pride, I assured her that I would do what she wanted; and accordingly, the very morning after, being Sabbath, I preached a sermon on the help lessness of them that have no help of man; meaning aged single women, living in garret-rooms, whose forlorn state, in the gloaming of life, I made manifest to the hearts and understandings of the congregation, in such a manner that many shed tears, and went away sorrowful.

"Having thus roused the feelings of my people, I went round the houses on the Monday morning, and mentioned what I had to say more particularly about poor old Nanse Banks the schoolmistress, and truly I was rejoiced at the condition of the hearts of my people. There was a universal sympathy among them; and it was soon ordered that, what with one and another, her decay should be provided for. But it was not ordained that she should be long heavy on their good will. On the Monday the school was given up, and there was nothing but wailing among the bit lassies, the scholars, for getting the vacance, as the poor things said, because the mistress was going to lie down to dee. And, indeed, so it came to pass; for she took to her bed the same afternoon, and, in the course of the week, dwindled away, and slippet out of this howling wilderness into the kingdom of heaven, on the Sabbath following, as quietly as a blessed saint could do. And here I should men tion, that the Lady Macadam, when I told her of Nanse Banks' case, inquired if she was a suffer, and, being answered by me that she was, her lady ship sent her a pretty French enamel box full of Macabaw, a fine snuff that she had in a bottle; and, among the Macabaw, was found a guinea, at the bottom of the box, after Nanse Banks had departed this life, which was a kind thing of Lady Macadam to do."-Annals of the Parish, pp. 87-91.

and on a level nearly with the Annals of the Parish. There is no inconsiderable resem. blance, indeed, it appears to us, in the character of the two Biographies: for if we substitute the love of jobbing and little manage ment, which is inseparable from the situation of a magistrate in one of our petty Burghs, used to attach to our orthodox clergy, and for the zeal for Presbyterian discipline which make a proper allowance for the opposite effects of their respective occupations, we shall find a good deal of their remaining pe culiarities common to both those personages, the same kindness of nature with the same tranquillity of temper-and the same practical sagacity, with a similar deficiency of large views or ingenious speculations. The Provost, to be sure, is a more worldly person than the Pastor, and makes no scruple about using indirect methods to obtain his ends, from which the simplicity of the other would have recoiled;-but his ends are not, on the whole, unjust or dishonest; and his good nature, and acute simplicity, with the Burghal authority of his tone, would almost incline us to conclude, that he was somehow related to the celebrated Bailie Nicol Jarvie of the Saltmarket! The style of his narrative is exceedingly meritorious; for while it is pitched on the self-same key of picturesque homeliness and deliberate method with that of the parish Annalist, it is curiously distinguished from it, by a sensible inferiority in literature, The next of this author's publications, we and an agreeable intermixture of malaprops, believe, was "The Ayrshire Legatees," also and other figures of rhetoric befitting the in one volume, and a work of great, and composition of a loyal chief magistrate. By similar, though inferior merit, to the former. far the most remarkable and edifying thing, It is the story of the proceedings of a worthy however, in this volume, is the discovery, Scottish clergyman and his family, to whom which the worthy Provost is represented as a large property had been unexpectedly be- having gradually made, of the necessity of queathed by a relation in India, in the course consulting public opinion in his later transac of their visit to London to recover this prop- tions, and the impossibility of managing puberty. The patriarch himself and his wife,lic affairs, in the present times, with the same and his son and daughter, who form the party, barefaced assertion, and brave abuse, of auall write copious accounts of what they see, thority, which had been submitted to by a to their friends in Ayrshire-and being all less instructed generation. As we cannot but lowly and simply bred, and quite new to the suspect, that this great truth is not yet suffiscenes in which they are now introduced, ciently familiar with all in authority among make up among them a very entertaining us, and as there is something extremely enmiscellany, of original, naïve and preposterous gaging in the Provost's confession of his slow observations. The idea of thus making a and reluctant conversion, and in the honest family club, as it were, for a varied and often simplicity with which he avows his adherence contradictory account of the same objects-to the principles of the old school of corrup each tinging the picture with his own peculi- tion, though convinced that the manner of arities, and unconsciously drawing his own advancing them must now be changed, we character in the course of the description, are tempted to extract a part of his lucubrawas first exemplified, we believe, in the Hum- tions on this interesting subject. After noticphrey Clinker of Smollett, and has been since ing the death of old Bailie M'Lucre, he takes copied with success in the Bath Guide, Paul's occasion to observe :Letters to his Kinsfolk, the Fudge Family, and other ingenious pieces, both in and prose verse. Though the conception of the Ayrshire Legatees, however, is not new, the execution and details must be allowed to be original; and, along with a good deal of twaddle, and too much vulgarity, certainly display very considerable powers both of humour, invention, and acute observation.

