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North Pole; and, to the best of our knowledge, we never yet were on the highest pinnacle of Chimboraco. Yet, before we undertook to conduct a periodical like the EDINBURGH LITERARY JOURNAL, it was natural that we should, like Ulysses, seek to increase our experience of men and their ways, by visiting foreign shores. It so chanced, that, in the course of our rambles, we stumbled upon Bohemia,—a country seemingly set apart from the rest of nations by the hand of Nature. Bohemia is a kind of natural basin. It is surrounded on every side by a ring of mountains, (to the north by a double belt.) The land sinks down on every side, from the circumference to the centre. Thither all the various watercourses find their way, and are drained off by the broad Elbe, which has burst a course for itself through those giant mountains which separate Bohemia from Saxony,

hemians, which almost makes amends for their wretched
state of society. There is warmth and endurance in their
friendship, when once it is obtained. There is something
primitive about them—even in their greetings. "Praised
be Jesus Christ," is the salutation.
"To all eternity,
Amen," is the response. We love them all-their re-
served and sturdy men—their dark and stately women,
with eyes all liquid fire, and hearts all love their patron
saint, (the holy St John of Nepomuc,) who, having been
deprived of life by being tossed from a bridge, has since
been constituted the special and exclusive guardian of all
such structures-no doubt on account of the affection
with which he must, after such an event, be inclined to
regard them.

Prague, the capital, (really, gentle reader, considering that we started from Dresden, we have arrived at the scene of the novel now before us with tolerable speed,) is characteristic, and worthy of such a land. Surrounded by slight elevations, highly diversified and romantic, the

the relative elevations and depressions of its surface, not unlike what Edinburgh might be, did a broad and placid stream flow between the Castle-hill and Prince's-street. On the highest elevation stand the Castle and the Minster. Around the base of the hill, and down to the river

It was with a strange feeling that we first set foot in the diligence from Dresden to Prague, for the purpose of visiting a country of which we had no more definite idea, than could be gathered from the perusal of some thou-site of the city is, not in its individual features, but in sands of romances and romantic dramas. It was most cruel that there was no less commonplace way of visiting this land of inaccessible mountains, dark forests, and darker deeds. The inns on the road, too, although bad enough to please the veriest novel reader, did not furnish us with a single adventure. We have since visited it inside, clusters a city of palaces. A stately bridge connects a more adventurous way; but to talk of that now were to wander from our subject. We found, that although the progress of arts has made every country patent to modern travelling, and spread a tiresome similarity of character over every European nation, yet the jealous care of the Austrian government has been, in a great measure, successful in keeping its subjects safe from the contamination. Not that it has been altogether successful. Some slight glimmerings of European culture have found their way thither in spite of it. But, on the whole, there are more peculiarities in Bohemian society, than in that of any other western nation.

this part of Prague, with the more thronged and busy
districts which lie beyond the Moldau.
The aspect of
the city tells its history at once, as we may read dead
passions and the sufferings of other years in the face of
him who has undergone strange fortunes. Not a street,

scarcely a building in the city, but carries the mind centuries back to the time when its foundations were laid; and yet scarcely one, but, from the repairs which frequent sieges and bombardments have rendered necessary, wears a modern look.

