at the mouth, and its bore is 20 inches in diameter. It appears to have been originally made for James IV., and is frequently mentioned as doing good execution at different periods of Scottish history. It was commonly kept in the Castle of Edinburgh, but on one occasion was sent to assist in the defence of Dunottar Castle, when besieged by Cromwell's army and fleet. There is a tradition, tha in this siege, Mons Meg disma ted an English vessel lying at the distance of a mile and a half. From these and similar exploits, it was called "the great iron murderer Muckle Meg." In 1754 it was removed to Lon on, probably as a measure of precaution; and application having been recently made to that effect, it has been re-transported, and is now lying at Leith. There is some talk of bringing it up to Edinburgh with military and civic honours. Theatrical Gossip.-Wr Knowles' Comedy of "The Beggar's Daughter of Bethnal Green," was produced last Saturday evening at Drury Lane, to a very crowded audience. It was not so successful as was expected, though abounding in many powerful situations, and much fine poetry. The under plot was considered too prominent, and, we observe, it is mentioned in the London papers, that Mrs Faucit, who was entrusted with the important part of Queen Elizabeth, completely murdered it. The piece, however, was announced for repetition, with considerable applause, although there appear to have been some individuals present who were determined that it should not have a fair hearing." A stout gentleman," in particular, in one of the boxes (No. 5," we presume) with the voice of a Stentor, and the face of a Medusa, and the gesticulations of a Cyclons, is spoken of as having particularly distinguished himself for the violence of his opposition. He was a shilling gallery of himself. If our old friend Weekes had taken his place beside him, we think he could have silenced him. We propose presenting our readers, next Saturday, with some choice extracts from this Comedy, of which we are fortunate enough to possess an unpublished copy.—We observe that Miss Phillips, who made her debut in Miss Mitford's Tragedy of " Rienzi," (not a copy of which, by the way, is to be had in Edinbur h,) is spoken of by the London critics as the actress of greatest promise now on the stage.-Ducrow and his equestrian company are attracting crowded audiences in Dublia. -Mr Macready is rather celebrated for being an impassioned actor, and he sometimes suits the action to the word a little too closely. The other day, at a provincial town in England, when playing Othello, he nearly stabbed his Iago in good earnest ;-exclaiming, "if thou art a devil, I cannot kill thee," he sent his sword, not along Iago's back, as is usual, but through his doublet, till the cold steel passed close to his skin, slightly rasing it. lago, we understand, thought it was all over with him. Macready nearly killed a Virginia once before. This is doing more than the author means. TO OUR READERS. It gives us much pleasure to intimate, that our next Number will contain a poem from the pen of Professor Wilson. And in the "Literary Journal" for Saturday the 27th of December,which may be considered as our Christmas Number,-our readers, we are sure, will share with us the satisfaction we have in announcing, that they will find articles, in prose and verse, by Professor Wilson, the Ettrick Shepherd, William Tennant, Esq., James Sheridan Knowles, Esq., John Malcolm, Esq., Dr Memes, William Kennedy, Esq., and some other authors of eminence, whose names we forbear to mention, from the possibility of cisappointment. The support we have already received is, we be. lieve, almost unprecedented in the history of Scottish periodicals; and we are determined to spare no exertion to entitle us to its continuance. TO OUR CORRESPONDENTS. "A Friend to Unity" is under consideration.-" Cato's" Letter on the Drama shall have a place, if we can find room for it."Pictures of Life," No. I. begins well, but does not end so well. —“ Q. Y. Q. T." does not seem to have read the preface to Knight and Rumley's "Crests of the Nobility." No review shall ever appear in the "Edinburgh Literary Journal," merely to please a bookseller. We regret that our observations on the art of teaching the blind to read are unavoidanly postponed till next Saturday. We have been perfectly inundated with original poetry. We are happy to receive contrib tions of this kind; but we have poetry at our command, which makes it impossible for us ever to think of admitting inferior compositions into the "Journal." The effusions of Clio," of " W. C.," of "W. T.," of " Alpha," and of Ynyr," do not quite come up to our standard.—“ A. M.” and "J. S. P." may write to us again;-their productions are very nearly good enough to merit an imprimatur.-The "Stanzas to a Daughter," the sonnets by "Gamma," "A Remembrance of Eight Years," and the song by "S. S." of Glasgow, will appear as soon as possible. We have to express our surprise, that the advertisement of the "Edinburgh Literary Journal" has not yet appeared in the "London Literary Gazette," though transmitted to that paper, and pait for, several weeks ago. LITERARY CRITICISM. Tales of the Great St Bernard. In three volumes. London: Henry Colburn. 