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show themselves, and where scandal can never thrive. The ladies dress very well, and seem to have a considerable quantity of conceit; their dresses here are not so plain and so elegant as with you; they have too great a profusion of flounces, feathers, and ruffles; few of them are to be met with very good-looking; the climate robs their complexions of all the beautiful colours, leaving behind the sallow, dun,

and yellow; no pure red and white in Canada, and dimples and smiles are rare. I endeavoured to fall in love once or twice, and flung my old heart quite open to the little archer; but the frost, or something or other, would not allow the arrows to penetrate. I have met with girls from my own old Scotland that I liked to spend the day with very much, but they had no pretensions to beauty; we could talk of witches, and quote Burns together. But this love proceeds from many causes, which have but small connexion with beauty of person; it is to be traced to the affinity of mind -Humph!

tail, he would have sunk like his horses, beneath the cold casement of the river, to be seen no more. If the horses are allowed to plunge much, there is no chance of saving them: they have, therefore, to hang them, to keep them quiet until they are pulled out, when the noose on the neck is slackened, and life permitted to return."-Vol. I. pp. 67-8. In the subjoined passage, our author is more poetical and elevated in his composition than is usual with him: the boundless forests of Canada. How different from a CANADIAN FORESTS." The bush is the native title of from the French, bois (wood)? or what is its root? The mere shrub, as the English language has it! Is the term matter is worthy philosophical consideration. To the bush he finds food for his family. To the bush goes the lumbergoes the settler, hungered out of the old world, and there man, and there is a supply of timber for the Quebec market forever and a day. To the bush goes the furrier, and there are his otters and beavers, the muffs and the tippets. "Do not let yourself be any longer deceived with the In exploring the bush, a person fancies at times that he has tale, that there are no unmarried ladies here, for there are in the greatest abundance; and also more bachelors than I got into complete solitude: he bustles along, and the rustlike to live among, having boarded in a house for a few days his ears to other sounds, while musquitoes, &c. are too apt fing he makes in getting through the brushwood, deafens where there were above thirty bachelors, between twenty to obscure the functions of the eyes; but let him listen a and forty years of age, every day at dinner. What do you little, and various singular sounds meet the ear, as do also think of this? Canada is not a place for people to get married in. What is the cause, it is not easy to assign: mestrange prospects the eye. Birds fly about screaming pitethinks it proceeds from the bachelors being chiefly foreign-ously, as if their nests had been lately robbed-these remind ers-people badgered up and down this world, who forget tribe in the woody wilderness perch upon boughs, and warus of the lapwings in England. None of the feathered that there is such a state as matrimony. Those who are ble sweet notes. No linnets no nightingales there: the long without a home get careless about finding one. The natives, however, and settled residents, wed as becomes music is melancholy, the cadence is sorrow, creating simithem; and at their weddings they have what are called lar sensations in the wanderer. Partridges there sit on the spireverees, a parading kind of show, with sleighs, if in branches, and there is the robin red-breast as large as winter, or a two-wheeled kind of gig, if in summer. Round thrush, yet a much greater coward than the British robin; the towns they fly-What a set-out!-fiddles playing, pis- he turns tail on the proffered crumb, and fears to enter the most hospitable mansion, although the doors may be flung tols firing,-altogether composing lots of fun: a true Canaopen to receive him. In the bushy hemlock the owl is dian spree is worth the looking at. In Montreal, the snow accumulates to a great depth in the streets during winter, bitterns. During the cold frosty nights, the trees creak, found dozing, while the swamps eroak with bull-frogs and rendering the walking very precarious; people wear a kind as if ten thousand bûcherons were at them with their hatof cramp on their feet, called creeper, and the ladies move about with stockings drawn over their boots. chets. On the banks of the wild rivers, are curious trod The Scotch den paths-these are the walks of the wolves, foxes, deer, brogue here is not only conceived vulgar, but highly offensive.'"-Vol. I. pp. 38-42. &c. These roads the Indians always adopt when on their journeys. Places called deer-licks are also frequent: these are salt-marshes, where the deer assemble to lick the saline soil. Hunters looking for the animals await them at these marshes with their guns, and shoot scores of them. "The bush is an interesting scene. There is, as Byron says,

INDIAN MODESTY." The modesty of the Indians is very great. Their noble chief, De Campsie, being at a party once where English ladies were showing off their snowy necks, and lovely heaving bosoms, on being asked what he thought of them, replied, shaking his head, They show much too great face for me.'"-Vol. I. p. 65.