It is not, however, the Prague of our day, but Prague at the conclusion of the thirty years' war, that has called The people may be divided into two great nations, into exertion the graphic powers of Madame Pichler. the governing and the governed. The former-the Aus- We are not quite certain, but we have a dim recollection trians engross all places of power and profit, and con- of having heard the name of this lady among the four stitute almost exclusively the military establishment of thousand respectable and industrious ladies and gentleBohemia. The Austrians are the least refined and instruct- men who are at present earning their daily bread in Gered of the Germans; and though, at home, honest and many by the manufacture of romances. It strikes us, (if good-natured to a proverb, they are notorious as oppressive we do not confuse her with some one else,) that she has masters in other lands. The latter the native Bohe- executed elegant and spirited translations of several of mians-acute and sensitive, proud,—of an Oriental dis- the Waverley Novels. The Swedes in Prague is an atposition, more prompt and active than persevering-sub- tempt at something in the same style. The time is faside in their forced state of inactivity into torpor. The vourably chosen-near enough the end of the war to adpeasantry seem to have no notions beyond what can help mit of a fortunate termination; a time when all the them to the pleasures of sense, and a rooted hatred of the strange characters a civil war can evolve have received Germans. The aristocracy, not permitted to take the the last finishing touch; a time when, the fierce and reckshare in the business of the state which belongs to them, less character of the mercenary troops having reached its seem to lose their relish even for the social pleasures, and wildest extreme, there is ample scope for adventure. The shut themselves up each in his family circle. The sys- more prominent characters are well chosen. A highlytem of political espionage completes the repulsion engen- gifted and beautiful, but vain and ambitious woman, feels dered in society; and the body politic, kept from falling flattered by the attentions of a young nobleman, beneath asunder by military force, resembles a mass of atoms, whose pacific and domestic demeanour she cannot discowhich, without any internal attraction for each other, are ver a mind capable of the most noble conceptions and held together by an external force. In this discordant mass energy sufficient to give them reality. Her cold heart is are to be found occasionally ingredients of a foreign charac-hurried away, her dull apprehension impressed by qualiter; such as the Jews, who, in the interior, compose the exclusive population of villages,-gipsies, who have generally abandoned their roving life, but retain the features and much of the character of their tribe,—on the frontiers, large bands of fearless smugglers, called into existence by Austria's exclusive system, from whom the bands of robbers, who still occasionally infest the country, draw most of their recruits.

Yet, as Nature (never at a loss) knows always to make up for deficiencies occasioned by accident-compensating the loss of sight by increased intensity of the sense of hearing, and supplying the want of good government and social order, by invigorating personal friendship-there is much to be found in the individual characters of the Bo

ties more evident to the vulgar gaze, by a man of boundless ambition, fierce passion, and versatility of talent. In the progress of the story, the former is awakened by events into the character of his country's preserver; the latter, goaded on by his passions, entangles himself deeper in the meshes of intrigue, and falls in battle, after having seen, one by one, his most cherished hopes decay. The vibrating of Helena's selfish heart between them, as a union with the one or the other seemed most likely to cast a splendour on her, is finely pourtrayed. Several of the subordinate characters play happily into the plot. What most pleases us in the work, is the delicate tact with which the workings of the human heart, the growth and decay of attachment between individuals of

different sexes, are drawn. What we most want in it, is power. In what are meant to be the more stirring scenes, there is a dreadful feebleness. It is not bringing them vividly before us, as some authors do-it is the cold second-hand narrative of one before whose imagination they have been made to pass. After all, however, the story carries us along with it without fatiguing us, and is just such reading as we would recommend to all our fair friends in the approaching hot weather. The translation is well executed.

Some Account of the Writings and Opinions of Justin
Martyr. By John, Bishop of Lincoln, and Master of
Christ's College, Cambridge. Cambridge, J. and J.
Deighton; London, C. J. G. and F. Rivington.
8vo. 1829.

tyr was the earliest among the Fathers of whose works any considerable portion has reached the present time; and his appearance marks the commencement of what may be termed the Ecclesiastical, in contra-distinction to the Apostolic period. We must refer the curious reader to the work before us, for a vast mass of interesting theological matter.

As the Reverend Edward Irving is at present promulgating certain opinions on the Millennium, which are somewhat extravagant, and which do not seem to attract much attention in Scotland, notwithstanding the reverend orator and prophet's exertions, he will perhaps consider that we do him a service by making our readers acquainted with

JUSTIN MARTYR'S OPINIONS ON THE MILLENNIUM. "We have seen, that among other questions put by Trypho to Justin," says the learned Bishop," he asks whether the Christians really believed that Jerusalem would be rebuilt, and that they, as well as the patriarchs, prophets, and Jews, and proselytes, who lived before the that although many pure (in doctrine) and pious Chriscoming of Christ, would be collected there. Justin replies, tians were of a different opinion, yet he himself, and as ορθογνώμονες κατὰ πάντα, were assured that they who bemany Christians as were in every respect orthodox, lieve in Christ should rise in the flesh, and for the space of a thousand years inhabit Jerusalem, rebuilt, and beau

