THE ETTRICH SHEPHERD. 



349 



of my companions express this. 

 No modern builder could throw up 

 such vast vaulted arches, and so 

 unaccountably sustain them. And 

 all else is in keeping. The cor- 

 nices and columns, aisles and gal- 

 leries, are gigantically proportion- 

 ate, and as mysteriously upheld. 

 Streets after streets, miles after 

 miles, seem to have been left only 

 half in ruins ; and here and there 

 is an effect as if the basements and 

 lower stories were encumbered 

 with fragments and rubbish, leav- 

 ing you to walk on a level with the 

 capitals and floors once high above 

 the pavement. It might be de- 

 scribed as a mammoth Hercula- 

 neum, first sepulchred with over- 

 toppling mountains, but swept and 

 choked afterwards by the waters of 

 the deluge, that found their way to 

 its dark streets on their subsiding. 

 What scenery and machinery all this 

 will be for the poets of the West by 

 and by! Their Parnassus is "a house 

 ready furnished." (N. P. Willis.) 



PROGRESS OF GEOLOGICAL DISCOVERT. 



At the close of Sir C. Lyell's 

 address at the anniversary of the 

 Geological Society, there is ap- 

 pended a note respecting an unex- 

 pected discovery, the particulars 

 of which became known to him 

 only since this statement of his 

 views was in the press, giving them 

 almost a prophetic character. One 

 of our ablest geologists, Mr. Logan, 

 the director of the Geological Survey 

 of Canada, has brought to England 

 from the lowest fossiliferous beds 

 of the palaeozoic rocks in North 

 America, slabs and casts of slabs 

 exhibiting the tracks and trail of a 

 <|u;idnrped. These have been 

 minutely examined by Professor 

 Owen, who has de-term ii:ed them 

 to have been made by a ivptile, in 

 all probability allied to the tortoise. 

 The position of the rock in which 

 they occur leaves no doubt about 

 their age. Thus, even as when 



Robinson Crusoe saw the foot-print 

 on the sand, he inferred unhesitat- 

 ingly the neighbourhood of men, 

 so from these prints in the petrified 

 sand must we accept the conclusion, 

 that air-breathing vertebrata ex- 

 isted during the primeval epoch, 

 when that sandstone was the shore 

 of a sea and away to the winds 

 are scattered by this single but 

 significant fact, a crowd of ingeni- 

 ous but unfounded theories, and 

 brilliant but hollow hypotheses. 

 (Literary Gazette.) 



JAMES HOGG, THE ETTRICK 

 SHEPHERD. 



As it was not entirely suitable 

 for one in the shepherd's circum- 

 stances to be contented with praise 

 alone, and, with a slight change, to 

 adopt Sir Egerton Brydges' line, 



" Careless of gaining cash if I deserve," 



he had taken up the notion, from a 

 scrap-book which lay on my table, 

 of borrowing an original poem from 

 every author of the day, and pub- 

 lishing the collection on his own 

 account. "Annuals" and "Sou- 

 venirs" wei-e not known then; and 

 truly if every poet had composed 

 with as much facility as James 

 Hogg, and thought as little as he 

 did about his productions after- 

 wards, the plan might have been 

 realized. One of the first promises 

 he received was from Lord Byron, 

 who often favoured him with long 

 letters, which Hogg usually 1m. t in 

 a day or two after their arrival. 

 From other quarters promises or 

 hopes were held out, but in no in- 

 stance came to fnliilinent, except in 

 that of Mr. Wordsworth, \\ 

 poem, however, could not be n\ ail- 

 able by itself alone, find was tl 

 fore inelnded by the author in his 

 ne\l publication. This plan l>cing 

 rather inconsistent with Hogg's 

 usual notions of independence, I 

 doubt not h< % had all alon^ in thu 

 buck-ground the quizzical plot 