WINTER TRAVELLING IN CANADA." In the winter of 1826, the ice of Lake Ontario, when at the thickest, was within half an inch of two feet; the Lake of Chaudiere was three feet and a half: they are not so thick, by about half a foot, towards the middle, and begin to take (that is, freeze) round the sides first, before the middle; sometimes towards the centre they will not freeze at all, unless the frost be very severe. The road for sleighs is therefore round the sides. The Canadian adopts this for two substantial reasons; first, that the ice is more safe there; and secondly, that should it break in, he has a better chance to get out. Often horses and sleighs will break smack through, sink beneath the ice, and be seen no more: the drivers generally contrive to escape, although sometimes they get entangled or confused, and sink with the rest. An honest settler and his wife were cantering along the Ottawa to hold their merry New-year in Montreal: what a gay set-out! and what a span of beautiful American bay horses!-they went like the wind; while the cutter (an elegant species of sleigh) tilted over the cracks and cahots in glorious style. My much-respected friend, John Sheriff, Esq. was a passenger aboard; who would not have had his interesting company if it were to be obtained?-a profound connoisseur in the news and manners of Canada, deeply read in the periodical literature of the old country, a great traveller all over the world, ever retaining a good and cheerful disposition. Often would he warn the farmer to take care of the ice, as about the eddies of Long Island it was never to be fully depended on; but the other still replied there could be no fear, seeing by the track that two laden traineaux had lately passed be fore them. Thus gliding along with a swift and smooth velocity, down they went with a plunging crash. My humorous friend, whose presence of mind never forsook him, vaulted on to the solid ice, and very politely handed out the lady; while her husband, poor fellow, kept touching up the cattle slightly with the whip, unconscious of his dangerous situation, and, had my friend not caught him by the coat

obtain

"A pleasure in the pathless woods.' When a man loses his way, he follows down the first running brook he comes to, and this never fails to conduct him to the banks of some river, where he generally may information of his situation. The Indian writes his letters on the bark of a tree, and places them in some post-office well known to his tribe; which post-office is generally an old hollow cedar. Thus they conduct their business in the bush, and breathe sighs to their squaws from Lake Simcoe perchance, to beyond the Rocky Mountains. Think what ye will, ye denizens of gay luxuriant cities; ye who boast of your wealth, your wives, your comforts, your society,-give an honest Canadian a bit of pig, his wife, and his pipe, and he is happy in the bush as you are, and treads his brushwood way as pleasantly as you do a Turkey carpet." Vol. I. pp. 100-2.

Sportsmen often meet with strange adventures; we should like to know how some of our August and September friends would relish a wild goose, obtained after the following fashion, with a gun whose powers of percussion were so tremendous:

The

DUCK-SHOOTING.-" The Camerons were the best hunters I ever knew in Canada. They were brothers, of Highland extract, hardy fellows, and extremely fearless: they would go out a-deer-hunting, and sometimes bring home fifteen in a couple of days. As for shooting ducks, they were unmatched, and filled the canoe with large fat fowls when nobody else could get a shot: they would go out on a morning and procure four or five dozen with ease. black wood-duck the best of all the wild duck tribe; it is of a sooty colour, with a dirty yellow speckled breast, and nearly as large as a goose. They feed on the wild rice, which grows plentifully in the small streams in the remote woods; they are not met with in large flocks; many of them remaining during summer, and are met with large broods following after them.

"One of the Camerons having observed a large flock of wild geese on the Lake of the Chaudiere, used every means in his power to have a shot at them, but could not he crawled round the rushy banks from one point to another, but it would not do,-still the flock kept aloof, and vexed him with their shyness. At length he took his canoe, and having cautiously got into it, allowed himself to drift out into the Big Bay towards his prey; and when he had got, as he considered, within shot, he let fly, and, dreadful to relate, the canoe upset from the percussion of the musket, and launched the keen sportsman into the deep. This, however, did not concern him much; instead of clinging to the canoe, or even catching a paddle, as many others would, he quietly swam ashore, without saying a word, with the gun in his hand, a distance nearly of a mile. His brothers on the bank did not seem at all alarmed: they got out on a point, and rode a tree to the canoe; that is, took a branch of some one or other that had tumbled down-these are always in superabundance-sat on it as we would on a saddle, and paddled away in the water to the canoe, which having uprighted, they easily succeeded, with the aid of the branch, in embarking by the stern, when away they hunted the wounded wild-geese, and brought a good shot ashore, where, on arriving, they found their brother had prepared a fire, was drying his clothes, and broiling something to eat, "Vol. I. pp. 231-3.