THE work before us, by Dr Kaye, Bishop of Lincoln, will add to the reputation which that prelate has already acquired as a theologian, a scholar, and an ecclesiastical writer, both by his very learned work on the writings and opinions of Tertullian, and by other disquisitions on the early Fathers of the Church. We feel well pleased that the LITERARY JOURNAL should be the first periodical in this country to introduce the Bishop of Lincoln to Scottish readers. The Church of England had never, perhaps, greater cause than at present to be proud of her governors. In her Augustan days, during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., she could boast of a Park-tified, and enlarged. In confirmation of this opinion, he

er, a Whitgift, and an Andrews, the last of whom was so

very learned, that he used to be termed "a living Lexi-
con;" but, not to mention other illustrious Bishops, she
at this moment can exultingly point to the names of
Blomfield, Marsh, Kaye, and Burgess, prelates whose
profound learning, the first as a Grecian, the second as a
theologian, the third as an ecclesiastical writer, and the
fourth as a Hebraist, reflects a lustre on the times in which
they live, and on the church over which they preside.
"We may be thankful," says Mr Southey, in his last
work, "that the Church of England is at this time, ac-
cording to the prayer of her own true poet (Words-
worth)-

"For her defence replenished with a band
Of strenuous champions, in scholastic arts
Thoroughly disciplined: nor (if in course
Of the revolving world's disturbances

Cause should recur, which righteous Heaven avert !
To meet such trial) from their spiritual lives
Degenerate, who, constrained to wield the sword
Of disputation, shrunk not, though assailed
With hostile din, and combating in sight
Of angry umpires, partial and unjust."

Sound Presbyterians though we be, far be it from us to
refuse the homage of our admiration to episcopalian ge-
nius and profound acquirements.

quotes Isaiah, lxv. 17, and the Book of Revelation, which expiration of the period of one thousand years the genehe expressly ascribes to the Apostle St John. At the ral resurrection was to take place, and after the general resurrection and judgment, this whole frame of things was to be consumed by fire."-P. 104.

In conclusion we have only to add, that we should be glad to see the Bishop of Lincoln's work in the hands of which displays industry, talent, and research of the most every clergyman and theological student, for it is a work striking kind.

Florence, the Aspirant. A Novel, in 3 vols. London.
Whittaker & Co. 1829.

MANY and varied qualifications are necessary to enable any one to attain pre-eminence as a Novelist. He must be intimately acquainted with human nature-he must possess acuteness to distinguish, and skill to analyze, the peculiarities of different characters he must have incidents he must uniformly render the situations of the imagination to invent, and judgment to classify, striking personages interesting and probable; and, as a subsidiary The work before us contains the substance of a Course casion by which it has been prompted. requisite, his language must always be suited to the ocof Lectures which the learned Bishop delivered in the all this, it is obvious that success will, in an especial In addition to Lent term of 1821. That our readers may form an idea of its plan, we shall enumerate the heads of the nine relate to events, which though ingeniously depicted, are manner, depend on the choice of the subject. If it either chapters into which it is divided. 1. On the Writings of intrinsically common-place, or if it continually lead to Justin Martyr. 2. The Opinions of Justin respecting abstruse and metaphysical enquiries, the chief aim of the the Ayos and the Trinity. 3. Justin's opinions respect- writer will be frustrated. ing original sin, the freedom of the will, grace, justifica-ject to a religious novel-a work which blends the suWe therefore decidedly obtion, predestination. 4. Justin's opinions respecting bap-blimest truths with the most absurd fictions, and which, tism and the eucharist, with a particular reference to a under the garb of whining sentimentalism, manifestly passage in the first Apology. 5. The immortality of the degrades, while it professes to recommend, the doctrines soul, the resurrection of the body, the millennium, future of Christianity. If religion is to become the legitimate judgments, angels, demons. 6. The condition of the framework for romance, why ought we to exclude anChristians in the time of Justin, and the causes of the atomy, algebra, or any other complex science? By rapid diffusion of Christianity. 7. The heresies mention- the publication of a religious novel, there is a literary ed by Justin,-miscellaneous observations. 8. An exfraud practised on the reader, which he cannot fail to reamination of the question, whether Justin quoted the sent. He expects to trace a resemblance between the gospels which we now have? 9. Illustrations of the fanciful representation of the novelist, and the actual ocpreceding chapters from the writings of Fabian, Athencurrences of life; but he finds, that the whole zest of the agoras, and Theophilus of Antioch, with additional re- eclaircissement consists in the unnatural reformation of Such are the interesting topics which the learnsome confirmed rake, or in the miraculous endowment of some flirting chambermaid with the acumen of a pro

