which have pleasure for their object, in the same manner as bodily health may be promoted by agreeable exercises. It is of momentous consequence in the economy of life, that its hours of leisure should be rescued from listlessness, or corrosive humours, or sensual pursuits, and devoted to studies which, at least, engender no evil affections. How far the mass of novels answer this description, it is unnecessary for me to attempt determining. My opinion is, that if they increase the sum of human idleness, they mitigate its pernicious effects. But I have endeavoured to discriminate the dissipation of the mind, produced by common-place fiction, from its elevation and excitement by the true language of imagination. And if it be asked, what general security we possess, for the probability of the poet's talents being employed in supporting the interests of virtue, it may be answered, that the nature of Poetry itself forms a mighty strong-hold. Impurity is an anomalous mixture, in its character. In the same manner as the artist, in visible forms, regards all profligate hints to our associations as utterly foreign to the spirit of art; in like manner, the poet finds no sentiments fitted for the universal admiration of mankind, but those which can be delivered unblushingly from age to age. Hence the poets of barbarous times were the prophets of future civilization; and those of enlightened ages still impel our imaginations forward into conceptions of ideal virtue and happiness, that make us love to suppose the essence of our being to be immortal. It is therefore but a faint eulogium on poetry to say, that it only furnishes an innocent amusement, to fledge the lagging hours of existence. Its effects are incalculably more beneficent. Besides supplying records of human manners, in some respects more faithful than those of history itself, it upholds an image of existence that heightens our enjoyment of all the charms of external nature, and that deepens our sympathies with whatever is amiable, or interesting, or venerable, in human character. We cannot alter one trait of our bodily forms; but the spiritual impressions made on the mind will elevate and amend the mind itself. And the spirits that would devote themselves to be the heroes and benefactors of mankind, are not likely to be less cherished by the philosophy that restrains their passions, than by the poetry that touches their imaginations with humane and generous senti ments. End of the First Lecture. ANECDOTES OF J. MACPHERSON, THE ANCIENT FREEBOOTER AND MUSICIAN. MR. EDITOR,--You are, no doubt, acquainted with many traits of character peculiar to the Gael; and it is believed the following account of a gipsy freebooter will shew, how much the ferocity and meanness of his maternal tribe were corrected by occasionally associating with the generous mountaineers who countenanced him, for the sake of his father. James Macpherson, the subject of our memoir, was born of a beautiful gipsy, who at a great wedding attracted the notice of a half-intoxicated highland gentleman. He acknowledged the child, and had him reared in his house, until he lost his life in bravely pursuing a hostile clan, to recover a spraith of cattle taken from Badenoch. The gipsy woman, hearing of this disaster, in her rambles the following summer, came and took away her boy; but she often returned with him, to wait upon his relations and clansmen, who never failed to clothe him well, besides giving money to his mother. He grew up in strength, stature, and beauty, seldom equalled. His sword is still preserved at Duff-house, a residence of the Earl of Fife, and few men in our day could carry, far less wield it as a weapon of war; and if it must be owned his prowess was debased by the exploits of a freebooter, it is certain no act of cruelty, no robbery of the widow, the fatherless, or distressed, and no murder, was ever perpetrated under his command. He often gave the spoils of the rich to relieve the poor; and all his tribe were restrained from many atrocities of rapine by their awe of his mighty arm. Indeed, it is said that a dispute with an aspiring and savage man of his tribe, who wished to rob a gentleman's house while his wife and twochildren lay on the bier for interment, was the cause of his being betrayed to the vengeance of the law. The magistrates of Aberdeen were exasperated at Macpherson's escape, when they bribed a girl in that city to allure and deliver him into their hands. There is a platform before the jail, at the top of a stair, and a door below. When Macpherson's capture was made known to his comrades by the frantic girl, who had been so credulous as to believe the magistrates only wanted to hear the wonderful performer on the violin, his cousin, Donald Macpherson, a gentleman of Herculean powers, did not disdain to come from Badenoch, and to join a gipsy, Peter Brown, in liberating the prisoner. On a market-day they brought several assistants; and swift horses were stationed at a convenient distance. Donald Macpherson and Peter Brown forced the jail, and while Peter Brown went to help the heavily-fettered James Macpherson in moving away, Donald Macpherson guarded the jail-door with a drawn sword. Many persons, assembled at the market, had experienced James Macpherson's humanity, or had shared his bounty; and they crowded round the