I'm sick of all the double knocks And one in blue, at number two, It's very hard they come so near, Miss Bell, I hear, has got a dear Which she has never done; I am not old, I am not plain, I am not crooked, like the bride But even beauty has no chance, At number six, they say, Miss Rose The imp they show with bended bow- But if he had he'd never deign To shoot for number one. It's very hard, and so it is, And here's a ballad-singer come O take away your foolish song, THE SNOW STORM. PROFESSOR WILSON. [It is generally supposed that John Wilson,-"Christopher North," whose name is so indissolubly associated with "Blackwood's Magazine," was the original editor of that periodical, but the post was first held by Thomas Pringle. Wilson, however, was entrusted with the management shortly after its establishment, and a more brilliant editor, perhaps, it was never the good fortune of a publisher to obtain; he threw into it all the force of his strong and original genius, at times making his readers roar with delight over his broad exuberant humour, then taking their breath away by his withering sarcasm, and anon melting them to tears by his tenderness and pathos. John Wilson was for years the Warwick -the king-crowner of the British press. His praise was fame, but his ill word was utter desolation; still on the whole it must be admitted that he was thoroughly conscientious, his only bias being a leaning towards the Scottish worthies by whom he was assisted. When was a Scotchman not clannish? Wilson was the son of a manufacturer in Paisley, where he was born, 1785. He was educated firstly at the University of Glasgow, whence he passed to Magdalene College, Oxford. On completing his studies he took up his abode on the banks of Windermere, and here wrote his first poems, the principal of which were-" The Isle of Palms," 1812, followed by "The City of the Plague." He next essayed prose fiction, and added to our permanent literature, Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life;" the "Trials of Margaret Lyndsay;" and "The Forresters." In 1820 he was appointed to the chair of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh, and thenceforth known as "Professor." This position he resigned in 1851, when the Crown settled on him a pension of 300l. a year. He died 1854, and his works, including his magazine papers and the celebrated Noctes" of "Black wood's Magazine," have since been published by the Messrs. Blackwood in a complete form.] LITTLE Hannah Lee had left her master's house soon as the rim of the great moon was seen by her eyes, that had been long anxiously watching it from the window, rising, like a joyful dream, over the gloomy mountaintops; and all by herself she tripped along beneath the beauty of the silent heaven. Still as she kept ascending and descending the knolls that lay in the bosom of the glen, she sang to herself a song, a hymn, or a psalm, without the accompaniment of the streams, now all silent in the frost, and ever and anon she stopped to try to count the stars that lay in some more beautiful part of the sky, or gazed on the constellations that she knew, and called them, in her joy, by the names they bore among the shepherds. There were none to hear her voice or see her smiles but the ear and eye of Providence. As on she glided, and took her looks from heaven, she saw her own little fireside her parents waiting for her arrival-the Bible opened for worship -her own little room kept so neatly for her, with its mirror hanging by the window, in which to braid her hair by the morning light-her bed prepared for her by her mother's hand-the primroses in her garden, peeping through the snow-old Tray, who ever welcomed her home with his dim white eyes-the pony and the cow;-friends all and inmates of that happy household. So stepped she along, while the snowdiamonds glittered around her feet, and the frost wore a wreath of lucid pearls round her forehead. She had now reached the edge of the Black-moss, which lay halfway between her master's and her father's dwelling, when she heard a loud noise coming down Glen-Scrae, and in a few seconds she felt on her face some flakes of snow. She looked up the glen, and saw the snow-storm coming down fast as a flood. She felt no fears; but she ceased her song, and, had there been a human eye to look upon her there, it might have seen a shadow upon her face. She continued her course, and felt bolder and bolder every step that brought her nearer to her parents' house. But the snow-storm had now reached the Black-moss, and the broad line of light that had lain in the direction of her home was soon swallowed up, and the child was in utter darkness. She saw nothing but the flakes of snow, interminably intermingled and furiously wafted in the air close to her head; she heard nothing but one wild, fierce, fitful howl. The cold became intense, and her little feet and hands were fast being benumbed into insensibility. "It is a fearful change," muttered the child to herself; but still she did not fear, for she had been born in a moorland cottage, and lived all her days among the hardships of the hills. "What will become of the poor sheep?" thought she; but still she scarcely thought of her own danger, for innocence, and youth, and joy are slow to think of aught evil befalling themselves, and, thinking benignly of all living things, forget their own fear in their pity for others' sorrow. At last she could no longer discern a single mark on the snow, either of human steps or of sheep-track, or the foot-print of a wildfowl. Suddenly, too, she felt out of breath and exhausted, and, shedding tears for herself at last, sank down in the snow. It was now that her heart began to quake with fear. She remembered stories of shepherds lost in the snow; of a mother and a child frozen to death on that very. moor; and in a moment she knew that she was to die. Bitterly did the poor child weep; for death was terrible to her, who, though poor, enjoyed the bright little world of youth and innocence. The skies of heaven were dearer than she knew to her; so were the flowers of earth. She had been happy at her work, happy in her sleep, happy in the kirk on Sabbath. A thousand thoughts had the solitary child, and in her own heart was a spring of happiness, pure and undisturbed as any fount that sparkles unseen all the year through in some quiet nook among the pastoral hills. But now there was to be an end of all this; she was to be frozen to death, and lie there till the thaw might come, and then her father would find her body, and carry it away to be buried in the kirkyard. The tears were frozen on her cheeks as soon as shed, and scarcely had her little hands strength to clasp themselves together, as the thought of an overruling and merciful Lord came across her heart. Then, indeed, the fears of this religious child were calmed, and she heard without terror the plover's wailing cry, and the deep boom of the bittern sounding in the moss. "I will repeat the Lord's Prayer;" and, drawing her plaid more closely around her, she whispered beneath its ineffectual 66 cover, Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Had human aid been within fifty yards, it could have been of no avail : eye could not see her, ear could not hear her in that howling wilderness. But that low prayer was heard in the centre of eternity, and that little sinless child was lying in the snow beneath the all-seeing eye of God. The maiden, having prayed to her Father in heaven, then thought of her father on earth. Alas, they were not far separated! The father was lying but a short distance from his child; he too had sunk down in the drifting snow after having, in less than an hour, exhausted all the strength of fear, pity, hope, despair, and resignation that could rise in a father's heart, blindly seeking to rescue his only child from death, thinking that one desperate exertion might enable them to perish in each other's arms. There they lay, within a stone's-throw of each other, while a huge snow-drift was every moment piling itself up into a more insurmountable barrier between the dying parent and his dying child. (By permission of Messrs. Blackwood & Sons.) THE BACHELOR. THE naturalists say that these singular creatures |