marks.

ed prelate discusses in the work before us. Justin Mar

fessor of ethics.

as a set of banditti would almost blush for," and as guilty of making the Bible itself" food for low puns and wretched witticisms." It would be ridiculous to refute such aspersions. They are levelled against men whose respectability and talent as a body cannot be disputed; and we only pity the imbecility, and smile at the maligni

Instead of epigrammatic dialogue, he only meets with inconclusive arguments and prejudiced opinions regarding the ritual of some peculiar sect. In the great majority of cases he can recognize no glowing delineations of female loveliness or of manly virtue-no bold developement of the darker lineaments of humanity -no indications of humour-no masterly strokes of sa-ty, of the vituperator. tire no touches of pathos-no graphic descriptions-no elegant fluency of diction. In short, every page is full of dull monotonous cant; and it is, in general, difficult to determine, whether the work ought to be despised for its insipidity, or for the profane allusions with which it abounds.

To complete the dramatis persona, we meet with a Miss Jessy M'Fie, a half-crazed Scottish Dissenter, and a Dr Campion and his son, who have some scrambling for the hand of Florence; which, however, is interrupted by the apoplectic demise of the old gentleman.

Such are the main features of this novel (erroneously so called); and we submit to our readers whether or not they substantiate our verdict regarding it.

MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE.

A FEW REMARKS ON WORDS.

By William Tennant, Author of “ Anster Fair," &c.

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Wing'd words that fly, with eye-confounding speed,
From Greece to France, from Tiber to the Tweed;
From Babel first they flew, as from their nest;

And ever since they fly, and find no rest.

Or all the vocables uttered by man, the word SHTA, isT, STO, stand, is the most universal, and has the most multitudinous family of derivatives. We find it in an immense variety of shapes in every modern and ancient language. It is to be seen in maps of the south of Asia, in Hindoostan, Cafferistan, &c.; in maps of the north of Europe, in Carlstad, Jacobstad, &c. We hear it every day in Scotland in farm-steadin', house-stance, &c. We' cannot read a single page of a Greek, Latin, English, Italian, Spanish, or German book, without meeting it in one or other of its multiplied phases. A little volume might be made up of the many words formed, throughout the various languages, from this single syllable. root is to be found in Sanskrit and Hebrew.