Mr Mactaggart's account of one of the greatest wonders of the natural world is graphic and interesting:

THE FALLS OF NIAGARA." Now you expect a description beyond the poetic quill of Howison, or statistical one of Gourlay; but this, my good fellow, I cannot do. You must come and see them with your own eyes. They are certainly sublime, awful, and beautiful, beyond my highest expectations. Think of the Great St Lawrence coming over a precipice of 150 feet, divided in the middle by Goat Island! More than one half of the water rolls down on the Canada side of the island, the rest on the American-both falls are nearly one height. The grand horseshoe fall is that on the Canadian side. The noise is deafening, but not disagreeable; and the smoking spume, though it obscures the bottom, and hinders the eye from penetrating into the awful cauldron, makes the whole more awfully beautiful. Look at them every day of the year, and every hour of the day, and new scenes will present themselves. Sometimes the noise lulls-sometimes the spray is full of rainbows and haloes. The waters at times seem green, and the next instant they are black. The frost adorning them with fringing icicles and furbelows of snow, while the sun paints them with streaks and circles of coloured light. Though I were a Milton, they would laugh at my muse; and being only a very humble individual, of course it is high presumption for me to speak; but triflers must be gabbling. As I examined, I could not but reflect on the numbers of mankind who have wandered far to see this wonderful spectacle, and of the far greater numbers who have heard of the Falls, but have not been so fortunate as to have seen them. I then considered myself extremely lucky, and said this was well worth leaving Britain for; for this, what is a voyage over the broad Atlantic? I went down Jacob's ladder-a ladder which hangs from the ledge of the table rock over which the waters fall; and, after descending about two hundred steps, found myself at the bottom of the Falls. Now for ye! I looked upon the face of the descending element. I crept along by the side of the limestone precipice, and looked through the foaming surge into the cauldron itself. Heavens-Not yet satisfied, I got in between the Falls and the precipice, and looked through the descending torrent. Speak not of thrones and happiness! could a soul at that moment be more happy than I was? I was alone! I was curtained by the Falls of Niagara. Nature in her greatness was before me, in a majesty of splendour! Could I then think of any thing else than her Author, my own insignificance, and the trust to repose in Him through time and eternity.

We cannot resist adding the following anecdote, which bears a kind of relation to the above subject:

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NELLY BURNSIDE." When the question was put in the forum of Edinburgh, respecting the objects of nature in heaven above and earth beneath,' which were likely to fill man with the greatest awe;- Those in the heavens,' quoth one of the speakers, for there are the sun and the stars.' -'No, no,' replied another, they are not so awful as the stormy ocean, or the Falls of Niagara.'-' You are both wrong,' cried out a Galloway poet in the gallery; there is nought in heaven above, nor earth below, can half match Nelly Burnside !"-Vol. II. p. 46.

We shall conclude our selections from this work with a passage, which we recommend to the serious attention of all persons who may ever indulge any thoughts of leaving their native country, and settling on the other side of the Atlantic :

