COWPER’S TOURIFICATIONS UF MALACHI MELDRUM. 
§* Its louder yet—thou.dreadfu” storn:, 
Thou bursts thy ruthless way ; 
And, whiring round the ilka se 
‘Lets in the morn sae bla! 
*« Dread was the night—and dread’s the 
morn ; 
Whare’s a’ the hours 0° May? 
Whan will ye spread your bonny leaf, 
_ And gie us unco’ day? 
« When will ye spread your bonny leaf? 
When sprinkle round your dew? 
And frae thy thorh, my bonny rose, 
«Thee shail | ever pu’! 
¢¢ Again the cock !—you curling reek 
Rows up the louring sky; 
And labeur’s carly, glimmering lamp, 
jet, Blinks welcome on my eye. 
s 
-*€ Strong the cauld chilling arm o’ death 
. Seem’d o’er the warld to reign : 
Thou cheery taper! thy sma” beam 
; Gies us a warld again, 
© * Otoil! ye smooth the care-wern bed ; 
The heather’s like the down ; 
The pillow that bears up thy head 
’ ~ ds safter than a crown. 
£* O hear ye, frae yon turf-clad ha’, * 
’ The morning hymn sae fine! 
Fiear ye the father’s orison, 
-* Sae humble, sae divine! 
_ § In joy and peace he welcom'd night ; 
/ ~_ In joy and peace he raise : 
| The blazing ingle o° the morn 
Bad a’ be pray’r and praise. 
** Blyth shines the face, strong beats the 
heart, : 
Warm'd wi’ a soul like thine: 
‘Thy life, thy hope, my hoary carl! 
Thy life, thy hope, be mine,” 
« 
After some ludicrous adventures our 
travellers arrive safe’ and sound at the 
Saracen’s Head,where they stop to break- 
fast. - 
«* Having got this extraordinary affair off 
my hands, and also got the waiter’s news, in 
order to give Shadrach half an hour more to 
furbish up his buckskin breeches to his satis- 
faction by the kitchen fire, I thought it 
~ would not be amiss to take a small stroll 
through the town, in the proper stile and 
spirit of a tourificator. Though I had been 
in the same town almost. every week of my 
life, and had been again and again in almost 
every hole and pore in it; yet in a scientific 
a ‘point of view I tound 1 knew nothing at all 
about it. ; , 
_ + * Partly for my amusement, and partly 
'. with a view to qualify myself for this mighty 
expedition, 1 had in the Re Rustica-way 
travelled down from Old Varro and Colu- 
mella, to Young and Anderson; I lad 
681 
thumbed over the pages of Cronstedt. and 
Linné; and many a weary winter night had 
I turned over the elaborate pages of the re- 
nowned Dr. Adam Smith. . It was now my 
time to turn these studies to some account, 
by adding farther to my own stock, er by 
bestowing knowledge and information where 
it seemed to be lacking among others. __ 
«© Accordingly I sallied forth, staff in 
hand: and wherever the sound of the ham- 
mer, or. the treddles, or even the whistling 
of a taylor was to be heard, thither I »bent 
my steps. The blacksmith, necessarily situ- 
ated near the Saracen’s Head, first ateracted 
my attention ; and I entered the smithy with 
a countenance fornied, as well as’I ‘could, 
both to conciliate respect, and to inspire con- 
fidence. The blacksmith, resting his elbow 
upon the lever of the bellows, exchanged a 
pinch with me, He satisfied me as to the 
angle a hobnail ought to be pointed to; and 
he was loud and long on the general abnse 
and cruelty of fitting the horse’s foot. to. the 
shoe with vile heels, &c. instead of fitting 
the shoe to the foot. * And, as to the fazyiere 
business,’ added he, ‘as a shoer of horses, 
I am obliged, from old custom, and in spite 
ef my teeth, to be a practitioner; but it 
would be a blessed tenderness to all horses, 
i or well, for they are both subject to the 
farrier, either to prevent, or remove diseases ; 
—that both farrier and groom should have a 
mark put upon them at the market-cross.’ 
In yecompence for this, and a great deal 
more, I gave him a chemical dissertation 
upon iron, and the easiest and cheapest 
modes of exciting heat; and I shewed him 
how his forge, which was like something 
hastily and temporarily reared up ja the cor- 
ner of a waste house, might be Rumfordized 
to the greatest possible advantage. al at 
«© Passing on. my weaver had just thro 
Paine’s Age of Reason into the little basket 
at his elbow, which held his. pins; and 
thumping away at his loom, was silently un- 
saying all that his pious futher and mother 
had taught him. On talking to him, about 
the beautiful and inimense labours of- the 
loom, he grayely uttered,. ¢ that while the 
minds of men were hampered with. creeds 
and confessions, and while, civil, liberty, 
pressed to death by aristocratical statutes and 
edicts, existed only in name, we can look 
fornahing,’ said he, ‘ but grovelling imper- 
fection in the operations either of the soul.br 
of the body of man.’ This last word he 
pronanest with prodigious emphasis. . Myy 
nowt of politics and polemics not being yet 
come, L endeavoured to divert the attention 
of the weaytr to his warp and woof, -by re-’ 
marking, that though the loom had existed 
since the days of ial tiene cee weaver 
looked at ‘Tom Paine, and then at me—De- 
dalus, I mean, said I, and had, no doubt, 
in so many thousand years, undergone divers 
al(crations and improvements, yet much re- 
inained to be done, and much might b ex- 
pected in this age’ of ingenuity: and Idd 