Its

The volumes now before us were written for the purpose of elucidating certain tenets of the Roman Catholic creed. We have expressed our general opinion regarding publications of this calibre, and certainly the present work tends to confirm that opinion. It may contain an accurate exposition of Catholic Theology; but, as a novel, it has no merit, and it is exclusively as a novel that it appears before the public. Indeed, we can hardly conceive a more ridiculous story than the one here unfolded. It would seem that the heroine, originally an Episcopalian, visits a Catholic chapel with her mother. On her return home, the young lady is taken violently ill, and a doctor having arrived, he receives the fearful intelligence that the amiable Miss Florence Stanhope, the paragon of beauty and perfection, had actually "shivered after having eaten half an egg;" although, as it is extremely important and instructive to observe," she often eats a whole one without injury;" on which account, opines the sagacious Mrs Stanhope," I should rather imagine, that the previous state of the stomach caused the aversion, than that it was occasioned by the food I speak of." This, however, though a very plausible supposition, and highly creditable to the gastronomical research of the author, is not the real cause of the malady. Florence has been impressed by the priest's eloquence she wishes to become a convert to his principles, and her desires in this respect are ultimately gratified. The process by which her conversion takes place, constitutes the sole materials of the plot. And who are the principal actors that contribute to the What is the termination BER in the names of the months advancement of this noble denouement? We are first September, October, &c.? An eminent philologist sugintroduced to the heroine, who possesses those attrac-gests, that it may be the latter fragment of IMBER, as showtions with which puling sensibility can invest her. Her mother occupies a more prominent part in the scene. She relates her history at full length; and, judging from its incidents, the propriety of her deportment seems somewhat questionable. By her own confession, even before marriage, her mysterious seclusion from society for several weeks, without any apparent reason, tended to cast a suspicion over her conduct; and after marriage, she is rather awkwardly found in an arbour with another woman's husband, who, with all the ardour of impassioned love, beseeches her to be "his guardian angel." And yet this worthy matron can spiritualize, like Hervey, on a green gooseberry. She has a sister, whose great delight consists in field sports-in angling-in taking long journeys alone in public vehicles and in sometimes assuming It is curious to observe how the same vocable, with the masculine attire. Her appearance awakens the amorous same signification, is current in countries separated by propensities of a Mr Ashburn, a Catholic divine, who is great distances; one or two instances only of such identiconsulted on all occasions, as the infallible oracle of Scrip- ties are sufficient to prove, that such nations must, at some tural knowledge. While in one page he inculcates obedi- period or other of their history, have been connected. Our ence to God's law, he, in the next page, eloquently describes Scottish word dochter, after gliding, like another Alpheus, the graces of the fair nymph; and, as he gazes on her through the German ocean, pops up its head, somewhat "well-proportioned feet and ankles, adorned in the Diana distorted and disguised, in Saxony, in the shape and sound style," he candidly declares that she is “an extraordinary of TOCHTER; and, after an immense hiatus of separation, fine woman." Albeit such expressions, in such circum- reappears, in the very same shape and guise, on the plains stances, are somewhat unsuitable to the clerical character, of Persia and Baloochistan. Our English word tree is they are, perhaps, more excusable than the bigoted senti- to be found in Sanskrit. Our homely word palaver is, ments contained in a letter from a friend of his, who is on with short intervals of interruption, found current nearly a visit to Edinburgh. In it the Scotch clergy are repre- in the same meridian line from pole to pole; it is a classisented as licentious in their conduct-as lamentably defi-cal word, as we all know, in the Doric of Scotland; it cient in intellectual attainments as exhibiting in their church courts, "such rancour, backbiting, and forebiting,

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er-as if regular rains characterized the Latin months, which is not the case. As the Romans and Greeks took all their astronomical notions from the Egyptians and Orientalists, it is more likely, that, with the division of the year into twelve months, and the division of the day into twelve hours, they adopted also the Oriental word BAR or BER, signifying time, turn, or revolution, and annexed it, as the Orientalists did, to their own cardinal numbers, to denote the revolutions or turns of the moon. To this day (as the Indians did in Sanskrit) the Persians say YAK-BAR, DO-BAR, &c. one-time, two-times, writing them, not as two words separate, but as one word, just as the Latins did in the names of their months.

passes subterraneously through the soil of England-reappears in Spain and Portugal-crosses the straits of

Hercules, and reigns predominant throughout all the gold-besmeared, semi-barbarous courts of Western Africa. The words wine, linen, sack (a bag), have been always current throughout ancient and modern Europe. The Phoenician traders, probably, exported these commodities to the various countries, and, with the commodities, exported also their names; just as the words shawl and tea are now current throughout the world.

In all cultivated languages, saving one, the substantive verb, unless used in the infinitive mood, has a nominative after it as well as before it. In the Arabic language, the substantive verb governs an accusative, like other active verbs. Our common people follow the Arabic idiom, and say, It is me, It was him, &c.

nothing between them. Of the Latin word asinus, the English language has appropriated to itself the ass, and the Greek has contented itself, we know not how, with the ovos. Of the Egyptian word PHIROM, (a man,) the Latins have made two, chopping it down, like a polypus, into two animated and current words, VIR and номO; and, by the by, the former word vIR, a hero, occurs in Sanskrit. In old Scythian, Herodotus says, AOR denoted a man. From the Egyptian word, probably the Greek avgwzos was likewise derived.