CAUTION TO EMIGRANTS.-" Letters from settlers to their

friends in Britain are not to be entirely depended upon; few They wish of them are exactly true, and for these reasons: as many of their friends to follow them as possible, for it is natural in man to have his friends about him; and to do this, he must paint the beauties of Canada in glowing colours; he must dwell upon the fertility of the soil, the cheapness of farms. If they cause them to forsake a comfortable home and come out to Canada, they commit no small crime. By remaining as they are, they benefit their own country, according to their station; by leaving it, they in some degree do it an injury; and, after being deceived in going abroad, they blame their friends, themselves, and the country they are brought to adopt. They may, it is true, return home again if they are able; but this, by a family of spirit, will not be thought of-they will wear away life with vexation; and in this state they are too frequently met with. There is nothing like travellers telling the ho nest truth, and letting people judge for themselves. There are certain classes of emigrants that might do well, but these must not be poor, nor yet very rich-such as have been in the school of adversity, and are no strangers to difficulties. Such letters do much injury; they not only bring out people to be deceived, and so become discontented, but from being friends at home, they are foes ever afterwards. All the noise about cheap provisions, plenty to eat and drink, and but little to do, is nonsense; and indeed if any one out of the country would consider it, they might see it at once. I can only say, that I have seen more distress in Canada than ever I saw out of it; and if we used as much exertion to live at home as we are obliged to do when there, few of us would go there. But we are slow of belief; and probably it is as well; the truth is generally disbelieved. Any thing that gratifies the imagination is easily imposed on us, while that which detracts from the ideal is abhorred, and will not be received. They who invite their friends extol the absence of taxes, the salubrity of the climate, the pleasures, amusements, pastimes, &c. They must not say a word about the difficulty of clearing the woods, the toils of the hatchet, the heavy lifts, rheumatic complaints, &c.; they must not say that only a mere speck of the country is yet cleared, and that they may get land almost for nothing; for what is its value, remote from towns and places where it may be brought to some account? Not one of the logs that are seen landed on our shores is cut on the farm of any settler. There is no cleared land within 300 miles of where they are obtained. There are no taxes of any extent, because there are very few who could pay them were they imposed. Where there is little taxation in a country, there is often little wealth."-Vol. II. pp. 254-6.

We can easily conceive a much superior book to the one we have now noticed, being written about Canada; but, in the present state of our information regarding that most extensive and interesting colony, we feel in"Returning towards the ladder, I espied a duck which debted to Mr Mactaggart for what he has done, and willhad been swept over the Falls; she was alive, but seeming-ingly confess that, upon many points, he has extended ly more than three-fourths dead; from her 1 inferred, that our previous stock of knowledge, and thereby done us a if one hundred good swimmers, such as the surf-gambollers service, for which we, in common with all right-thinking of the South Sea Isles, were to be swept over, one-fourth of men, should be thankful. them would come out alive. Had Lord Byron been with me, I daresay he would have attempted it and made a coward of me, for I should not have liked to accompany him.' -Vol. II. pp. 42-4.

National Portrait Gallery of Illustrious and Eminent Per-
sonages of the Nineteenth Century. Engraved on Steel.
With Memoirs, by the Rev. Henry Stebbing, M. A.
London. Fisher and Co., Colnaghi and Co., Jones and
Co., and Ackerman. Published Monthly. Parts I.
II. and III.

Prize List-Public Exhibition Day of the Edinburgh
Academy, Wednesday, 29th July 1829.

THIS little pamphlet contains, besides the names of the young gentlemen who distinguished themselves during the last year in the seven different classes of the Edinburgh Academy, several specimens of their abilities in the shape of exercises in English and Latin verse and in French composition. We think it should also have included a specimen or two of Latin prose, as it did last year, when Mr Williams was Rector. We observe, also, that to the "Prize List" for 1828 there is the following preface:-" These exercises are printed without any corrections on the part of the Rector or Masters, and without any suggestions as to the mode in which passages might be amended. They have been printed from the manuscript copy delivered in for competition, and even the errors of the press have been corrected by the authors. J. Williams, Rector." No similar statement has been made this year by the present Rector, the Rev. Thomas Sheepshanks, and we are therefore left in the dark upon the subject, which ought not to have been the case.

THIS is a work of a very different stamp from the numerous catchpenny publications, connected with the fine arts, which are at present over-running the country. The portraits it contains, and which are taken either from original paintings, or from rare and valuable engravings, are executed in a style to entitle them to a place on the tables, or in the libraries, of all patrons of the arts. Each part furnishes three of these, together with judiciously written biographical notices of the individuals represented. The series is to embrace all those of our own times who are distinguished either for their exalted rank, their professional celebrity, or their literary and scientific attainments. It has already presented us with the Duke of Wellington, Lord Byron, the Marquis Camden, Earl Amherst, her Royal Highness the late Princess Charlotte, Dr Wollaston, Lord Grenville, the Marchioness of Stafford, and Earl St Vincent. As a specimen of the simple and useful manner in which the accompanying memoirs are executed, we select that of our countrywoman, Eliza-Latin Verses," the "Best English Verses," the "Best beth Sutherland-Gower,—

THE MARCHIONESS OF STAfford.