1828. MR CROLY, the author of these tales, has won unto himself a name; but we are inclined to suspect, that on the strength of that name he has of late years been writing too much. This is a great error; but it is one into which authors of the present day are continually falling. With only one or two exceptions, they have all written too much. Instead of allowing their genius to rest like a fountain, deep, unruffled, and pellucid, within its own green margin, and for ever reflecting the glad faces of those who first discovered, and still delight to haunt it, they have idly thought of enhancing its value by allowing it to dribble through a dozen long agricultural ditches, where the pure water becomes muddy and scanty, and the well from which it sprang "splen didior vitro," "unde loquaces Lymphæ desiliunt," is choked with weeds, and deserted by its votaries. There was an age when men read too much, and wrote too little, when they stored their own minds with an undigested mass of things, but did not cultivate the art of communicating their knowledge to others. But that age has long been past. The smallest quantity of knowledge, and the very last dregs of an exhausted imagination, are now considered quite enough to form the materiel of three goodly octavos. With more than the gold-beater's assiduity, the tiniest piece of the precious metal-thought, is thumped and hammered till it cover a whole acre of paper;-one idea, bordering on originality, serves for a dozen pages; and one incident, betraying a distant indication of invention, amply fills out a volume, like the single tea-spoonful of preserved fruit which the skilful pastry-cook places in the centre of the vast circumference of a puff-tart. The opinion, indeed, of most living authors seems to be, that they must take the temple of Fame by storm, and that the ladder by which they must scale its walls ought to be made of their own works piled on the top of each other. They might spare their pains; for the temple is not to be taken by storm. If they ever get into it, whom will they find there? Homer with | only two books, his Iliad and Odyssey; Virgil with only one, his Eneid, Pastorals, and Georgics, bound up in the same volume; Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, Milton, Gray, and a hundred others, with the labours of their immortal lives held easily in their unburdened hands. It is quite proper that an author who has never acquired any reputation at all should write all sorts of books, upon all manner of subjects, in the hope that at last he may make a lucky hit, and obtain a name; but let the writer who has already gained distinction beware how he trifles with it. It is a thousand times more respectable to be the author of a duodecimo of twenty pages that has PRICE 10d. been received with general admiration, than the acknowledged father of a whole library of works, all of which are passing smoothly down the current of oblivion, freighted with the heavy freight of leaden mediocrity. One cause why the literature of the present day is so much shallower, and therefore necessarily so much more ephemeral, than that of an earlier date, is, that there is now a far greater demand for books than there used to literary appetite must be satisfied some way or other. be. We are a reading people; and the cravings of our The question is, not where the most costly food can be had, but where food of any kind is to be soonest found. of their publishers; if they would have patience, someThe many-mouthed public stand gaping round the doors thing recherché would be cooked for them; but they their friends the authors to supply them, for the love of will not have patience, and so the publishers beseech heaven, with whatever comes to hand. The authors, without considering what they are about, stuff into the maws of the hungry monster all sorts of bitter and indigestible edibles. These are, perchance, swallowed at first; but as soon as their unpalatable flavour is discovered, the monster turns upon the hapless author, and tears him into a thousand pieces. The great number of periodicals, many of which pay well, is another reason why the energies of numerous clever men are prevented from arriving at maturity. Every body knows that if wine be drawn off the cask as soon as made, it may be very pleasant to the taste, but it possesses little potency,-it wants that rich and stronglyembodied relish, that cool and manly vigour, that rough and racy burr, which it is almost sure to acquire after being allowed to lie a long lustrum" in the deep-delved earth." It is the same thing with man's intellectual powers. If there be too speedy and constant a drain upon them, it is absolutely necessary that they should be wirespun, in order to make them last at all. "A rolling stone," says the proverb, "gathers no fog ;" and if all that comes in by the eyes and ears must immediately go out again at the point of the pen, a certain degree of quickness, versatility, and cleverness, may be exhibited, but depth and breadth, an overmastering power of mind and imagination, rarely or never. The general rule, therefore, unquestionably is, that no very voluminous author, and no very constant and professional writer in periodicals, is to be compared with the mightier spirits of former days, however valuable a contributor to the literary habits and enjoyments of the present generation, Put Bacon-put Locke-put Gibbon-put Hume-put Burke -put Dr Samuel Johnson in the midst of a coterie of some of our very clever men," and how pigmy-like would the said clever