happened plain eneugh,' returned the boy; 'the brig brak, and the cart coupet.' And did you and the horse coup likewise?' said Mr Stewart. O ay, we a' coupet thegither, for I was ridin' on his back.' 'And where is your father and all the rest of the folk?' 'Whaur sud they be but in the hay-field? Dinna ye ken that we're takin' in our hay? John Tamson's and Jamie Forster's was in a week syne, but we 're aye ahint the lave.'

All the party were greatly amused by the composure which the young peasant evinced under his misfortune, as well as by the shrewdness of his answers; and having learned from him that the hay-field was at no great distance, gave him some halfpence to hasten his speed, and promised to take care of his horse till he should return with assistance.

He soon appeared, followed by his father and two other men, who came on stepping at their usual pace. 'Why, farmer,' said Mr Stewart, you have trusted rather too long to this rotten plank, I think' (pointing to where it had given way); 'if you remember the last time I passed this road, which was several months since, I then told you that the bridge was in danger, and shewed you how easily it might be repaired.'

'It is a' true,' said the farmer, moving his bonnet; but I thought it would do weel eneugh. I spoke to Jamie Forster and John Tamson about it; but they said they wadna fash themselves to mend a brig that was to serve a' the folk in the glen.'

'But you must now mend it for your own sake,' said Mr Stewart, even though a' the folk in the glen should

be the better for it.'

Ay, sir,' said one of the men, that's spoken like yoursel'! Would everybody follow your example, there would be nothing in the world but peace and good neighbourhood.'

The interior arrangements and accommodation of the cottage visited by Mrs Mason are dirty and uncomfortable. The farmer is a good easy man, but his wife is obstinate and prejudiced, and the children self-willed and rebellious. Mrs Mason finds the family quite incorrigible, but she effects a wonderful change among their neighbours. She gets a school established on her own plan, and boys and girls exert themselves to effect a reformation in the cottages of their parents. The most sturdy sticklers for the gude auld gaits are at length convinced of the superiority of the new system, and the village undergoes a complete transformation. In the management of these humble scenes, and the gradual display of character among the people, the authoress evinces her knowledge of human nature, and her tact and

discrimination as a novelist.

We subjoin a Scottish song by Miss Hamilton which has enjoyed great popularity.

My Ain Fireside.

I hae seen great anes, and sat in great ha's,
'Mang lords and fine ladies a' covered wi' braws,
At feasts made for princes wi' princes I've been,
When the grand shine o' splendour has dazzled my

een;

But a sight sae delightfu' I trow I ne'er spied As the bonny blithe blink o' my ain fireside. My ain fireside, my ain fireside,

O cheery's the blink o' my ain fireside;

My ain fireside, my ain fireside,

Nae forms to compel me to seem wae or glad,

I may laugh when I'm merry, and sigh when I'm sad.

Nae falsehood to dread, and nae malice to fear,
But truth to delight me, and friendship to cheer;
Of a' roads to happiness ever were tried,
There's nane half so sure as ane's ain fireside.
My ain fireside, &c.

When I draw in my stool on my cosy hearthstane,
My heart loups sae light I scarce ken 't for my ain;
Care's down on the wind, it is clean out o' sight,
Past troubles they seem but as dreams o' the night.
I hear but kend voices, kend faces I see,
And mark saft affection glent fond frae ilk ee;
Nae fleechings o' flattery, nae boastings o' pride,
'Tis heart speaks to heart at ane's ain fireside.
My ain fireside, &c.

LADY MORGAN.