"This noble and illustrious lady is descended from the most ancient house in Scotland, and represents a family whose nobility has passed through many of the most distinguished personages in the history of the country. The first of her ancestors, of whom we find mention, was Thane of Sutherland, and his name is rendered interesting to us by his having fallen a victim to the revenge of Macbeth. The earldom of Sutherland was bestowed by King Malcolm upon the son of this nobleman, who was in his turn succeeded by his son, who built the ancient seat of the family, Dunrobin Castle. William, the fourth Earl of Sutherland, married the eldest daughter of King Robert the First, whose son David is recorded to have erected the earldom into a royalty, in the year 1345. On the decease of the ninth Earl, the titles and estates of the family descended, as in the instance of the present Countess, to a female possessor, married to the second son of the Earl of Huntly, who assumed the title in right of his wife.

"The present inheritor of the honours which have descended through this long line of noble ancestry, is the only daughter of William, the seventeenth Earl, who married the eldest daughter and co-heiress of William Maxwell, Esq. of Preston. Her ladyship was born May 24th, 1765, and her father died on the 16th of June, in the year following. Her right of succession, as a female, was immediately strongly disputed by Sir Robert Gordon, baronet, of Gordonstown, and by George Sutherland, Esq. of Force. A long and difficult discussion was entered into on this important point, but her ladyship's guardians succeeded in proving her clear and distinct claim as heiress to the earldorn; and, on the 21st of March, 1771, her right was settled by a decision in the House of Lords. When only four years old, she thus became possessor of the most honourable title, and of the richest domain, of any of the Scottish nobility.

The Dux of the highest Latin class this year was Mr Andrew Ramsay Campbell; and we observe that prizes have been awarded to the same gentleman for the "Best

French Composition," and for being the "Best Grecian,"
and the "Best French Scholar." This indicates a degree
of industry and talent deserving of no mean praise, and
we hope that these distinctions are only the avant-couriers
of others still more desirable. From a Latin poem, en-
titled "Holyrood," by Mr Campbell, we have pleasure
in making the following short extract:

Ut juvat hic vacuum me solas ire per aulas,
Quas tenuit dudum formâ præstante Maria,
Abjectique Itali fuscum spectare cruorem
Hærentem tabulis, detergerique negantem-
Hic, a reginâ multo dignatus honore,
Primores, ipsumque ausus contemnere regem,
Demens! sic fastus expendit sanguine pœnas.
Hic quoque Reginam solitus gravis ille sacerdos
Hortari, vitæ culpas delictaque poscens,
Romanæ fidei promptus reprehendere sacra,
Atque Dei verum menti defigere cultum.
O! nimis infelix, funestis casibus acta,
Ter vacuos thalamos plorasti, conjuge rapto;
Carcere te, hospitium quærentem, clausit Eliza,
Et tandem ferrum cognato sanguine tinxit ;
Perfida! si formæ non ulla moveret imago
Corda tibi sæva, triplici circumdata ferro,
Si non hospitii leges violare timeres,
Nec consanguineæ dextram maculare cruore ;
Nonne tamen mentem memoris præconia famæ
Moverunt, læsi nec vivax numinis ira?
Munera dum Phoebus diffundet grata diei,
Dumque reget tacitam bijugis Latonia noctem,
Restabit semper terris infamia cædis.

Thoughts on Union with Christ, and Abiding in Him. By
Sosthenes. Edinburgh. W. Whyte and Co. 1829.

We can safely recommend this little work to the devout, as one of great piety and sound Christian doctrine.

"In the year 1785, the Countess of Sutherland married the first and present Marquis of Stafford, distinguished not more for his wealth and exalted rank, than for his splendid patronage of the Fine Arts. Her ladyship has issue, Earl Gower, who was born August 8th, 1786; Francis, born January, 1800; and the ladies Charlotte and Elizabeth, born, the former on June 8th, 1788, and the latter in No- The Youth's Instructor. Nos. I. and II. Berwick. vember, 1797.

"The high nobility of the Countess of Sutherland received, on his Majesty's visit to Scotland, in 1822, the royal distinction-her son, Lord Leveson Gower, being appointed to carry the sceptre before the King, as representative of the Earls of Sutherland, to whom that honour was determined to belong."

We have only to add, that this work is amazingly cheap, the price of each Part being so low as two shillings.