men appear beside the resuscitated giant, whose far sterner studies led to far higher results, the grasp of whose mind was like that of the iron-glaive, whose words descended like the hammer of the Cyclops, and whose perspicacious thoughts "summered high upon the hills of God," where the petty novelists, the chirping poets, and the barking critics of our age, in which external polish is regarded more than inward substance, dare not lift their enfeebled eyes. We love those venerable and sinewy ancients, and can almost fancy them in the repose of their strength, leaning over the battlements of heaven, and with a calm smile viewing far below the skirmishes of us petty men. The scene is laid in modern Greece and Turkey, and we are treated with all the usual barbaric horrors of assassinations, battles, stranglings, and so forth, which we confess are little to our taste. The third tale appeared a year or two ago in one of the Annuals; it is a clever, lively sketch, called "The Red-nosed Lieutenant." Of the rest," The Married Actress," which has also appeared in one of the Annuals, is the best. The others are called "The Patron Saint," "The Locked-up Beauty," and "The Conspirator." There are two defects in Mr Croly's tales, which we suspect he will not be able easily to get rid of, else he would never have fallen into them. The first is, that he does not understand how to arrange a plot, and the second, that he has not the art of giving interest to individual character. Wherever he writes generally and descriptively, he much excels the common run of novel-writers; but he cannot get up a story with any thing like dramatic effect, and he seems to want a knowledge of those attributes which ought to be given to his heroes and heroines, in order to win for them the reader's affections. We shall present only one specimen of Mr Croly's style. It is from his " Introduction," where his writing is entirely descriptive, and consequently good. The extract may be entitled_ If there be aught digressive in these remarks, Mr Croly must bear the blame, for they were suggested by seeing him before us as a teller of tales. It is several years since Mr Croly distinguished himself as a poet; and it is certainly as a poet that we are still disposed to think he principally excels. A poet's laurels, however, though they have a comfortable sensation on the brow, do not always produce the same comfortable feeling in the pocket. They are not to be ate, but only to be looked at, like the fruit in a fruiterer's window. A poem is published; the impression is a thousand copies; the reviewers praise it to the skies; with the exception of a few scores, every copy is sold; the author dreams of retiring to a country estate, and, hoping to enjoy his otium cum dignitate for the rest of his life, orders his printer, paper-maker, binder, and publisher, to make out their accounts. The printer's demand is nearly double the original estimate; but then the author is requested to remember, that his corrections were scarcely less expensive than the original setting up ;-the paper-maker supplied paper which had never before been equalled for LIFE ON THE GREAT ST BERNARD. beauty, and at nineteen shillings a-ream he has absolutely no profit at all;-the binder regrets extremely "If I could be a summer monk, and change my vows, that the recent rise in leather, and in his workmen's wa-like my clothes, with the winter, I know no fraternity ges, makes it necessary to charge considerably higher than that offers stronger temptations than the Augustins of usual; and the publisher, after deducting his thirty-five the Saint Bernard. To escape the bustle of the world, per cent, and other reasonable charges, finds that he is yet be in the world; to have moving before our eyes an due to the author the sum of L.3, 9s. 6d., and having still easy succession of society-a constant living phantassome copies of the first edition on hand, cannot con- magoria, often highly piquant, and always amusing; scientiously advise the publication of a second. The to indulge in literature, without the toils of authorship, poet either finds his revenge in a small quantity of arse- the teasing of dilettanti, or the agonies of exulting critinic, a phial of laudanum, or a moderate dose of prussic cism; to ramble over a sun-clad kingdom of mountains, acid, or flings his muse into the fire, and writes a novel with the kingship undisputed, among all the royal and every ten days to that "most liberal and enterprising of heroic strugglers for a grave ten thousand feet below; all booksellers," Mr Henry Colburn. to sit on rocks, and muse o'er flood and fell;' to turn painter, poet, pilgrim, and dreamer, at one's own discretion, and without having the fear of living man before our eyes; and to do all this with the saving and singular consciousness, that we are doing some good in our vocation, that humanity is the better for us, and that our place would be missed among mankind.