road to speedy ruin. This error continued to make me uneasy for a considerable time, until luckily I thought of resorting to my old custom of analysing, a habit I recommend to my readers, as furnishing an almost certain antidote to every species of deception.

The first discovery I was enabled to arrive at by this method was, that the furniture of the enchanted house was in reality neither expensive or splendid, but on the contrary very plain; and that it owed its sole charm to a certain uniform simplicity in the style and arrangement, which gave it that air of attic elegance which had deceived me so completely. There was no glare about the rooms; no tinsel or gaudy colours; none of that common and vulgar contrast we see so often, between the extreme of finery in one part, and the extreme of meanness in the other. It was a family circle, where every object possessed a kindred likeness, and evidently partook of the same general physiognomy. The servants neither wore livery nor gold lace; but then it was a pleasure to receive a glass of water from them, for they were always clean, and never out at the elbows.

Proceeding in the development of this web of magic, I went so far as to count the dishes at one of these imaginary sumptuous dinners, and also to examine with a critical eye the table equipage, piece by piece. To my utter astonishment, there were but three dishes of meat, but then they were well cooked, and neatly served. What I had mistaken for finery in the table equipage turned out to be nothing more than a table-cloth as white as snow, with spoons and knives and forks, as bright as silver. Here, as in all the other household arrangements, the same sense of propriety, the same congruity of one part with another, the same nice adaptation of means and objects, joined in the easy deportment, and graceful suavity of the mistress, constituted all the mystery of that deception under which I had labouréd. ·

The great key, however, to the whole enchantment, I found at last, was in the presiding genius of this admirable wife. It was she that threw this air of elegance on all around, and metamorphosed even the old-fashioned

arm-chair into a superb Grecian sofa. Versed from her childhood in all the indescribable secrets of good breeding; familiar with all its essential attributes, and tauglit by long experience the lesson which only experience can teach, she remained mistress of herself on all occasions, and being always at her ease, made every one easy around her. She knew that the splendours of vulgarity, far from disguising, only rendered it more glaring, as the ornaments of ugliness increase its deformity, and that nothing so completely destroys the involuntary respect we pay to equipage and show as the knowledge that they are exhibited by those who either enjoy them at the expense of the essential comforts of life, or of some industrious mechanic, who will never be paid. In one word, she knew that a well-bred woman, gifted with a nice sense of propriety, will make a house appear more genteel than all the fine decorations in the world.

ΤΑΤΩΝ ΜΟΥΣΩΝ ΕΙΣΟΔΙΑ.

THE MUSES WELCOME

TO THE HIGH AND MIGHTIE PRINCE JAMES, &c.

THERE are two things which, we hope, will ever be found to go hand and hand to the end of time; we mean learning and loyalty; and that discontent and dissatisfaction will ever be confined to the utterly ignorant, and to that more mischievous class, which may be denominated the half-informed; in which arrogance and pretension are more assiduous in making converts to crude speculations, than conscious of deficiency in making progress in true philosophy and sound sense. It is a considerable time now since Pope told the world, that "a little learning was a dangerous thing," and assuredly the Spenceans and Radicals cannot be brought forward as an illustration of the falsity of his maxim.

Were a comparison to be drawn between our ancestors

VOL. IV.

F

of a century or two back, and the present times, we do not think that, in many respects, we should have great cause to exult in the parallel. We should in all likelihood surpass them in the show, but yield to them in the substantial practice of good. We should exhibit more of finicalness, pretension, politeness, and all those arts and graces, which cost little in the exercise; but it is much to be feared, that, balanced against them in benevolence, hospitality, warm-heartedness, disinterestedness, generosity; or in any of those virtues, the practice of which requires a sacrifice of selfish feelings; or in profundity of knowledge; or in whatever demands severe exertion of the mental faculties, we have as much reason to dread our being found wanting, as Belshazzar, when he beheld

The harmless hand that wrote
His sentence on the palace wall.