Thomas Melrose. 1829.

THESE little books, which contain reading lessons for very young children, are upon a simple and judicious plan. Had we a large family in Berwick, we would purchase a bundle of them from Mr Thomas Melrose.

We doubt whether these three lines convey a just view of Rizzio's character.-ED.

MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE.

the keeper instantly involved the entrant in darkness by re-closing the gloomy portal. A flight of about twenty

TRADITIONARY NOTICES OF THE OLD TOLBOOTH steps then led to an inner door, which, being duly knock

AND ITS TENANTS.

By the Author of the "Histories of the Scottish
Rebellions."

sword, together with the sheath of a bayonet, and one or two bandeliers, alike understood to hang there for the defence of the jail. On the west end of the hall hung a board, on which the production, probably, of some insolvent poetaster-were inscribed the following emphatic lines:

A prison is a house of care,

A place where none can thrive,
A touchstone true to try a friend,
A grave for men alive—
Sometimes a place of right,

Sometimes a place of wrong,
Sometimes a place for jades and thieves,

And honest men among.

ed, was opened by a bottle-nosed personage denominated Peter, who, like his sainted namesake, always carried two or three large keys. You then entered the hall, which, being free to all the prisoners except those of the east end, WHOSOEVER is fortunate enough to have seen Edin- was usually filled with a crowd of shabby-looking, but burgh previous to the year 1817-when as yet the greater very merry loungers. This being also the chapel of the part of its pristine character was entire, and before the jail, contained an old pulpit of singular fashion,—such a stupendous grandeur, and dense old-fashioned substan- pulpit as one could imagine John Knox to have preached tiality, which originally distinguished it, had been swept from; which, indeed, he was traditionally said to have away by the united efforts of fire and foolery-must re- actually done. At the right-hand side of the pulpit, was member the Old Tolbooth. At the north-west corner a door leading up the large turnpike to the apartments of St Giles's Church, and almost in the very centre of a occupied by the criminals, one of which was of platecrowded street, stood this tall, narrow, antique, and iron. This door was always shut, except when food was gloomy-looking pile, with its black stancheoned windows taken up to the prisoners. On the north side of the hall opening through its dingy walls, like the apertures of a was the Captain's Room, a small place like a countinghearse, and having its western gable penetrated by sun-room, but adorned with two fearful old muskets and a dry suspicious-looking holes, which occasionally served horresco referens-for the projection of the gallows. The fabric was four stories high, and might occupy an area of fifty feet by thirty. At the west end there was a low projection of little more than one story, surmounted by a railed platform, which served for executions. This, as well as other parts of the building, contained shops. On the north side, there remained the marks of what had once been a sort of bridge communicating between the Tolbooth and the houses immediately opposite. This part of the building got the name of the Purses, on account of its having been the place where, in former times, on the King's birth-day, the magistrates delivered donations of as many pence as the King was years old to the same number of beggars or blue-gowns. There was a very dark room on this side, which was latterly used as a guard-house by the right venerable military police of Edinburgh, but which had formerly been the fashionable silk-shop of the father of the celebrated Francis Horner. At the east end, there was nothing remarkable, except an iron box attached to the wall, for the reception of small donations in behalf of the poor prisoners, over which was a painted board, containing some quotations from Scripture. In the lower flat of the south and sunny side, besides a shop, there was a den for the accommodation of the outer door-keeper, and where it was necessary to apply when admission was required, and the old grey-haired man was not found at the door. The main door was at the bottom of the great turret or turnIt pike stair which projected from the south-east corner. was a small but very strong door, full of large-headed nails, and having an enormous lock, with a flap to conceal the keyhole, which could itself be locked, but was generally left open. One important feature in the externals of the Tolbooth was, that about one-third of the building, including the turnpike, was of ashler workthat is, smooth freestone-while the rest seemed of coarser and more modern construction, besides having a turnpike about the centre, without a door at the bottom. The floors of the west end, as it was always called, were somewhat above the level of those in the east end, and in recent times the purposes of these different quarters was quite distinct the former containing the debtors, and the latter the criminals. As the east end contained the hall in which the Scottish Parliament formerly met, we may safely suppose it to have been the oldest part of the build-riosity, in the impossibility of seeing the execution, to try ing-an hypothesis which derives additional credit from the various appearance of the two quarters-the one having been apparently designed for a more noble purpose than the other. The eastern division must have been of vast antiquity, as James the Third fenced a Parliament in it, and the magistrates of Edinburgh let the lower flat for booths or shops, so early as the year 1480.