LADY MORGAN (Sydney Owenson, or Mac Owen, as the name was originally written), during the course of forty or fifty years, wrote in various departments of literature-in poetry, the drama, novels, biography, ethics, politics, and books of travels. Whether she has written any one book that will become a standard portion of our literature, is doubtful, but we are indebted to her pen for a number of clever lively national sketches and anecdotes. She had a masculine disregard of common opinion or censure, and a temperament, as she herself stated, 'as cheery and genial as ever went to that strange medley of pathos and humour-the Irish character.' Mr Owenson, the father of our authoress, was a respectable actor, a favourite in the society of Dublin, and author of some popular Irish songs. His daughter (who was born in 1783) inherited his predilection for national music and song. Very early in life she published a small volume of poetical effusions, and afterwards The Lay of the Irish Harp, and a selection of twelve Irish melodies, with music. One of these is the song of Kate Kearney, and we question whether this lyric will not outlive all Lady Morgan's other lucubrations. While still in her teens, Miss Owenson became a novelist. She published two tales long since forgotten, and in 1801 a third, The Wild Irish Girl, which was exceedingly popular. This success introduced the authoress into some of the higher circles of Irish and English society, in which she greatly delighted. In 1811, she married Sir Charles Morgan, a physician, and travelled with him to France and Italy. She continued her literary labours, and published The Missionary, an Indian Tale (1811); O'Donnel, a National Tale (1814) Florence Macarthy, an Irish Tale (1818); anence The O'Briens and the O'Flahertys (1827). these works our authoress departed from thgbeaten track of sentimental novels, and ventureer like Miss Edgeworth, to portray national manne mWe have the high authority of Sir Walter Scued for the opinion, that O'Donnel, though deficient a story, has some striking and beautiful passages of situation and description, and in the comic

sa

fireside.

Ance mair, gude be thankit, round my ane heartsome ingle,

Wi' the friends o' my youth I cordially mingle;

gan's sketches of Irish manners are not always pleasing. Her high-toned society is disfigured with grossness and profligacy, and her subordinate characters are often caricatured. The vivacity and variety of these delineations constitute one

of their attractions: if not always true, they are lively; for it was justly said, that whether it is a review of volunteers in the Phoenix Park, or a party at the Castle, or a masquerade, a meeting of United Irishmen, a riot in Dublin, or a jug-day at Bog-moy-in every change of scene and situation our authoress wields the pen of a ready writer.' One complaint against these Irish sketches was their personality, the authoress indicating that some of her portraits at the viceregal court, and those moving in the 'best society' of Dublin, were intended for well-known characters. Their conversation is often a sad jargon of prurient allusion, comments on dress, and quotations in French and Italian, with which almost every page is patched and disfigured. The unfashionable characters and descriptions-even the rapparees, and the lowest of the old Irish natives, are infinitely more entertaining than these offshoots of the aristocracy, as painted by Lady Morgan. Her strength lay in describing the broad characteristics of her nation, their boundless mirth, their old customs, their love of frolic, and their wild grief at scenes of death and calamity. The other works of our authoress are France and Italy, containing dissertations on the state of society, manners, literature, government, &c. of those nations. Lord Byron has borne testimony to the fidelity and excellence of Italy; and if the authoress had been less ambitious of being always fine and striking, and less solicitous to display her reading and high company, she might have been one of the most agreeable of tourists and observers. Besides these works, Lady Morgan has given to the world The Princess (a tale founded on the revolution in Belgium); Dramatic Scenes from Real Life (very poor in matter, and affected in style); The Life and Times of Salvator Rosa; The Book of the Boudoir (autobiographical sketches and reminiscences); Woman and her Master (a philosophical history of woman down to the fall of the Roman empire); and various other shorter publications. In 1841, Lady Morgan published, in conjunction with her husband, Sir T. C. Morgan (author of Sketches of the Philosophy of Life and Morals, &c.), two volumes, collected from the portfolios of the writers, and stray sketches which had previously appeared in periodicals, entitling the collection The Book without a Name. In 1859, she published Passages from my Autobiography, containing reminiscences of high-life in London and Paris. A pension of £300 a year was conferred on her during the ministry of Earl Grey, and the latter years of Lady Morgan were spent in London. She died in April 1859. Her Correspondence was published by Mr Hepworth Dixon in 1862.

The Irish Hedge Schoolmaster.