The author's next work is "The Provost," which is decidedly better than the Legatees,

"And now that he is dead and gone, and also all first came into power and office, I may venture to those whom I found conjunct with him, when I say, that things in yon former times were not guided so thoroughly by the hand of a disinterested integ rity as in these latter years. On the contrary, it seemed to be the use and wont of men in public trusts, to think they were free to indemnify them. selves, in a left-handed way, for the time and trouble they bestowed in the same. But the thing was not so far wrong in principle, as in the hug germuggering way in which it was done, and which

gave to it a guilty colour, that, by the judicious stratagem of a right system, it would never have had. And, sooth to say, through the whole course of my public life, I met with no greater difficulties and trials, than in cleansing myself from the old habitudes of office. For I must, in verity, confess, that I myself partook, in a degree, at my beginning; of the caterpillar nature, &c.-While, therefore, I think it has been of a great advantage to the public to have survived that method of administration in which the like of Bailie M'Lucre was engendered, I would not have it understood that I think the men who held the public trust in those days a whit less honest than the men of my own time. The spirit of their own age was upon them, as that of ours is upon us; and their ways of working the wherry entered more or less into all their trafficking, whether for the commonality, or for their own particular behoof and advantage.

"I have been thus large and frank in my reflections anent the death of the Bailie, because, poor man, he had outlived the times for which he was qualified; and instead of the merriment and jocularity that his wily by-hand ways used to cause among his neighbours, the rising generation began to pick and dab at him, in such a manner, that, had he been much longer spared, it is to be feared he would not have been allowed to enjoy his earnings both with ease and honour."

The Provost, pp. 171-174. Accordingly, afterwards, when a corps of volunteers was raised in his Burgh, he ob

serves

man to prosperity, in the sequestered traffic or pri vate life."-Ibid. pp. 315, 316.

Trusting that these lessons from a person of such prudence, experience, and loyalty, will not be lost on his successors, we shall now indulge ourselves by quoting a few speci mens of what will generally be regarded as his more interesting style; and, with our usual predilection for the tragic vein, shall begin with the following very touching account of the execution of a fair young woman for the murder of her new-born infant.

"The heinousness of the crime can by no possi bility be lessened; but the beauty of the mother, her tender years, and her light-headedness, had in the hearts of all the town to compassionate her, won many favourers, and there was a great leaning especially when they thought of the ill example that had been set to her in the walk and conversation of her mother. It was not, however, within the power of the magistrates to overlook the accusation; so we were obligated to cause a precognition to be taken, and the search left no doubt of the wilfulness of the murder. Jeanie was in consequence removed to the Tolbooth, where she lay till the Lords were coming to Ayr, when she was sent thither to stand her trial before them; but, from the hour she did the deed, she never spoke.

cast to be hanged-and not only to be hanged, but "Her trial was a short procedure, and she was ordered to be executed in our town, and her body "I kept myself aloof from all handling in the cution of Jeanie was what all expected would hap given to the doctors to make an Atomy. The exepecuniaries of the business; but I lent a friendly pen; but when the news reached the town of the countenance to every feasible project that was likely other parts of the sentence, the wail was as the to strengthen the confidence of the King in the sough of a pestilence, and fain would the council loyalty and bravery of his people. For by this have got it dispensed with. But the Lord Advocate time I had learnt, that there was a wakerife Com- was just wud at the crime, both because there had mon Sense abroad among the opinions of men; been no previous concealment, so as to have been and that the secret of the new way of ruling the an extenuation for the shame of the birth, and be world was to follow, not to control, the evident cause Jeanie would neither divulge the name of the dictates of the popular voice; and I soon had rea- father, nor make answer to all the interrogatories son to felicitate myself on this prudent and season- that were put to her, standing at the bar like a able discovery; for it won me great reverence dumbie, and looking round her, and at the judges, among the forward young men, who started up at like a demented creature-and beautiful as a Flanthe call of their country. The which, as I tell ders baby! It was thought by many that her adfrankly, was an admonition to me, that the peremp-vocate might have made great use of her visible tory will of authority was no longer sufficient for the rule of mankind; and, therefore, I squared my after conduct more by a deference to public opinion, than by any laid down maxims and principles of my The consequence of which was, that my influence still continued to grow and gather strength in the community, and I was enabled to accomplish many things that my predecessors would have thought it was almost beyond the compass of manliness, as the judge himself said to the jury. to undertake."-Ibid. pp. 208-217.

own.