On passing the outer door, where the rioters of 1736 thundered with their sledge-hammers, and finally burnt down all that interposed between them and their prey,

The historical recollections connected with the hall ought not to be passed over. Here Mary delivered what Lindsay and other old historians call her painted orations. Here Murray wheedled, and Morton frowned. This was the scene of Charles's ill-omened attempts to revoke the possessions of the Church; and here, when his commissioner, Nithsdale, was deputed to urge that measure, did the Presbyterian nobles prepare to set active violence in opposition to the claims of right and the royal will. On that occasion, old Belhaven, under pretence of infirmity, took hold of his neighbour, the Earl of Dumfries, with one hand, while with the other he grasped a dagger beneath his clothes, ready, in case the act of revocation were passed, to plunge it into his bosom.

From the hall a lobby extended to the bottom of the central staircase already mentioned, which led to the different apartments about twelve in number-appropriated to the use of the debtors. This stair was narrow, spiral, and steep-three bad qualities, which the stranger found but imperfectly obviated by the use of a greasy rope that served by way of balustrade. This nasty convenience was not rendered one whit more comfortable by the intelligence, usually communicated by some of the inmates, that it had hanged a man! In the apartments to which this stair led, there was nothing remarkable, except that in one of them part of the wall seemed badly plastered. This was the temporary covering of the square hole through which the gallows tree was planted. member communing with a person who lodged in this room at the time of an execution. He had had the cu

We re

if he could feel it. At the time when he heard the psalms and other devotions of the culprit concluded, and when he knew, from the awful silence of the crowd, that the signal was just about to be given, he sat down upon the end of the beam, and soon after distinctly felt the motion occasioned by the fall of the unfortunate person, and thus, as it were, played at see-saw with the criminal.

The annals of the Old Tolbooth would, we have often thought, form a curious and instructive volume. If it

were not rather our province to communicate scattered traits than to compose regular history, we might be persaaded to attempt such a work. The annals of crime are of greater value than is generally supposed. Criminals form an interesting portion of mankind. They are entirely different from us-divided from us by a pale which we will not dare not overleap, but from the safe side of which we may survey, with curious eyes, the strange proceedings which go on beyond. They are interesting, often, on account of their courage-on account of their having dared something which we timorously and anxiously avoid. A murderer or a robber is quite as remarkable a person, for this reason, as a soldier who has braved some flesh-shaking danger. He must have given way to some excessive passion and all who have ever been transported beyond the bounds of reason by the violence of any passion whatever, are entitled to the wonder, if not the admiration, of the rest of the species. Among the inmates of the Old Tolbooth, some of whom had inhabited it for many years, there were preserved a few legendary particulars respecting criminals of distinction, who had formerly been within its walls. Some of these I have been fortunate enough to pick up. One of the most distinguished traits in the character of the Old Tolbooth was, that it had no power of retention over people of quality. It had something like that faculty which Falstaff attributes to the lion and himself of knowing men who ought to be respected on account of their rank. Almost every criminal of more than the ordinary rank ever yet confined in it, somehow or other contrived to get free. An insane peer, who, about the time of the Union, assassinated a schoolmaster that had married a girl to whom he had paid improper addresses, escaped while under sentence of death. We are uncertain whether the following curious fact relates to that nobleman, or to some other titled offender. It was contrived that the prisoner should be conveyed out of the Tolbooth in a trunk, and carried by a porter to Leith, where some sailors were to be ready with a boat to take him aboard a vessel about to leave Scotland. The plot succeeded so far as the escape from jail was concerned, but was knocked on the head by an unlucky and most ridiculous contretemps. It so happened that the porter, in arranging the trunk upon his back, placed the end which corresponded with the feet of the prisoner uppermost. The head of the unfortunate nobleman was therefore pressed against the lower end of the box, and had to sustain the weight of the whole body. The posture was the most uneasy imaginable. Yet life was preferable to ease. He permitted himself to be taken away. The porter trudged along the Krames with the trunk, quite unconscious of its contents, and soon reached the High Street, which he also traversed. On reaching the Netherhow, he met an acquaintance, who asked him where he was going with that large burden. To Leith, was the answer. The other enquired if the job was good enough to afford a potation before proceeding farther upon so long a journey. This being replied to in the affirmative, and the carrier of the box feeling in his throat the philosophy of his friend's enquiry, it was agreed that they should adjourn to a neighbouring tavern. Meanwhile, the third party, whose inclinations had not been consulted in this arrangement, felt in his neck the agony of ten thousand decapitations, and almost wished that it were at once well over with him in the Grassmarket. But his agonies were not destined to be of long duration. The porter, in depositing him upon the causeway, happened to make the end of the trunk come down with such precipitation, that, unable to bear it any longer, the prisoner fairly reared out, and immediately after fainted. The consternation of the porter, on hearing a noise from his burden, was of course excessive; but he soon acquired presence of mind enough to conceive the occasion. He proceeded to unloose and to burst open the trunk, when the hapless nobleman was discovered in a state of insensibility; and

