of the harbour-master, who came alongside in a beautiful boat manned with French Canadians. He ordered all the passengers to be mustered upon deck, and called them over, that he might ascertain if each individual answered the description annexed to his name in the Custom-house list. This being accomplished, the Captain desired Hurder and his companion to come forward, and then explained to the harbour-master how they had got into the ship without his knowledge or consent. The former bid the mate detain them on board until farther or ders, and then took leave, after his crew had received a quantity of provisions as their usual perquisite.

None of the emigrants went ashore that night. They continued walking the deck till a late hour, and anticipating the pleasure they would have in rambling through Quebec next morning. Montreal was the place of our ship's destination, and the greater part of them meant to remain on board until we reached that city, in order to save the expence of going there in a steam-boat.

At an early hour on the succeeding day, all the emigrants were in motion. The Captain informed them that the vessel would lie at anchor for two days, and that those who chose might go ashore and visit the town, provided they returned on board within the time specified. This intelligence being promulgated, many of the females and young men hastened to dress themselves in their best apparel, that they might be ready to secure places in the ship's boat, the first time it was sent

ashore. But some, who had talked much of the great connexions they had in Quebec, the letters of introduction and recommendation they were provided with, and the flattering attentions they expected to receive when they delivered them, seemed suddenly to forget all these things, and to become alike friendless and unknown. They never even proposed to visit that city, which had once been a place of such promise to them, although it lay directly before their eyes. Others, who were prevented by the deficiencies of their wardrobes from making a respectable appearance, declared that they would rather remain on board, than wander through dusty streets, where nothing at all remarkable or interesting was to be seen. Pride soothed the pangs of disappointment during the day, and at night envy found a balm in the triumph of ill-nature; for those who had been ashore came back weary, dispirited, and out of humour, and again, took up their abodes in the steerage, and endeavoured to console themselves with the hope of finding Montreal a prettier, larger, and more entertaining town than Quebec.

I left the ship next morning, and on the succeeding day saw her bear up the St Lawrence, under the influence of a favourable wind. The emigrants waved their hats to me, and I accompanied my return of the salute with fervent wishes that the comforts, blessings, and advantages of the land to which they were hastening, might exceed their warmest and earliest anticipations.

MR NORTH,

WITH this I send you some specimens of translation from the great Northern Bard of antiquity, whose worksthanks to the fostering care and fatherly protection of some one or other -have come to us in tolerable preservation; yet whose very existence, (mirabile dictu!) is a matter of the strongest doubt. As to the authenticity of the works ascribed to Ossian, there is certainly abundant cause for scepticism; and from the days of Samuel Johnson, down to those of Malcolm Laing, Wordsworth, and the author of Waverley, it has furnished an inexhaustible subject for the exhibition

of hypothetical conjecture and antiquarian research. But to the reader of poetry,-to him who loves beautiful imagery, sublime sentiment, and deep pathos for the corresponding feelings which they awaken in the bosom, wholly unconnected with ther tendency to any particular bias, it must be a matter of moonshine whether the whole, or only a part, was generated by the son of Fingal, or if the entire structure was elaborated within the pericranium of our more modern friend, James Macpherson, Esq. Are the writings of Rowley destitute of merit, because we know them to be the composition of the boy Chatterton ?

It is curious to observe what an ef fect this rage for antiquity produces, and how it is capable of altering our estimation of the intrinsic value of things, as if either age or scarcity ought to confer true value on things which must have been, and ought ever to be considered as trifling; yet they do so, whether it be on a cracked Roman jar, or a Queen Anne's farthing. An additional eclogue of Virgil would weigh down, in our eyes, a whole bale of common-place Herculaneum manuscripts, whether rolled or unrolled; So I suppose I have not the least chance of ever being numbered among the associates of the Antiquarian Society.

Verily, Mr North, the mind of man is a strange thing, and a heterogeneous compound. In confirmation of this particular tendency in our nature of which we are now speaking, we have almost uniformly found, that they who believe in the age and authenticity of Ossian, will award him no lower a station than among the Homers, Dantes, Miltons, and Shakespeares; whereas, such as consider him a modern fiction, will be contented with nothing less than a condemnation of the whole mass, as little better than rant, bom bast, and fustian,-merely because it is written by Macpherson; as if there was no such thing as sterling merit, or as if a standard of real poetical excel lence could exist only in the reader's imagination. We remember a speech of Lord Chatham's, which says, that ❝s youth cannot be imputed to any man as a reproach;" nor can recent production, we should suppose in the same way, be considered a blemish, (as Mr Hazlitt would fain have it,) in any work. It is surely no fault in Scott, Byron, or Campbell, that they have not lived and been gathered to their fathers some thousand years ago.

The works of Ossian, in the state in which they are served up to us by Macpherson, may be considered rather as the raw materials of poetry, than as exhibiting that art, condensation, and selection of thought, which are requi site to form a finished composition. There is a thronging-a profused as semblage of lofty and magnificent imagery, seen in the distance, rapidly shifting, shadowing, and indistinct. "The glory and the splendour of a dream," united with its obscurity and

its perplexing remoteness. We hold not converse with human flesh and blood, but with heroic spectres, *who pace about the hills continually," and that come to us from the breast of the ocean. There are neither cities, nor civilization, nor society; but the wanderings, and wars, the impulses of nature, and passion in its untamed empire. Mossy stones mark out the dwellings of the dead; the wind curls the wave, swells the sail, and agitates the forest; and the silence of night is broken by gibbering voices, and "airy tongues that syllable mens' names on sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses."

Yet, in the narration of the adventures, and in the construction of the fables, a wonderful stretch of inven tion is exhibited; and a method is visible, even in the most irregular and inconsistent parts, which is not a lit tle surprising. The Epic of Fingal contains some passages of heroic beau ty, which would thrill the blood of a coward, and make him long to be a soldier; while the Songs of Selma abound in touches of the most deep and the most artless pathos.

It is strange that Wordsworth, who has studied so profoundly, and so successfully, the philosophy of the material world, should make the never-ending delineation of natural objects and appearances in these works, the theme of his scepticism as to their authenticity, and of his non-belief concerning the blind Ossian, as if blindness is not affirmed of Homer, and known of Milton. If Wordsworth has ever dipped into the poems of Blacklock-who was born blind-he may there discover that a power of describing the material world, in all the variety and vicissitude of its presentations, may be attained, either from a successful mental effort in retaining the delineations of others; or, by a kind of intuitive perception, though, after the experiment of Locke with his blind man, who thought scarlet: colour like the sound of a trumpet, we would: rather imagine not.

Moore, in his Introduction to his Irish Melodies, has thrown out a needless sarcasm in saying, that if Ireland could have Burns, she would willing ly give up all claim to Ossian, as it there was one point of similarity in the constitution of their genius, or as if one point of comparison could be