Of many men, shall grow," "You dream!" the Whisper scorning said I dared not answer No. "If I can gain nor name, nor power, Nor gold by high emprise, Bread to the hungry I will give, And dry the orphan's eyes; Through me the Sun of Joy shall find Its way to Sorrow's door;" "The wildest dream of all," then said The Whisper," you are poor." "I'm poor, unheeded; but I'll be An honest man," I said; "TRUTH I shall worship, yea and feel For all whom God hath made; The poor and honest man can stand Before earth's highest,-such I'll be!" The Whisper spoke not now !'-p. 121–123. VI. 'THE FOUK O' OCHTERGAEN. 'Happy, happy be their dwallin's, Weel I mind ilk wud an' burnie, An' ilk faither douce an' auld! Chorus. Happy, happy be their dwallin's, Weel I mind the ploys an' jokin's Chorus.-Happy, happy be their dwallin's, Truer lads an' bonnier lasses Never danced aneath the mune;Love an' Friendship dwalt amo' them, An' their daffin' ne'er was dune. Chorus.-Happy, happy be their dwallin's By the burn an' in the glen; Cheerie lasses, cantie callan's, Are they a' in Ochtergaen. I ha'e left them noo for ever: Chorus.-Happy, happy be their dwallin's, Whare'er the path o' life may lead me, Ae thing sure-I winna mane Chorus. Happy, happy be their dwallin's, By the burn and in the glen; If our readers have enjoyed these, they may find plenty more in the volume as good or better; and some which we could hardly abstain from quoting. And, when they have been moved to laughter, or touched even to tears, or elevated and animated by some stirring strain, or calmed by solemn thought, they may shut the book and depart, as we must, to their proper, and we trust honourable and useful, avocations, with this good moral ringing in their ears: But true hearts a'-gae work awa, UNIVERSAL CO-OPERATION. To legislate for the human race is one of the highest offices on which the human mind can enter, and, at the same time, the most difficult. So far are legislators from being born, that the study of a long life, acting upon a suitable organization, scarcely makes an individual, in any great degree, eligible to the duties of ment. govern The man who would govern others must know how to govern himself. He must not be possessed with the tame equanimity of the passionless, he must be imbued with the tempered fire of the impassioned. He must have feelings and passions in common with his kind, or he will not sympathize with them-he will not understand them; his theories will be partial and his practice absurd. Like the crane in the fable, he will put his provision for human happiness into narrow-necked bottles, forgetting that, though the long and narrow beak can avail itself of such a medicine, to the broad-muzzled animal, nothing short of breaking the form can admit him to the food which the form encloses. Ă parallel is thus presented to the laws and institutions of such as are, by peculiarity of training, distinct from their fellow creatures, and who yet regard themselves as the standard of the species. But, while the legislator has the feelings and passions which are so common, he must have that command of them which is so uncommon. His nature must be, like the Arabian steed, full of force and fire, as ready to endure as to dare; but he must bestride that nature, as the Arab does his horse, with pride and love— pride, which deprecates defalcation from the high course he has marked out for himself, as he would death; and love, which forbids him to wrong the noble nature that he guides, by any neglect. He that ruleth his own spirit is greater than he that taketh a city.' The legislator must, Janus-like, look back upon the past, and forward into the future: his telescopic vision must be directed to the source and termination of things, as far as it be possible for him to penetrate points so deeply veiled; and, at the same time, his microscopic vision must mark and observe the present, even to the passing vapour of the hour, and the pernicious vermin of the minute. He must love humanity with that large love which seeks happiness in the happiness of humanity, suffers agony in its misery, humiliation in its debasement, and which would make him content to live, or resigned to die, if to do either might assist to advance universal salvation. Where shall we look for a legislator such as this? Not echo, but the whole world, may answer, Where? Sit there such on any of the thrones before which the trammeled multitude of every latitude pay tribute, tremble, cringe, and scowl? Sit there such in any of the assemblies ostensibly convened to make laws for these multitudes? No-and how should they? That infirm and senseless form of humanity called a Kingthat excrescence first cast forth by human weakness, and since continued by its craft, and partaking of the properties to which it owes its origin and continuance-how is it fit to personify greatness-to be the pedestaled example to a nation—a shining light on the civil horizon, purifying, warming, and irradiating the moral atmosphere, and chasing all its clouds and vapours ? Take the crown from the head of royalty, the robe from its body, strike the sceptre from its hand, and drive away the herds which minister to the mockeries of its gilded sepulchre, and let royalty stand nude by the red Indian with his practised eye which pierces space like the eagle's—with his fleet foot which traverses it like the deer's with his high heart which will not heave with a groan beneath the scalping knife of his foe,-and what looks a king?-That embodied lullaby, with whose first. food falsehood was administered, and who, when pomp and flattery do not sustain him above his fellows, falls so immeasurably below them! Place royalty beside a less poetic being than the Indian, place him beside the enlightened mechanic of the present day, with his informed (thanks to penny and twopenny trash') but uninflated mind, his home anxieties and thence intensified affections; who lives by his honest, overtasked, and ill-requited labour, and submits to the scalping knives of tithes and taxation; and what looks a king? And now for the swarms which buzz about a court, and bask in the mock sun of royalty,-their perch and their plumage are all for which they care, and the gilded cage which forbids their free flight is the altar of their debasing worship. That grovelling aggrandizement, which consists in pomp and parade, is the sole ambition of the broods of aristocracy. Man, by nature the creature only of God, and the commander of nothing but himself, sinks into the creature of a king, and the tyrant of all below him in the conventional scale; directly or indirectly he invades their dearest privileges, insults their finest feelings, and taints their social atmosphere. The superficial polish of courtesy, like the varnish ou some insects, prevents aristocracy being as loathsome to the senses as to the soul; but the evils inflicted through its means are not for this polish the less fatal-perhaps more so, as the razor dipped in oil cuts deepest, because the wound it makes is at the moment unfelt. It is said that there is no smoke without some fire, and certainly there is no fire without some fuel. If the people will put themselves like dry sticks under the caldron of corruption, of course it will be kept boiling. There is no antidote to the moral poison which infects the political and social atmosphere with the breath of mock greatness and its worshippers,-there is no antidote but a real love, a real respect for humanity. What would the actors, from the principal down to the meanest page in that puppet show, a coronation, feel, if the people, instead of rending the air with senseless acclamation, would let the pageant pass unnoticed? Why, the proudest player would feel ready to sink with shame under the sense of his own emptiness, and each would shuffle out of the show as soon as he could. I am no enemy, let me here parenthetically observe, to ceremonies and assemblies which serve to congregate multitudes, animate joyous feelings, and kindle glowing spirits. I agree with Fanny Butler in all she says of the home religion' of keeping birthdays, &c., and we could not do better than cultivate social religion, political religion, by commemorating the anniversaries of the periods of great events and glorious human beings. Be Christmas day a day of universal charity in memory of the model of benevolence on that day given to the world; be the birth of Washington commemorated by all that can indicate admiration of patriotism and freedom; be Shakspeare's birth commemorated by all that can do honour to genius and poetry. In each association, however small, be there domestic festivals and let these, like circles in water, extending into larger and larger circles, animate the spirit which would occasionally convene meetings to do honour to the memory of the social, the national, the universal benefactor. If, in allusion to these, the young were to ask the elders, Why is this? Wherefore make we these rejoicings?' the |