jail as in mere curiosity, but, in fact, to obstruct the civil authorities from preventing a rescue. A butcher, however, was resolved, if possible, to detain Macpherson, expecting a large recompense from the magistrates: he sprang up the stairs, and leaped from the platform upon Donald Macpherson, whom he dashed to the ground by the force and weight of his body. Donald Macpherson soon recovered, to make a desperate resistance; and the combatants tore off each other's clothes. The butcher got a glimpse of his dog upon the platform, and called him to his aid; but Macpherson, with admirable presence of mind, snatched up his own plaid, which lay near, and threw it over the butcher, thus misleading the instinct of his canine adversary. The dog darted with fury upon the plaid, and terribly lacerated his master's thigh. In the mean time, James Macpherson had been carried out by Peter Brown, and was soon joined by Donald Macpherson, who was quickly covered by some friendly spectator with a hat and great coat. The magistrates ordered webs from the shops to be drawn across the Gallowgate; but Donald Macpherson cut them asunder with his sword, and James, the late prisoner, got off on horseback. He was some time after betrayed by a man of his own tribe; and was the last person executed at Banff, previous to the abolition of heritable jurisdiction. He was an admirable performer on the violin; and his talent for composition is still in evidence in " Macpherson's Rant," "Macpherson's Pibroch," and Macpherson's Farewell." He performed those tunes at the foot of the fatal tree; and then asked if he had any friend in the crowd to whom a last gift of his instrument would be acceptable. No man had hardihood to claim friendship with a delinquent, in whose crimes the acknowledgment might implicate an avowed acquaintance. As no friend came forward, Macpherson said, the companion of many gloomy hours should perish with him; and, breaking the violin over his knee, he threw away the fragments. Donald Macpherson picked up the neck of the violin, which to this day is preserved, as a valuable memento, by the family of Cluny, chieftain of the Macphersons. 66 B. G. THE MAID'S REMONSTRANCE. FROM AN UNPUBLISHED OPERA, BY T. CAMPBELL. NEVER Wedding, ever wooing, All my life with sorrow strewing, Rivals banish'd, bosoms plighted, Charms you call your dearest blessing, ABSENCE. FROM THE SAME. "Tis not the loss of love's assurance, The fondest thoughts two hearts can cherish, What though, untouch'd by jealous madness, Absence! is not the soul torn by it From more than light, or life, or breath? "Tis Lethe's gloom, but not its quiet, The pain without the peace of death. ON THE COMPLAINTS IN AMERICA AGAINST THE BRITISH PRESS. Ir may not be known to all our readers that several citizens of America, addicted to writing books, or, like ourselves, to the less ambitious composition of periodical articles, consider themselves to be in a state of declared and justifiable hostility with the British press, for what they call the indiscriminate and virulent abuse," which it has lately heaped upon their country; and that in consequence some very angry appeals and remonstrances, and retaliative effusions, have been sent forth, to expose the extreme injustice and illiberality with which their unoffending republic has been treated on this calumniating side of the Atlantic. The vanity, or at least the views, of the writers to whom we allude, seems to have taken rather a singular turn. Heretofore a self-sufficient and irritable author's first ambition was to create an extraordinary bustle about himself; and he accordingly, as often as the fit was on him, loudly called upon the world to become a party in his personal squabbles and fantastic resentments; but the present race of paper-warriors of Boston and Philadelphia, magnanimously dismissing all consciousness. of themselves, are displaying a more expanded fretfulness, as assertors of their country's reputation: and lest, we suppose, their sincerity should be questioned, they have entered into their patriotic animosities with all the blind and morbid zeal, and all the petty punctilious susceptibility of affront, that might have been expected from the most sensitive pretender to genius, while defending his own sacred claims to admiration and respect. If the questions at issue were confined to the respective merits of Mr. Walsh, the great American appellant, against the calumnies of English writers*, and our principal periodical reviews, which he so bitterly arraigns, we should leave the belligerents to fight out their differences in a course of harmless missile warfare across the Atlantic'; but we can perceive from the tone of Mr. Walsh's book, and of his Boston reviewert, that they have taken up the affair in a spirit far exceeding that of an ordinary literary quarrel. They have laboured hard to impress upon America, that she has become in this country the object of An Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain respecting the United States of America. Part first, containing an Historical Outline of their Merits and Wrongs as Colonies, and Strictures upon the Calumnies of British Writers. By Robert Walsh, junior. Second edition. Philadelphia, 1819, 8vo. pp. 512. + North American Review and Miscellaneous Journal. New series, No. 11. April 1820, Boston. |