his memory, and neither placeman's sophistry nor patriot's rant will be likely in any way to interfere with his repose. Intense fatigue, whether intellectual or manual, however, is not the best security for sound slumber at any hour, more particularly in the morning.

Even at this hour the swart Savoyard (filius nullius) issues forth on his diurnal pilgrimage, "remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow," to excruciate on his superannuated hurdy-gurdy that sublime melody, "the hundred and seventh psalm," or the plaintive sweetness of "Isabel," perhaps speculating on a breakfast for himself and Pug, somewhere between Knightsbridge and Old Brentford. Poor fellow! Could he procure a few bones of mutton, how hard would it be for his hungry comprehension to understand the displeasure which similar objects occasioned to Attila on the plains of Champagne!

Then the too frequent preparations for a Newgate execution—but enough of such details; it is the muse of Mr. Crabbe that alone could do them justice. We would say to the great city, in the benedictory spirit of the patriot of Venice,—esto perpetua! Notwithstanding thy manifold "honest knaveries," peace be within thy walls, and plenty pervade thy palaces, that thou mayest ever approve thyself, oh queen of capitals,

Blackwood's Magazine.

THE SKETCH-BOOK.

SCOTTISH SPORTING.

From the Letters of Two Sportsmen; with Recollections of the Ettrick Shepherd.

(For the Mirror.)

After visiting Thoms, the sculptor, "Burns's cottage," "Halloway Kirk," Monument, &c., in Ayrshire, we toddled on over to Dumfries, and had a crack with poor "Rabbie Burns's" widow, not forgetting McDiarmid the author; thence to Moffat, and up that dismal glen, the pass of Moffat, to the grey mare's tail, a waterfall, so called from its resembling the silvery tail of a grey mare; and truly, if the simile were extended into infinitude, which from its sublimity it would admit of, we might compare its waving, silky stream swinging over the broad face of its lofty grey rock, to the tail of the pale horse of Revelation, over the chaos of time. It was a sombre, solemn sort of a day, and the dense clouds hung curtaining down the mountain sides, like our living pall as it were—I scarcely know how—but we felt dismally until we took a dram and got into a perspiration, with tugging up the sinuosities of the cliff's, to the summit of the waterfall. Loch Skein, where we were galvanized, electrified, magnetized, and petrified, all at once, by the quackery, clackery, flappery, quatter, splatter, clatter, scatter, and dash-de-blash, and squash, of a flock of wild ducks, on its reedy, flaggy surface; O, what a scutter was there! Our hearts, too full, leapt into our mouths, but our guns were turned into tons of lead, and ere we could heave them up to our shoulders of clay, the thousand had fled into the eternal grey mist of the mountain, like the dispersion of a confused dream. There we stood like two sumphs, (as Hogg calls those who are ganging a bit aglee in their wits) gaping and staring at each other with a look which said, why did not youshoot? Our dogs too stood as stiff as two pumps, with tails standing out like the handles! Apropos—talking of Hogg, the poet, we called to see him in his half-acre island in Eltrive Lake, and truly we met with that burning hot reception which we had anticipated from Blackwood's Magazine description of him. We had no notes of introductionexcept the notes which our guns pricked upon the echoes of Ettric Forest, and which James Hogg heard and answered with a view-hallo, for us to "come awa doon the brae an' tak' a dram o'speerits," and so we did, and in true Highland style; he met us at the door and gave us a drain from the bottle, first gulping a glass himself of that double-strong like & fire-eater, without a twink of the eye or a wince of the mouth; and then with a grip o' the daddle, which made the fingers crack, he pulled us into his bonnie wee bit shooting box of a house, with a "Come awa ben ye'll be the better o' a bite o' venison pasty;" so in we went, and were introduced to his bonnie wife and sousy barnes, which latter, Jammie Hogg nursed as though he lov'd 'em frae the uttermost ends o' his sowl.

Campbell has it against Byron, that "the poetic temperament is incompatible with matrimonial felicity." Fudge, fudge, Mr. Campbell, did you ever visit James Hogg?

Well, we sat down to take a snack with James and an extraordinary monkey of his, which he has dressed in the garb of a Highland soldier, and which too, sat down at table, and played his knife and fork like a true epicure. "An extrornry crater is that wee Heelan-man o' mine, gentlemen, he can conduc himsel' as weel's ony Christan man at table, and aft when I'm pennin' a bit rhyme 'thegither, the crater'll lowp up 'ith chair anent me and tak' up a pen, in exac emeetation o' me, and keck into my 'een in his cunnin way, as if he was speering me what to write aboot; he surely maun ha' a feck o' thocht in his heed if are could gar him spak it; but ye ken his horsemanship beats a'. I had a spire-haired collie, a breed atween a Heelan lurcher, a grew, and a wolf, dog, a meety, muckle collie he is for sure—weel, gentlemen, do ye ken, he a' rides on him when we hoont the tod (fox), an' to see him girt a screep o' red flannin on for a saddle, that the neer-do-weel toor fra a beggar-wife's tattered duds ane day; an' then to see him lowp on like a mountebank, and sit skreighin an' chatrin, an' cronkin like a paddock on a clud o'yearth. O, its a lachin teeklesome sicht for sure—an' then hee'l thud, thud, thud his wee bit neive 'ith shouther 'oth collie, an' steek his toes in his side, just for a' the world like a Newmarket jockey, an' then hee'l turn him roon behint-afore an' play treeks, till collie gerns at him; an' then beway o' makin friens again, hee'l streek an' pat him, an' peek the ferlie oot o' his hurdles; an' then when we're a' ready for gannin awa, to be sure what a dirdum an' stramash do they twa keek up; an' then aff they flee like the deevil in a gale o' wind, an' are oot o' sicht before ye can say owr the border an' far awa. But I ha' just been speerin the forester aboot the tod (fox), an' he gars me gang owr the muir to Ettric Forest, an' leuk in a cleuch in a rock there is there, an' I shall find the half-peckit banes o' a joop o' mine that stray'd yestreen. So, gentlemen, if yer fond o' oor kin o' sportin, ye shall hae such a sicht o' rinnin an' ridin as ye ne'er saw heretofore we your twa een."

We readily accepted the invite, and off we set in company with the "Ettric Shepherd" and his monkey, and certainly it was a "teeklesome sicht" to see him mounted on the long, lank, wire-haired, shaggy wolf-dog-grew-lurcher, while he in play was scouring round and round the wild and barren moor; away and away as swift as the wind, over brae and bourn and bog they went, like a red petticoated witch on a besom, flying in the storm.

On our way we fell in with the foresters, who were going a deer-stalking; they had a buck to kill for the duke, so we joined company, and gave that satisfactory shrug of the shoulders, with the expectation of sport, that a spider would feel while sitting in the corner of a hollow nut-shell, and seeing his victim already entangled in his web, while he was whetting his appetite with suspended hope, in dream of anticipated fattenings.

We made the best of our way to the watering-place haunt of the deer. Silence was the word, and we crept on tip-toe and tip-toe, scarce breathing, keeping ever out of the wind's course; for they have an