Of the words denoting parts of the human body, the nose appears to be the most cosmopolitan and prevalent. It occurs in Sanskrit in NAIS, Latin NASUS, Greek (by Metathesis) gives, whence NARIS, French NEZ, Italian NASO, German NASE, &c. We have it in maps, denoting a cape or promontory, in Fife-ness, Buchan-ness, Nase of Norway; even up in Russia, beyond Archangel, in NANIN-NOSS, SVIATOI-NOSS, &c. The foot, too, is very prevalent; in Sanskrit PAD, Persic PA, Greek wous, Latin res, &c.

The word barbarus is, probably, of Ægyptian or Phonician origin, and means only a foreigner. Herodotus says, the Ægyptians called all those Bagbaga who spoke not their own language. Plutarch says it is a Spartan word, which strengthens our suspicion of its Ægyptian origin, as the Spartans regarded themselves as a colony from the Nile, and claimed cognation not only with Ægypt, but also with the Jews, as we learn from the second Book of Maccabees. Bagbagopavo. therefore means, not those (as Strabo thinks) who stutter, speak negligently, or barbarously, but merely those who speak a foreign language. The word BARBAR occurs in the Old Testament, and is there used, I imagine, in its radical signifi-try-town, is the Greek ways; and our word town itself is cation. It is translated by our interpreters "fatted fowl;" but, as Michaelis suggests, it more probably means wild fowls in opposition to tame-so that the primary meaning of this word may be found to be-wild in opposition to tame-foreign in opposition to native.

In the Latin language, the word opus-in the Greek, gy—and in Persic, KAE-all signifying work or business -are used in the sense of need and necessity. The Latin Grammarians have absurdly made of opus, used in this sense, an indeclinable substantive and indeclinable adjective.

The Phoenicians and Ægyptians, who seem to have had many words in common, appear to have given the first names to many islands, mountains, and countries. Mount Etna, (a furnace,) Scylla, (destruction,) Charybdis, (hole of perdition,) Gades or Gadin, (fence or bound,) Ida, (a pillar or column,) are, in all likelihood, the names given to these places by the first Phoenician or Ægyptian navigators. If the Ægyptian word olb signified an island, it is perhaps the origin of Albion, a name given to our island, not by the natives, but by foreigners.

It is worthy of observation, that in several languages, the word denoting town is either the same with, or obviously deduced from, that denoting a hill or mountain. In Sanskrit they differ only in one letter; the German burg (whence comes our word borough) is evidently derived from berg, a mountain. The Latin word pagus, a coun

nothing else than DUN, an eminence or hill, which we prefix to our terms, as in Dun-edin, Dun-fermline; but the Latins postfixed, (as the Greeks did woλ45,) as in Carrodinium, Ebrodinium, and a multitude of other names, from Spain to Scythia. Either the first builders of cities might have chosen such elevated situations for the sake of greater security and defence; or, we may adopt Plato's notion, that, immediately after the flood, men, still trembling at that dreadful catastrophe, and yet not quite secure against its recurrence, chose the tops of hills as being less in danger of being surmounted by the waters.

The Sanskrit word PET, signifying motion, is the origin of the Latin verb petere, whose primary meaning Dr Hunter, with his usual acuteness, considers to be merely motion. This meaning of the verb, which ought to be its first and leading one, Ainsworth has made the eleventh and most remote. From this word are derived also the Greek words ToμAI, TETÀOμAI, UWIGTITNS, διπετής, &c., and, perhaps, IT, contracted from TETw—all including the idea of motion. Of the Latin verb, used in the sense of aiming at, moving towards, (as in the phrase, One" Taurus petit cornibus,") the English have made," the bull butts with his horns;" but our Scottish forefathers have stuck closer to the Sanskrit orthoepy, and said, "the bull putts with his horns."

of the kings of Egypt, according to Herodotus, constructed, in a marsh, an artificial island for his residence, which he called Olb. The island Elba, the river Elb, from some island in its course, have, perhaps, had the same origin.