Extremes meet. There are one set of people who are ever ready to exclaim, that the present age is by far the best and wisest of any that the world has exhibited; and that the past is to them but a scene of twilight indistinctness and confusion; while there is another set, who despising every thing recent, merely because it is so, and willing to adhere rather to old prejudices than to newly discovered truths, will be contented with nothing but what wears the stamp of ancient usage, and venerable old age. In most things, truth, after all, generally lies in the middle; and the surest way of arriving at it is, by setting aside all prejudices, and forming our estimate from the consideration of facts alone. There is nothing, for instance, more loudly vaunted of than the present flourishing state of learning in Scotland-which is indeed supposed to form one of our most characteristic excellencies among the nations of the earth-and that liberal diffusion of ideas, originating in the cheapness of education, which has formed us into a large body corporate of authors and readers; yet we venture to stake our credit, that no such volume as the one before us, "The Muses Welcome to. K. James," could, by any exertion of cotemporary talent, be possibly called forth on

any similar occasion. As to our sister Erin throwing it into shade, by any thing which she may produce on the present occasion of his Majesty's visit there, we profess an equally sceptical opinion.

So inveterate were the prejudices, now fast dispelling, which our southern neighbours, at least the most uninformed part of them, conceived against this portion of the island, that our forefathers were accounted a set of savages prowling about the mountains, and utterly ignorant of the arts which adorn civilized life. A journey to Scotland was considered as a thing far more hazardous than what we look on a voyage to China to be now-adays; and the traveller, before leaving his disconsolate friends, generally made his will, and settled his affairs, as the chances were considerably against his safe return to the bosom of his family. We speak of things not half a century old; and which will be found to be not wholly extinct at the present day, as witness the fears expressed so pathetically in the commercial travels of our friend the Bagman, as may be found extracted in an early number of our work: but we trust we have there made sufficient apology for him, in its being the first time he had ever lost hold of his mother's apron-strings.

A more complete refutation of the scandals thrown out against old Scotland, and a more triumphant display of her general scholarship and sound information, at a time when a great part of Europe was in a state of semibarbarism, can be found nowhere more satisfactorily than in the collection from which we now propose to make some extracts. And we do think we shall be deemed to have rendered a service to our country, by putting our literary men on their mettle, against the expected visit of his Majesty next year.

James the Sixth, after having resided, and held his court in London for fourteen years, found it expedient, for the better settling of the civil and ecclesiastical differences of his Scottish subjects, to visit his ancient dominions in person. In his journey northward, the heads of the civil authorities, and the seminaries of learning, in testimony of their loyalty and joy, delivered orations,

held disputations before him, and greeted him with poems in the Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English tongues, which were collected in a handsome folio, printed in 1618 (the year following), and edited by John Adamson.

In passing from Berwick to Dunglass, the King was first addressed by A. Hume, in a most elaborate piece of oratory, which sets out with saying, that Priam of Troy had fifty sons; and that between father and children there subsisted many reciprocal duties. This postulate we immediately grant to Mr. A. Hume; but let us see what use he makes of the fact. James the Sixth is likened to Priam, and the Scottish people to his offspring; but, as Priam had a Paris, as well as a Hector, the similitude will not hold good here, in Mr. A. Hume's opinion, as his countrymen were all Hectors. He then proceeds to give a sketch of the history of Scotland from the days of the Picts, the landing of Fergus, the invasions of the Britons, Danes, Normans, and Romans, down to the day and the hour in which the King stands before him. Nothing surely can be more loyal or rhetorical than the following passage :·

"Nos hactenus per duo ferè millia annorum soli fuimus majorum tuorum; illiq; nos respiciebant solos. Si labores et sudores; si frigus et famen; si incommoda, et pericula, quæ illi pro nobis, nos pro illis hausimus, enumerare velim; dies me, quid diem dico? imò annus, imò et ætas deficiet priùsquàm oratio."

The speech being concluded, a great number of "poesies," in the Latin tongue, were recited, some of them considerably above mediocrity, and one or two of them very chaste and classical.

Ón the 15th of May, "the King's majestie came to Sea-towne," where he was presented with a Latin poem, half as long as the Pilgrims of the Sun, composed by Joannes Gellius a Gellistown, Philosoph. et Med. Doc. who seems to have been fond of congratulatory addresses, as, previous to this, he was also author of an Epithalamium in Nuptias Frederici V. et Elizabethæ, printed at Heidelburg in 1613.—But let us turn from him to a name with which we are more familiar, and not more so than