-Utopia might grow pale to the beatitudes of the little republic under the protection of St Augustin, and the shadow of Mont Velan, existente aestate. We do not know whether some such motive first drew Mr Croly from his "Angel of the World," and "Gems from the Antique," into the Green-room with his comedy of "Pride shall have a Fall," and from thence into a mystical theological investigation of the Apocalypse, and from thence into a three-volumed "story of the past, the present, and the future," called "Salathiel," and from thence again into "Tales of the Great St Bernard," grave and gay, historical and descriptive. But whatever effect all this wandering may have on Mr Croly's purse, we hardly think it will enhance his reputation, except in so far as it will prove him possessed of more versatility than commonly belongs to poets. But abstract versatility is nothing, unless it be a versatility of excellence. There are seven tales in the three volumes before us, and though all more or less amusing and clever, we cannot say that any of them struck us as particularly brilliant. The first is, on the whole, the best. It is entitled "The Squire's Tale," and contains a good deal of smart and, we think we may say, able writing. The great and vulgar error, however, which pervades it, is that its whole object is to inculcate that wealth must necessarily bring misery, even to those who had always enjoyed a competence, and who possess well-cultivated and steady minds. There is no plot in this tale; it is merely a series of incidents to show the embarrassments in which a worthy man was involved, along with his family, in consequence of becoming worth twenty thousand pounds a-year. Probability is continually outraged, and we feel therefore dissatisfied, even where most pleased with the author's ingenuity and cleverness. The second tale, which is called "Hebe," and is the longest of the whole, has a tremendously complicated and confused plot, and, though containing some powerful scenes and vivid descriptions, is to us very dull and uninteresting. "But summer is, unfortunately, a rare guest, and its visit one of the shortest possible duration. The sunshine that subdues the plain, with the fidelity of a wife, is, at the famous Hospice, capricious as a first love. I had entered its walls on a day made in the prodigality of the finest season of the year. The snowy scalps of the hills were interspersed with stripes of verdure, that had seen the light for the first time within memory; the bee, that, more than all creation beside, gives assurance of summer to my ear, was roaming and humming away among the thistle-down and mosses, that even the Alpine frost is not always able to kill. I could imagine, in the air that passed in slight gusts from time to time, the odours of the Italian flowers. I lingered long at the gate of the convent, enjoying the magnificent serenity of the sky, the air, and the hills, and felt no trivial reluctance at abandoning so alluring a contemplation for a corridor crowded with servants, and a chamber imbedded in a wall as thick as if it had to stand a siege. Even the indulgence of the convent table could not wean me from the conviction that I could have got through my travel pleasantly enough, though the Hospice had, like the Santa Casa, been transported on the backs of angels to some new Loretto, many a league and far.' "But I had not been two hours under its roof before a burst of wind, that reminded me of nothing but the roar of Niagara, shot down the side of Mont Velan, stripped away the gathered snow of half a century in an immense sheet, and hurled it full upon the convent. All was in instant commotion within. The table was deserted by the chief part of the brotherhood, who hurried to see that the casements and doors were made secure. The ground-floor of the building, which is occupied with stables, and storehouses for wood, and the other supplies of the convent, was a scene of immediate confusion, from the crowding in of the menials and peasantry. Í ventured one glance from my window-summer was gone at once; and the winter wild' was come in its stead. The sun was blotted out of the heavens; snow, in every shape that it could be flung into by the most furious wind, whirlpool, drift, and hail, flashed and swept along. Before evening it was fourteen feet high in front of the Hospice. We could keep our fingers from being icicles only by thrusting them almost into the blazing wood fires; the bursts of wind shook the walls like cannon-shot; and I made a solemn recantation of all my raptures on the life of an Augustin of St Bernard. As the night fell, the storm lulled at intervals, and I listened with anxiety to the cries and noises that announced the danger of travellers surprised in the storm. The fineness of the season had tempted many to cross the mountain without much precaution against the change; and the sounds of horns, bells, and the barking of the dogs, as the strangers arrived, kept me long awake. By morning the convent was full; the world was turned | to universal snow; the monks came down girded for their winter excursions; the domestics were busy equipping the dogs; fires blazed; cauldrons smoked; every stranger was pelissed and furred up to the chin; and the whole scene might have passed for a Lapland carnival. But the Hospice is provided for such casualties; and, after a little unavoidable tumult, all its new inhabitants were attended to with much more than the civility of a continental inn, and with infinitely less than its discomfort. The gentlemen adjourned to the reading-room, where they found books and papers which probably seldom passed the Italian frontier. The ladies turned over the portfolios of prints, many of which are the donations of strangers who had been indebted to the hospitality of the place; or amused themselves at the piano-forte in the drawing-room,-for music is there above the flight of the lark; or pored over the shelves to plunge their souls in some flattering tale' of hope and love, orange groves, and chevaliers plumed, capped, and guitarred into irresistible captivation. The scientific manipulated the ingenious collection of the mountain minerals made by the brotherhood. Half a dozen herbals from the adjoining regions lay open for the botanist; a finely bound and decorated album, that owed obligations to every art but the art of poetry, lay open for the pleasantries, the memorials, and the wonderings of every body; and for those who loved sleep best, there were eighty beds.”