410 
Imposing thus on Reason’s dormant reign, 
Tiarmicss amusement soothes the vacant 
mind. : 
Alightdispels thecharm. We stop at Weem.” 
In the following passage we have ano- 
ther proof of that honourable love of ac- 
curacy which acknowledged Loch Lo- 
mond to be so much less than the Ame- 
rican lakes, and which elsewhere can- 
didly confesses that the falls of the Clyde 
are not so vast as those of the Rhine, and 
the Nile, and Niagara. . 
** Here too, a habitation ready reared 
Invites the enthusiast to the lone abode, 
Unmatch’d, perhaps, in Britain’s happy 
isle. (P. 61.) 
Mark the precision of this sentence, 
and the poet’s scrupulous truth! This 
ready-built house was the pleasantest the 
Doctor had ever seen, and he thought it 
was the pleasantest in the whole island ; 
but, not having seen every house in the 
island he could not positively affirm it 
to be so; for though the affirmation 
might not have been false, it would have 
been rash to have incurred the possibi- 
lity of falsehood. The opinion is quali- 
fied by the happy word * perhaps.” and 
thus all danger is avoided. 
As a naturalist Dr. Cririe is indeed 
conspicuous ; he has discovered that 
«« Winter comes in course,” 
That 4 
** In winter oft descends the flaky snow,’ 
(P. 120.) 
And that trees live longer than men: 
for thus he sweetly sings on lamenting 
the Queen of Scots. 
«« The pow’r of vegetation kept alive 
For ages ; trees that Mary must have seen, 
Beneath whose shade, perhaps, she mournful 
sat.” 
They do not however live for ever, for 
the next line tells us. 
“Yet these now yield to time and fast 
decay.” “(P.25. 
pee i cbse? 
Yet is the Doctér no timid slave to the ° 
laws of nature. F¥€ ventures to improve 
“them, as, when in a thunder-storm, he 
Say Sy 
«© Rocks dash’d on rocks are heard . 
Rattlingaround.”  (P. 114.) 
To proceed to the:pathetic. 
See there th’ overhanging rock, « here, dread- 
. fal fl) 
BRITISH TOPOGRAPHY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
While, of the precipice not well aware, 
The lady plung’d into the eddying pool. 
A friend, with eager haste her life to save, 
Swift to the gulph descends, fatal to both, 
Had not, while both alternate sink and rise, 
Suspended o'er the deep, a rock been caught, 
Which held, in dread suspence, the scales 
of fate, 
While hope and fear alternate rose and fell. 
What a subject was here to have been 
“ painted in crayons and engraved at the 
publisher’s expence !”” The Lady in the 
Pool, a friend assisting her, the Rock 
holding the Scales of Fate, and Hope 
and Fear playing at way-jolt in them! 
We have yet to examine the fancy of 
the poet, and the specimen shall be taken 
from his Loch-Kettrin, “ in which, being 
more a work of fancy, the reins of ima- 
gination are held with a freer hand.” 
‘* Night gently drew the curtains of the sky.” 
Having thus put the sky to bed, the 
poet is at leisure to describe the texture 
of hiscurtains. They were 
«« Of heavenly tissue, azure starr’d with gold.” 
Blue and gold we should have thought 
sufficiently handsome. ‘The furniture of 
Dr. Graham’s certainly was not finer, 
and his is the only celestial bed which 
we ever recollect to have been exhibited ; 
but the fancy of the poet varies his orna- 
ments: they were either blue and gold, 
“< Or silver edged, a thin and chequer’d 
lawn.” 
i, e. cross-barred cambric with silver 
trimmings; or they were gauze, 
«Transparent, swift to vanish with the 
morn 3” 
or they were of printed calico, 
‘* Mottled here and there with shade opaque:” 
or they were, we know not what, for 
«« Meantime the radiance of the silent moon 
Pierces, at times, the half-transparent veil, 
Or pours effulgence 'twixt its shifting folds.” 
(P. 192.) 
There is yet a finer flight of fancy im 
that part of the p6em which is entitled 
Tyne-Drum to Dalmally. It is a splen- 
did picture of the Spirit of the Storm, 
who steps from mountain to mountain, 
one foot on Jura, another on Nevis; not 
the Mount Jura contiguous to Switzer- 
land, nor the West Indianisland Nevis, — 