Words, in emigrating from one country to another adjoining, and thence to others more distant, suffer such dreadful mutilations and distortions, as scarcely to be recognized. Who, without knowing how much it has suffered in gliding to us through the French and Italian, could detect, in our English word surgeon, the two Greek words xg and sgyo? Who could discover the dwarfish word alms to be the gigantic sλnposuvn? kirk to be zugiazn? strange to be extraneus? Even when the sounds and the syllables are the same, their senses are utterly deflected. Of KNECHT, a hind or slave, we have made a knight, one of our highest dignities. Of BANCO, a poor plain plank for sitting, we have made banker, bank, bench of Bishops. KATHEDRA, a chair, is converted into a huge church. Of the Hebrew negative, AIN, (not, nothing,) the Greeks have stolen the a, the Latins the IN,-thus dividing, like most conscientious thieves,

Devongrove, Dollar, 4th June, 1829.

A TALE OF THE PLAGUE IN EDINBURGH.

By Robert Chambers, Author of " The Traditions of Edin-
burgh," the "Histories of the Scottish Rebellions," &c.
In several parts of Scotland, such things are to be found
as tales of the Plague. Amidst so much human suffering
as the events of a pestilence necessarily involved, it is of
course to be supposed that, occasionally, circumstances
would occur of a peculiarly disastrous and affecting de-
scription, that many loving hearts would be torn asunder,
or laid side by side in the grave, many orphans left deso-
late, and patriarchs bereft of all their descendants,—and
that cases of so painful a sort as called forth greater com-
passion at the time, would be remembered, after much of
the ordinary details was generally forgotten. The cele-
brated story of Bessy Bell and Mary Gray, is á case în

point.

So romantic, so mournful a tale, appealing as it does to every bosom, could not fail to be commemorated, even though it had been destitute of the great charm of locality. Neither could such a tale of suffering and horror as that of the Teviotdale shepherd's family (already alluded to in a former article upon this subject) ever be forgotten in the district where it occurred,—interesting as it is, has been, and will be, to every successive generation of mothers, and duly listened to and shuddered at by so many infantine audiences. In the course of our researches, we have likewise picked up a few extraordinary circumstances connected with the last visit paid by the plague to Edinburgh; which, improbable as they may perhaps appear, we believe to be, to a certain extent, allied to truth, and shall now submit them to our readers.

When Edinburgh was afflicted, for the last time, with the pestilence, such was its effect upon the energies of the citizens, and so long was its continuance, that the grass grew on the principal street, and even at the Cross, though that Scottish Rialto was then perhaps the most crowded thoroughfare in Britain. Silence, more than that of the stillest midnight, pervaded the streets during the day. The sunlight fell upon the quiet houses as it falls on a line of sombre and neglected tombstones in some sequestered churchyard-gilding, but not altering, their desolate features. The area of the High Street, on being entered by a stranger, might have been contemplated with feelings similar to those with which Christian, in the Pilgrim's Progress, viewed the awful court-yard of Giant Despair; for, as in that well-imagined scene, the very ground bore the marks of wildness and desolation; every window around, like the loop-holes of the dungeons in Doubting Castle, seemed to tell its tale of misery within, and the whole seemed to lie prostrate and powerless under the dominion of an unseen demon, which fancy might have conceived as stalking around in a bodily form, leisurely dooming its subjects to successive execution.

effect among the thin congregations of haggard and terrified scarecrows, who persisted in meeting regularly at places of worship. The learned puzzled themselves with conjectures as to its probable causes and cures ; while the common people gave way to the most wild and fanciful surmises, almost all of which were as far from the truth. The only popular observation worthy of any attention, was, that the greater part of those who suffered from this new disease died during the night, and all of them while unattended.