– Vol. i. p. 10-15. To our town readers, who have all the new books at their command, we shall not especially recommend the "Tales of the Great St Bernard;" to our country read. ers, who have not the same advantages, it is right to say that their leisure hours may be amused, as they perhaps, have often been before, with works a thousand times inferior in point of literary merit. Professor Fillans's Letters to T. F. Kennedy, Esq. M.P. on the Principles of Elementary Teaching, and the Parochial Schools of Scotland. Edin. Adam Black, 1828. No national institution, perhaps, ever operated more visibly, more beneficially, or more widely, on national character, than the parochial establishment of Scotland. Nor among the almost innumerable plans for the instruction of the people is there one which, in its entire efficiency, appears better adapted to accomplish an object so very desirable. A more important service, therefore, could hardly have been undertaken than Professor Pillans has recently performed in directing attention to the present defects and future improvement of this mighty instrument. The attempt, also, was the more meritorious, that the unshrinking discharge of the duty must have been foreseen as likely to arouse the clamours and misrepresentations of the prejudiced and the interested. We regret that our limits permit only a brief outline of the Professor's "Two Letters" on this subject, a work which, in the compass of one hundred and seven pages octavo, will be found to embrace every essential precept of practical tuition, forming a manual that ought to be in the hands of every teacher,-nay, of every parent really studious of the dearest interests of his children. The first of these admirable Letters contains illustrations of the leading principles of Elementary Education; the second points out the causes and the cure of imperfect discipline. The principles laid down in the First Letter are the three following:-I. That a child in being taught to read, should be taught at the same time to understand what he reads. II. That corporal punishment should never be resorted to till every other method has failed. III. That the office and duty of a public teacher are, so to arrange the business of his school, and the distribution of his time, that no child shall be idle. Although the "Letters" bear reference to Elementary Education alone, it will be at once apparent to those conversant with the subject, that the propositions now enumerated constitute, in fact, the science-the philosophy-the art of teaching in all its stages. The first, in its varied application and extended uses, enlarging with the increasing years and acquirements of the pupil, is the only principle which can fully insure the primary object of all education-intellectual culture. While, therefore, we go along entirely and most heartily with the learned Professor in his always useful-often truly beautiful—illustrations of the greater rapidity, ease, and certainty with which the child will read when he is also taught to carry the meaning along with him, we look forward, and, grounding our assertion on experience of some extent, affirm, that just in proportion as this principle shall have been observed and acted upon from the commencementjust as the understanding has been gradually unfolded from the Horn-book upwards, will the more difficult studies of succeeding years advance with facility, comfort, and success. The pupil who, from his earliest ca. reer at school, has thus been trained to apply both the judgment and the memory in every lesson, while, by the aid of two faculties he advances more securely than by one, will acquire powers of understanding growing with his growth, and strengthening with his strength. We may anticipate even more distant, but equally certain results, of this intellectual education, and a consideration of infinitely greater importance than mere acquirement. Behold the youth carrying into the business of life those habits of calm inquiry and of sound judgment, without which scholarship were vain-which form the respectable man and the useful citizen.-The second principle is the foundation of moral education. Every imperfection of character which displays itself in maturer years, is to be traced either to neglect, or to erroneous and un generous principles of action addressed, and consequent improper associations formed, in early life. Fear, the Principle addressed in the system of education to which the work before us is opposed, constitutes a powerful, indeed, but, with all its attendant brood of degraded feelings and revengeful passions, a most debasing agent in our moral nature. Here, however, we confess the difficulty of decidedly legislating,-a difficulty, not to say a dan |