as a crowd collected immediately, and the City Guard were not long in coming forward, there was of course no farther chance of escape. The prisoner did not revive from his swoon till he had been safely deposited in his old quarters. But, if we recollect aright, he eventually escaped in another way.

Of Porteus, whose crime-if crime existed—was so sufficiently atoned for by the mode of his death, an anecdote, which has the additional merit of being connected with the Old Tolbooth, may here be acceptable. One day, some years before his trial, as he was walking up Libberton's Wynd, he encountered one of the numerous hens which, along with swine, then haunted the streets of the Scottish capital. For some reason which has not been recorded, he struck this hen with his cane, so that it immediately died. The affair caused the neighbours to gather round, and it was universally thought that the case was peculiarly hard, inasmuch as the bird was a clocker, and left behind it a numerous brood of orphan chickens. Before the Captain had left the spot, the proprietrix of the hen, an old woman who lived in the upper flat of a house close by, looked over her window, and poured down upon the slayer's head a whole Gardeloo of obloquy and reproach, saying, among other things, that “she wished he might have as many witnesses present at his hinderend as there were feathers in that hen.”* Porteus went away, not unaffected, as it would appear, by these idle words. On the night destined to be his last on earth, he told the story of the hen to the friends who then met in the jail to celebrate his reprieve from the execution which was to have taken place that day; and the prophetess of Libberton's Wynd was honoured with general ridicule for the failure of her imprecation. Before the merry-meeting, however, was over, the sound of the deaddrum, beat by the approaching rioters, fell upon their ears, and Porteus, as if struck all at once with the certainty of death, exclaimed, “D-n the wife! she is right yet!" Some of his friends suggested that it might be the fire-drum; but he would not give ear to such consolations, and fairly abandoned all hope of life. Before another hour had passed, he was in eternity.

Nicol Brown, a butcher, executed in 1753, for the murder of his wife, was not the least remarkable tenant of the Tolbooth during the last century. A singular story is told of this wretched man. One evening, long before his death, as he was drinking with some other butchers in a tavern somewhere about the Grassmarket, a dispute arose about how long it might be allowable to keep flesh before it was eaten. From less to more, the argument proceeded to bets; and Brown offered to eat a pound of the oldest and "worst" flesh that could be produced, under the penalty of a guinea. A regular bet was taken, and a deputation of the company went away to fetch the stuff which should put Nicol's stomach to the test. It so happened that a criminal-generally affirmed to have been the celebrated Nicol Muschat-had been recently hung in chains at the Gallowlee, and it entered into the heads of these monsters that they would apply in that quarter for the required flesh. They accordingly provided themselves with a ladder and other necessary articles, and, though it was now near midnight, had the courage to go down that still and solitary road which led towards the gallows, and violate the terrible remains of the dead, by cutting a large collop from the culprit's hip. This they brought away, and presented to Brown, who was not a little shocked to find himself so tasked. Neverthe

less, getting the dreadful "pound of flesh" roasted after the manner of a beef-steak, and adopting a very strong and drunken resolution, he set himself down to his horrid

endeavouring to introduce a better system of street police than had It is but charity to suppose Porteus might, in this case, be only formerly prevailed. It is not many years since the magistrates of a southern burgh drew down the unqualified wrath of all the good women there, by attempting to confiscate and remove the filth

which had been privileged to grace the causeway from time imine.

morial.

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