Not many days after the alarm first arose, a poor woman arrested a physician in the street, and desired to confer with him a brief space. He at first shook her off, saying he was at present completely engaged, and could take no new patients. But when she informed him that she did not desire his attendance, and only wished to communicate something which might help to clear up the mystery of the late premature deaths, he stopped and lent a patient ear. She told him that on the previous night, having occasion to leave her house, in order to visit a sick neighbour, who lay upon a lonely death-bed in the second flat below her own garret, she took a lamp in her hand, that she might the better find her way down. As she descended the stair, which she described as a turnpike, or spiral one, she heard a low and inexpressibly doleful moan, as if proceeding from the house of her neighbour,-such a moan, she said, as she had never heard proceed from any of the numerous death-beds it had been her lot to attend. She hastened faster down the stair than her limbs were well able to carry her, under the idea that her friend was undergoing some severe suffering, which she might be able to alleviate. Before, however, she had reached the first landing-place, a noise, as of footsteps, arose from the house of pain, and caused her to apprehend that all was not right in a house which she knew no one ever visited, in that time of desolation, but herself. She quickened her pace still more than before, and soon reached the landing-place at her neigh

swoof down the stair, like the noise of a full garment brushing the walls of a narrow passage, she drew in the lamp, and looking down beyond it, saw what she conceived to be the dark drapery of the back of a tall human figure, loosely clad, moving, or rather gliding, out of sight, and in a moment gone. So uncertain was she at first of the reality of what she saw, that she believed it to be the shadow of the central pile of the stair gliding downwards as she brought round the light; but the state of matters in the inside of the house soon convinced her, to her horror, that it must have been something more dreadful and real-the unfortunate woman being dead; though as yet it was three days till the time when, according to the old rules of the disease, she might have lived or died. The physician heard this story with astonishment; but as it only informed his mind, which was not free from superstition, that the whole matter was becoming more and more mysterious, he drew no conclusions from it, but simply observing, with a professional shake of the head, that all was not right in the town, went upon his way.

When the pestilence was at its greatest height, a strange perplexity began, and not without reason, to take posses-bour's door. Something, as she expressed it, seeming to sion of the few physicians and nurses who attended the sick. It was customary for the distempered to die, or, as the rare case happened, to recover, on a particular day after having first exhibited symptoms of illness. This was an understood rule of the plague, which had never been known to fail. All at once, it began to appear that a good many people, especially those who were left alone in their houses by the death or desertion of friends, died before the arrival of the critical day. In some of these cases, not only was the rule of the disease broken, but, what vexed the physicians more, the powers of medicine seemed to have been set at defiance; for several patients of distinction, who had been able to purchase good attendance, and were therefore considered as in less than ordinary danger, were found to have expired after taking salutary drugs, and being left with good hopes by their physicians. It almost seemed as if some new disease were beginning to engraft itself upon the pestilence-a new feature rising upon its horrid aspect. Subtle and fatal as it formerly was, it was now inconceivably more It could formerly be calculated upon; but it was now quite arbitrary and precarious. Medicine had lost its power over it. God, who created it in its first monstrous form, appeared to have endowed it with an additional sting, against which feeble mortality could present no competent shield. Physicians beheld its new ravages with surprise and despair; and a deeper shade of horror was spread, in consequence, over the public mind.

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As an air of more than natural mystery seemed to accompany this truly calamitous turn of affairs, it was, of course, to be expected, in that superstitious age, that many would attribute it to a more than natural cause. By the ministers, it was taken for an additional manifestation of God's wrath, and as such held forth in not a few pulpits, accompanied with all the due exhortations to a better life, which it was not unlikely would be attended with good

The old woman, who, of course, could not be expected to let so good a subject of gossip and wonderment lie idle in her mind, like the guinea kept by the Vicar of Wakefield's daughters, forthwith proceeded to dissipate it abroad among her neighbours, who soon (to follow out the idea of the coin) reduced it into still larger and coarser pieces, and paid it away, in that exaggerated form, to a wider circle of neighbours, by whom it was speedily dispersed in various shapes over the whole town. popular mind, like the ear of a sick man, being then peculiarly sensitive, received the intelligence with a degree of alarm, such as the news of a lost battle has not always occasioned amongst a people; and, as the atmosphere is best calculated for the conveyance of sound during the time of frost, so did the air of the plague seem peculiarly

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