1830.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



J90 



convenient distances from the old. The practice 

 was little known eighty years since ; and the fa- 

 Rhion seems to have been led by the citizens of 

 Edinburgh, towards the year 1770. Strangers 

 and others who have seen this splendid and ro- 

 mantic town, are mostly struck with the contrast 

 between the old town, occupying a central ridge 

 of ground, and the new and new-new towns, ly- 

 ing at easy distances across the ravines, on its 

 north and southern quarters. Before these lat- 

 ter places of residence were built for the accom- 

 modation of the upper and nearly all the middle 

 ranks, the whole population, then amounting to 

 60,0()0 persons, was crowded into the ancient 

 city. All degrees of rank were thus, as a matter 

 of necessity, placed in the immediate proximity 

 of each other, and a state of society was pro- 

 duced of a very peculiar nature. Like the tene- 

 ments in Paris, and most of the towns in the Ita- 

 lian states, the lands, or fabrics of houses, were 

 divided into flats or separate dwellings, with their 

 individual outer doors to the lands or landing- 

 places on the stair, which was common to all par- 

 ties. As is the practice still in the above foreign 

 towns, each flat had its distinct degree of respec- 

 tability; and the rank of the tenant was lowered 

 in quality in proportion to his distance from the 

 ground floor. Peers, lords of session, clergymen, 

 advocates, attornies, shopkeepers, dancing-mas- 

 ters, artizans, and others in a still lower grade, 

 occupied flats and half flats from the first to the 

 eighth story. The cellar was, moreover, dedicated 

 to the use of a cobbler, chimney-sweep, or water- 

 carrier, with a shop constructed on the street- 

 level, when the land faced a great thoroughfare; 

 each tenement thus exhibiting a specimen of the 

 chief component parts of a little town. And as 

 nearly all the houses partook of the same charac- 

 ter, both on the main street and in the alleys or 

 closes, it will be perceived, that the society of the 

 place must have been formed in adaptation to the 

 tangible peculiarities of the town. 



There arose much of what would now be reckon- 

 ed as discomfortable, from a residence in such 

 hampered situations ; but allowing this to be true, 

 the system of all classes congregating in the im- 

 mediate proximity of each other, had an excellent 

 effect in keeping the number of poor within bounds, 

 and in preventing the introduction of assessments. 

 The rich took an interest in their "poor neigh- 

 bours," (that being, let it be remarked, the appel- 

 lation of the destitute and poor at the time of 

 which we write,) and these in return paid them by 

 condescendence and real respect. All was so well 

 arranged, that each mutually conferred a benefit 

 on the other. When a humble, and apparently 

 very honest family, known to the neighbourhood, 

 lost its chief support by the sudden death of a pa- 

 vent when sickness and want had entered their 

 dwelling or when any minor misfortune overtook 

 the poor inhabitants of the stair, the whole land 

 was interested, and the intelligence spread by 

 means of an understream of communication, at 

 all times current through the medium of gossips, 

 servants, or hair-dressers, the latter of whom then 

 acted as a species of morning newspaper to the 

 upper classes. 



So well as Mr. Chalmers writes, he 

 might surely, with very little trouble, 

 have excluded such vulgar Scotticisms 

 as notwithstanding of to remember of 

 a thing till, for to thereby, for there- 



abouts and his usage of condescend, 

 which is quite unintelligible to English 

 ears, for instance we could not here 

 condescend on the precise sum which is 

 still paid out of the Exchequer annually 

 to Scottish sinecurists. Does he mean 

 ascertain ? 



Matilda, a Poem, by H. Ingram. A 

 more harmless amusement than string- 

 ing syllables into verse there cannot well 

 be it is occupation it is delightful to 

 the performer. 



There is a pleasure in poetic pains 



Which none but poets know. The shifts and 

 turns, 



The expedients and inventions multiform, &c. 



as Cowper has it, whom Nature meant 

 for a satirist, and surely was no idealist. 

 The poet the man or woman whose in- 

 spirations are to be read is the one who 

 is prompted from within to give expres- 

 sion to glowing and forcing feelings the 

 result, perchance, of some finer organi- 

 zation, which makes sensations of mere 

 perceptions, and endows the inanimate 

 with life and vigour which deadens the 

 eye towards the coarse and common, 

 and catches at a glance the sublime, the 

 beautiful, the beau-ideal of moral or 

 physical conception and evolves, while 

 to the vulgar it seems only to subtilize, 

 delicate relations and new imaginings. 

 This is the poet not the mere imitator 

 of others' developments not even he 

 who comprehends, and tastes, and re- 

 lishes them and certainly not the man 

 who does nothing but turn prose into 

 measure by the adoption of certain jing- 

 lings, and cadences, and faded flowers of 

 speech and least of all by the scribbler 

 of metrical novels the most wearisome 

 of man's idlest productions ! 



The tale before us concerns the Cru- 

 sades, and covers some eight or ten thou- 

 sand lines the writer, no doubt, still 

 young which proves with what unen- 

 viable facility words and phrases, now 

 that their channels are so well worn, 

 run into metre. Nobody, now-a-days, 

 will take quantity for quality at least 

 not in verse. 



It is scarcely worth while to quote 

 mere mediocrity every-day workman- 

 ship ; neither gods, nor men, nor book- 

 sellers, it used to be said, could tolerate 

 middling poetry the latter, however, 

 find their shelves groan with it. But, 

 think of encountering 



O ! what forms of love 



Bright glancing, graced the balcony above ! 



There peerless dames their radiant charms dis- 

 played, 



Whose eyes, more potent than Damascus' 

 blade, 



Now fierce as summer suns, now mildly bright, 



Like twinkling stars that gem the vault of 



night. &c. 

 Smooth enough, but mortally fade. 