Upon occasion of his third and last promomotion to the Provostry, he thus records his own final conversion.

consternation, and plead that she was by herself; for in truth she had every appearance of being so. He was, however, a dure man, no doubt well enough versed in the particulars and punctualities of the law for an ordinary plea, but no of the right sort of knowledge and talent to take up the case of a forlorn lassie, misled by ill example and a winsome nature, and clothed in the allurement of love.

"On the night before the day of execution, she two town-officers, and placed again in our hands, was brought over in a chaise from Ayr between and still she never spoke. Nothing could exceed the compassion that every one had for poor Jeanie; so she was na committed to a common cell, but laid in the council room, where the ladies of the of them sat up all night and prayed for her: But town made up a comfortable bed for her, and some her thoughts were gone, and she sat silent. In the morning, by break of day, her wanton mother that had been trolloping in Glasgow came to the Tol booth door, and made a dreadful wally waeing; and the ladies were obligated, for the sake of peace, to bid her be let in. But Jeanie noticed her not, still sitting with her eyes cast down, waiting the coming on of the hour of her doom.

"When I returned home to my own house, I retired into my private chamber for a time, to consult with myself in what manner my deportment should be regulated; for I was conscious that heretofore I had been overly governed with a disposition to do things my own way; and although not in an avaricious temper, yet something, I must confess, with a sort of sinister respect for my own interests. It may be, that standing now clear and free of the world, I had less incitement to be so grippy, and so was thought of me, I very well know; but in so briety and truth I conscientiously affirm, and herein "There had not been an execution in the town record, that I had lived to partake of the purer spirit in the memory of the oldest person then living; the which the great mutations of the age had conjured last that suffered was one of the martyrs in the into public affairs; and I saw that there was a ne-time of the persecution, so that we were not skilled cessity to carry into all dealings with the concerns in the business, and had besides no hangman, but of the community, the same probity which helps a were necessitated to borrow the Ayr one. Indeed,

I being the youngest bailie, was in terror that the | could extend the arm of protection. Seeing no obligation might have fallen on me. A scaffold abatement of the wrath of heaven, that howled was erected at the Tron just under the Tolbooth and roared around us, I put on my big coat, and windows, by Thomas Gimblet, the Master-of-work, taking my staff in my hand, having tied down my who had a good penny of profit by the job; for he hat with a silk handkerchief, towards gloaming 1 contracted with the town council, and had the boards walked likewise to the kirkyard, where I beheld after the business was done to the bargain; but such an assemblage of sorrow, as few men in situThomas was then deacon of the wrights, and him-ation have ever been put to the trial to witness. self a member of our body.

never known; but it was supposed that they had foundered at their anchors, and that all on board perished. "The day being now Sabbath, and the whole town idle, every body in a manner was down on the beach, to help, and mourn, as the bodies, one after another, were cast out by the waves. Alas! few were the better of my provident preparation, and it was a thing not to be described, to see, for more than a mile along the coast, the new-made widows and fatherless bairns, mourning and weeping over the corpses of those they loved Seventeen bodies were, before ten o'clock, carried to the desolated dwellings of their families; and when old Thomas Pull, the betherel, went to ring the bell for public worship, such was the universal sorrow of the town, that Nanse Donsie, an idiot natural, ran up the street to stop him, crying, in the voice of a pardonable desperation, Wha, in sic a time, can praise the Lord?"-The Provost, pp. 177-184. The next work on our list is the history of "Sir Andrew Wylie," in three volumes-and this, we must say, is not nearly so good as any of the former. It contains, however, many passages of great interest and originality, and displays, throughout, a power which we think ought naturally to have produced something better; but the story is clumsily and heavily managed, and the personages of polite life very unsuccessfully dealt with. The author's great error, we suspect, was in resolving to have three volumes instead of one-and his writing, which was full of spirit, while he was labouring to confine his ideas within the space assigned to them, seems to have become flat and languid, the moment his task was to find matter to fill that space.