From Florence Macarthy.

A bevy of rough-headed students, with books as ragged as their habiliments, rushed forth at the sound of the horse's feet, and with hands shading their uncovered faces from the sun, stood gazing in earnest surprise. Last of this singular group, followed O'Leary himself in learned dishabille! his customary suit, an old great-coat, fastened with a wooden skewer at his breast, the sleeves hanging unoccupied, Spanish-wise, as he termed it; his wig laid aside, the shaven crown of his head resembling the clerical tonsure; a tattered Homer in one hand, and

a slip of sallow in the other, with which he had been distributing some well-earned punities to his pupils; thus exhibiting, in appearance, and in the important expression of his countenance, an epitome of that order of persons once so numerous, and still far from extinct learned in the antiquities and genealogies of the great in Ireland, the hedge schoolmaster. O'Leary was Irish families, as an ancient senachy, an order of which he believed himself to be the sole representative; credulous of her fables, and jealous of her ancient glory; ardent in his feelings, fixed in his prejudices; hating the Bodei Sassoni, or English churls, in proportion as he distrusted them; living only in the past, contemptuous of the present, and hopeless of the future, all his national learning and national vanity were employed in his history of the Macarthies More, to whom he deemed himself hereditary senachy; while all his early associations and affections were occupied with the Fitzadelin family; to an heir of which he had not only been foster-father, but, by a singular chain of occurrences, between his prejudices and his affections, that added to Thus there existed an incongruity the natural incoherence of his wild, unregulated, ideal character. He had as much Greek and Latin as generally falls to the lot of the inferior Irish priesthood, an order to which he had been originally destined; he spoke Irish, as his native tongue, with great fluency; and English, with little variation, as it might have been spoken in the days of James or Elizabeth; for English was with him acquired by study, at no early period of life, and principally obtained from such books as came within the black-letter plan of his antiquarian pursuits.

tutor and host.

Words that wise Bacon and grave Raleigh spoke, were familiarly uttered by O'Leary, conned out of old English tracts, chronicles, presidential instructions, copies of patents, memorials, discourses, and translated remonstrances from the Irish chiefs, of every date since the arrival of the English in the island; and a few French words, not unusually heard among the old Irish Catholics, the descendants of the faithful followers of the Stuarts, completed the stock of his philological riches. O'Leary now advanced to meet his visitant, with a and satisfaction, not unmingled with pride and importcountenance radiant with the expression of complacency ance, as he threw his eyes round on his numerous disciples. To one of these the Commodore gave his horse; and drawing his hat over his eyes, as if to shade them from the sun, he placed himself under the shadow of the Saxon arch, observing :

'You see, Mr O'Leary, I very eagerly avail myself of your invitation; but I fear I have interrupted your learned avocation.'

'Not a taste, your honour, and am going to give my classes a holiday, in respect of the turf, sir. What does yez all crowd the gentleman for? Did never yez see a raal gentleman afore? I'd trouble yez to consider yourthem ragged runagates, your honour, poor as they look; selves as temporary.-There's great scholars among for though in these degendered times you won't get the children, as formerly, to talk the dead languages, afore they can spake, when, says Campion, they had Latin like a vulgar tongue, conning in their schools of teachcraft the aphorisms of Hippocrates, and the civil institutes of the faculties, yet there's as fine scholars, and as good philosophers still, sir, to be found in my seminary as in Trinity College, Dublin.-Now, step forward here, you Homers. "Kehlute meu Troes, kai Dardanoi, id epikouroi."

Half a dozen overgrown boys, with bare heads and naked feet, hustled forward.