His next publication, however, though only in one volume, is undoubtedly the worst of the whole-we allude to the thing called the "The Steam-Boat," which has really no merit at all; and should never have been transplanted from the Magazine in which we are informed it first made its appearance. With the exception of some trash about the Coronation, which nobody of course could ever look at three months after the thing itself was over, it consists of a series of vulgar stories, with little either of probability or originality to recommend them. The attempt at a parallel or paraphrase on the story of Jeanie Deans, is, without any exception, the boldest and the most unsuccessful speculation we have ever seen in literary adventure.

The piece that follows, though in three volumes, is of a far higher order-and though in many points unnatural, and on the whole rather tedious, is a work undoubtedly of no ordinary merit. We mean "The Entail." It contains many strong pictures, much sarcastic observation, and a great deal of native and effective humour, though too often debased by a tone of wilful vulgarity. The ultimate conversion of the Entailer himself into a sublime and sentimental personage, is a little too romantic-the history of poor Watty, the innocent imbecile, and his Betty Bodle, is perhaps the best full-length narrative-and the drowning of honest Mr. Walkinshaw the most powerful single sketch in the work. We can afford to make no extracts.

"Ringan Gilhaize," also in three volumes,

is the last, in so far as we know, of this ready writer's publications; and is a bold attempt to emulate the fame of the Historical novels of his original; and to combine a striking sketch of great public occurrences, with the details of individual adventure. By the assistance of his grandfather's recollections, which fill nearly half the book, the hero contrives to embrace the period both of the Ref ormation from Popery, in the Reign of Queen Mary, and of the sufferings of the Covenanters from that of King Charles till the Revolution. But with all the benefit of this wide range, and the interest of those great events, we cannot say that he has succeeded in making a good book; or shown any spark of that spirit which glows in the pages of Waverley and with labour and care: and, besides a full narOld Mortality. The work, however, is written rative of all the remarkable passages of our ecclesiastical story, from the burning of Mr. Wishart at St. Andrew's, to the death of Dundee at Killicrankie, contains some animated and poetical descriptions of natural scenery, and a few sweet pictures of humble virtue and piety. Upon the whole, however, it is a heavy work-and proves conclusively, that the genius of the author lies much more in the quieter walks of humorous simplicity, intermixed with humble pathos, than the lofty paths of enthusiasm or heroic emotion. In the first part we meet with nothing new or remarkable, but the picture of the Archbishop of St. Andrews' luxurious dalliance with his tragical death of that fair victim of his seduc paramour, and of the bitter penitence and tions, both which are sketched with considerable power and effect. In the latter part, there is some good and minute description of the perils and sufferings which beset the poor fugitive Covenanters, in the days of their long and inhuman persecution. The cruel desolation of Gilhaize's own household is also given with great force and pathos; as well as the description of that irresistible impulse of zeal and vengeance that drives the sad survivor to rush alone to the field of Killicrankie, and to repay at last, on the head of the slaughtered victor of that fight, the accumulated wrongs and op pressions of his race. But still the book is tiresome, and without effect. The narrative is neiare too numerous, and too much alike; while ther pleasing nor probable, and the calamities the uniformity of the tone of actual suffering and dim religious hope, weighs like a load on the spirit of the reader. There is no interesting complication of events or adventure, and no animating development or catastrophe. In short, the author has evidently gone beyond his means in entering the lists with the master of historical romance; and must be contented, hereafter, to follow his footsteps in the more approachable parts of his career.

Of the other set of publications before us, "Valerius" is the first in point of date; and the most original in conception and design. It is a Roman story, the scene of which is laid in the first age of Christianity; and its object seems to be, partly to present us with a living

The next in order, we believe, is "Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life,"- -an affected, or at least too poetical a title, and, standing before a book, not very natural, but bright with the lights of poetry. It is a collection of twenty-five stories or little pieces, half novels half idylls, characteristic of Scottish scenery and manners-mostly pathetic, and mostly too favourable to the country to which they relate. They are, on the whole, we think, very beautifully and sweetly written, and in a soft spirit of humanity and gentleness. But the style is too elaborate and uniform;-. there is occasionally a good deal of weakness and commonplace in the passages that are most emphatically expressed, and the poetical heightenings are often introduced where they hurt both the truth and the simplicity of the picture. Still, however, they have their foundation in a fine sense of the peculiarities of our national character and scenery, and a deep feeling of their excellence and beautyand, though not executed according to the dictates of a severe or correct taste, nor calculated to make much impression on those who have studied men and books, "with a learned spirit of observation," are yet well fitted to minister delight to less fastidious spirits,and to revive, in many world-wearied hearts, those illusions which had only been succeeded by illusions less innocent and attractive, and those affections in which alone there is neither illusion nor disappointment.

picture of the manners and characters of those | has not failed through any deficiency of his, ancient times, and partly to trace the effects has been prevented, we think, from succeedof the true faith on the feelings and affections ing by the very nature of the subject. of those who first embraced it, in the dangers and darkness of expiring Paganism. It is a work to be excepted certainly from our general remark, that the productions before us were imitations of the celebrated novels to which we have so often made reference, and their authors disciples of that great school. Such as it is, Valerius is undoubtedly original; or at least owes nothing to that new source of inspiration. It would be more plausible to say, that the author had borrowed something from the travels of Anacharsis, or the ancient romance of Heliodorus and Charielea-or the later effusions of M. Chateaubriand. In the main, however, it is original; and it is written with very considerable power and boldness. But we cannot, on the whole, say that it has been successful; and even greater powers could not have insured success for such an undertaking. We must know the daily life and ordinary habits of the people in whose domestic adventures we take an interest:and we really know nothing of the life and habits of the ancient Romans and primitive Christians. We may patch together a cento out of old books, and pretend that it exhibits a view of their manners and conversation: But the truth is, that all that is authentic in such a compilation can amount only to a few fragments of such a picture; and that any thing like a complete and living portrait must be made up by conjecture, and inferences drawn at hazard. Accordingly, the work before us consists alternately of enlarged transcripts of particular acts and usages, of which accounts have been accidentally transmitted to us, and details of dialogue and observation in which there is nothing antique or Roman but the names,-and in reference to which, the assumed time and place of the action is felt as a mere embarrassment and absurdity. To avoid or disguise this awkwardness, the "It was on a fierce and howling winter day that only resource seems to be, to take shelter in my way to the Manse of that parish, a solitary peI was crossing the dreary moor of Auchindown, on a vague generality of talk and description, destrian. The snow, which had been incessantly and to save the detection of the modern in falling for a week past, was drifted into beautiful his masquerade of antiquity, by abstaining but dangerous wreaths, far and wide, over the from every thing that is truly characteristic melancholy expanse-and the scene kept visibly either of the one age or the other, and conse- from every point of the compass struck the dazzling shifting before me, as the strong wind that blew quently from every thing by which either masses, and heaved them up and down in endless character or manners can be effectually de- transformation. There was something inspiriting lineated or distinguished. The very style of in the labour with which, in the buoyant strength the work before us affords a curious example of youth, I forced my way through the storm-and of the necessity of this timid indefiniteness, I could not but enjoy those gleamings of sunlight under such circumstances, and of its awkward opening in the sky, and gave a character of cheerthat ever and anon burst through some unexpected effect. To exclude the tone of modern times, fulness, and even warmth, to the sides or summits it is without idiom, without familiarity, with- of the stricken hills. As the momentary cessations out any of those natural marks by which of the sharp drift allowed my eyes to look onwards alone either individuality of character, or the and around, I saw here and there up the little openstamp and pressure of the time, can possibly ing valleys, cottages just visible beneath the black be conveyed, and runs on, even in the gay side some small spot of green pasture kept open for and satirical passages, in a rumbling, round-the sheep. These intimations of life and happiness about, rhetorical measure, like a translation from solemn Latin, or some such academical exercitation. It is an attempt, in short, which, though creditable to the spirit and talents of the author, we think he has done wisely in not seeking to repeat,-and which, though it

As the author's style of narration is rather copious, we cannot now afford to present our readers with any of his stories-but, as a specimen of his tone and manner of composition, we may venture on one or two of his introductory descriptions. The following, of a snowy morning, is not the least characteristic.

stems of their snow-covered clumps of trees, or be

came delightfully to me in the midst of the desola. tion; and the barking of a dog, attending some Shepherd in his quest on the hill, put fresh vigour into my limbs, telling me that, lonely as I seemed to be, I was surrounded by cheerful thongh unseen company, and that I was not the only wanderer over the snows.