'There's my first class, plaze your honour; sorrow one of them gassoons but would throw you off a page of Homer into Irish while he 'd be clamping a turf stack.Come forward here, Padreen Mahony, you little mitcher, ye. Have you no better courtesy than that, Padreen? Fie upon your manners!-Then for all that, sir, he's my

head philosopher, and am getting him up for Maynooth. Och! then, I wouldn't ax better than to pit him against the provost of Trinity College this day, for all his ould small-clothes, sir, the cratur! Troth, he'd puzzle him, grate as he is, ay, and bate him too; that's at the humanities, sir.—Padreen, my man, if the pig's sould at Dunore market to-morrow, tell your daddy, dear, I'll expect the pintion. Is that your bow, Padreen, with your head under your arm, like a roasting hen? Upon my word, I take shame for your manners.-There, your honour, them's my cordaries, the little leprehauns, with their cathah heads, and their burned skins; I think your honour would be divarted to hear them parsing a chapter.-Well, now dismiss, lads, jewel-off with yez, extemplo, like a piper out of a tent; away with yez to the turf: and mind me well, ye Homers, ye, I'll expect Hector and Andromache to-morrow without fail; obsarve me well; I'll take no excuse for the classics barring the bog, in respect of the weather being dry; dismiss, I say.' The learned disciples of this Irish sage, pulling down the front lock of their hair to designate the bow they would have made if they had possessed hats to move, now scampered off; while O'Leary observed, shaking his head and looking after them: 'Not one of them but is sharp-witted and has a janius for poethry, if there was any encouragement for learning in these degendered times.'

MRS SHELLEY.

In the summer of 1816, Lord Byron and Mr and Mrs Shelley were residing on the banks of the Lake of Geneva. They were in habits of daily intercourse, and when the weather did not allow of their boating-excursions on the lake, the Shelleys often passed their evenings with Byron at his house at Diodati. During a week of rain at this time,' says Mr Moore, having amused themselves with reading German ghost-stories, they agreed at last to write something in imitation of them. "You and I," said Lord Byron to Mrs Shelley, "will publish ours together." He then began his tale of the Vampire; and having the whole arranged in his head, repeated to them a sketch of the story one evening; but from the narrative being in prose, made but little progress in filling up his outline. The most memorable result, indeed, of their storytelling compact was Mrs Shelley's wild and powerful romance of Frankenstein-one of those original conceptions that take hold of the public mind at once and for ever.' Frankenstein was published in 1817, and was instantly recognised as worthy of Godwin's daughter and Shelley's wife, and as, in fact, possessing some of the genius and peculiarities of both. It is formed on the model of St Leon, but the supernatural power of that romantic visionary produces nothing so striking or awful as the grand conception of Frankenstein-the discovery that he can, by his study of natural philosophy, create a living and sentient being. The hero, like Caleb Williams, tells his own story. A native of Geneva, Frankenstein, is sent to the university of Ingolstadt to pursue his studies. He had previously dabbled in the occult sciences, and the university afforded vastly extended facilities for prosecuting his abstruse researches. He pores over books on physiology, makes chemical experiments, visits even the receptacles of the dead and the dissecting-room of the anatomist, and after days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, he succeeds in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, he became capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter! Full of his

extraordinary discovery, he proceeds to create a man, and at length, after innumerable trials and revolting experiments to seize and infuse the principle of life into his image of clay, he constructs and animates a gigantic figure, eight feet in height. His feelings on completing the creation of this Monster are powerfully described:

The Monster created by Frankenstein.

It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, Í saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun complexion, and straight black lips. white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled

The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation, but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room, and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. At length lassitude succeeded to the tumult I had before endured, and I threw myself on the bed in my clothes, endeavouring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness. But it was in vain; I slept indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams. I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her; but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw I started from my sleep with horror, a cold dew covered the grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel. my forehead, my teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed, when, by the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window-shutters, I beheld the wretch-the miserable Monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed, and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped, and rushed to the house which I inhabited, where I remained during down-stairs. I took refuge in the courtyard belonging the rest of the night, walking up and down in the greatest agitation, listening attentively, catching and fearing each sound as if it were to announce the approach of the demoniacal corpse to which I had so miserably given life.

Oh! no mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could