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A MIDSUMMER-DAY'S DREAM.

(Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1828.)

We have no idea of what is thought of us in the fashionable world. Most probably we are looked on as a pretty considerable quiz. Our external, or personal appearance, is, we cheerfully confess, somewhat odd, both face and figure. It is not easy for you to pass us by on the streets without a stare at our singularity, or to help turning round, as soon as you think you are out of reach of our crutch, which, by the by, we sometimes use as a missile, and can throw almost as far as that celebrated gymnast of the Six Foot Club can swing the thirteen pound sledgehammer; while, with a placid smile of well-pleased surprise, you wonder if that can indeed be the veritable and venerable Christopher North.

Such is our natural and acquired modesty, that so far from being flattered by these proofs of public esteem and popular favour, they fret and annoy us more than we care to express. The truth is, we can seldom, on such occasions, help feeling as if there were a hole in our black silk stocking, the white peeping through like a patch of snow-a shoe minus a silver buckle-a button off some part of our dress-the back part of our hat in front-the half-expanded white rose-bud-tie of our neckcloth, of which we are alike proud and particular, dissolved into two long slips, which more than any thing else appertaining to a man's habiliments, give your person the impress of a weaver expert at the treddle and fly-shuttle-or, to us who keep a regular barber on the chin establishment, with a salary of £80, worst suspicion of all, and if verified to the touch, death to that day, a beard! A beard!

VOL. I.

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fair reader, as rough as the brush-naughty little mermaid-with which you keep combing your glossy locks in that mirror-no, you do not think it flatters-both before you "lie down in your loveliness," and after you rise up in it,-alarmed by the unexpected and apparently endless ringing of the breakfast bell.

Yet, we are not so very much of a quiz, after all; and considering how the storms of many seasons have beat against us, it is astonishing how well we wear, both in root, branch, and stem. We cannot help-in our prideHeaven forgive and pity us!-sometimes likening ourselves to an old ash beside a church. There stands the tree, with bark thick as cork, and hard as iron-hoary arms overshadowing with a pleasant glimmer-for his leaves are beautiful as those of some little plant, come late and go early, and are never so umbrageous as to exclude the blue sky-overshadowing with a pleasant glimmer a whole family of tombstones,—a stem with difficulty circled by the united arm-lengths of some halfdozen schoolboys, never for a day satisfied, without, during a pause of their play, once more measuring the giant,-roots, many of them visible like cables along the gravel-walk leading from the kirkyard-gate, where on Sabbath stands the elder beside the plate, and each Christian passing by droppeth in the tinkling charity, from rich man's gold to widow's mite-and many of them hidden, and then reappearing far off from among the graves-while the tap-root, that feeds and upholds all the visible glory, hath for ages struck through the very rock-foundation of that humble house of the Most High! Solemn image! and never to be by us remembered, but through a haze of tears! How kindred the nature of mirth and melancholy! What resemblance seemeth that tree now to have to a poor, world-wearied, and almost life-sick old man! For in a few short years more, we shall have passed away like a shadow, and shall no more be any where found; but thou, many and many a midsummer, while centuries run their course, wilt hang thy pensive, "thy dim religious light"-over other and other generations, while at that mystic and awful table, whiter than the unstained mountain snow, sit almost in the open

air, for the heavens are seen in their beauty through the open roof of that living temple, the children of the hamlet and the hall, partaking of the sacrament,-or, ere that holiest rite be solemnised in simplicity, all listening to the eloquence of some gray-headed man inspired by his great goodness, and with the Bible open before him, making, feeble as he seemed an hour ago before he walked up into the tent, the hearts of the whole congregation to burn within them, and the very circle of the green hills to ring with joy !

What a blessed order of Nature it is, that the footsteps of Time are "inaudible and noiseless," and that the seasons of life are like those of the year, so indistinguishably brought on, in gentle progress, and imperceptibly blended the one with the other, that the human being scarcely knows, except from a faint and not unpleasant feeling, that he is growing old! The boy looks on the youth, the youth on the man, the man in his prime on the gray-headed sire, each on the other, as on a separate existence in a separate world. It seems sometimes as if they had no sympathies, no thoughts in common, that each smiled and wept on account of things for which the other cared not, and that such smiles and tears were all foolish, idle, and most vain; but as the hours, days, weeks, months and years go by, how changes the one into the other, till, without any violence, lo! as if close together at last, the cradle and the grave! In this how Nature and man agree, pacing on and on to the completion of a year-of a life! The spring how soft and tender indeed, with its buds and blossoms, and the blessedness of the light of heaven so fresh, young, and new, a blessedness to feel, to hear, to see, and to breathe! Yet the spring is often touched by frost-as if it had its own winter, and is felt to urge and be urged on upon that summer, of which the green earth, as it murmurs, seems to have some secret forethought. The summer, as it lies on the broad blooming bosom of the earth, is yet faintly conscious of the coming-on of autumn with "sere and yellow leaf," the sunshine owns the presence of the shade and there is at times a pause as of melancholy amid the transitory mirth! Autumn comes with its full or

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decaying ripeness, and its colours grave or gorgeousthe noise of song and sickle-of the wheels of wainsand all the busy toils of prophetic man gathering up against the bare cold winter, provision for the body and for the soul! Winter! and cold and bare as fancy pictured-yet not without beauty and joy of its own, while something belonging to the other seasons that are fled, some gleamings as of spring-light, and flowers fair as of spring among the snow-meridians bright as summer morns, and woods bearing the magnificent hues of autumn on into the Christmas frost-clothe the old year with beauty and with glory, not his own-and just so with old age, the winter, the last season of man's ever-varying, yet never wholly changed life!

Then blessings on the sages and the bards who, in the strength of the trust that was within them, have feared not to crown old age with a diadem of flowers and light! Shame on the satirists, who, in their vain regret, and worse ingratitude, have sought to strip it of all "impulses of soul and sense," and leave it a sorry and shivering sight, almost too degraded for pity's tears! True, that to outward things the eye may be dim, the ear deaf, and the touch dull; but there are lights that die not away with the dying sunbeams-there are sounds that cease not when the singing of birds is silent-there are motions that still stir the soul, delightful as the thrill of a daughter's hand pressing her father's knee in prayer; and therefore, how calm, how happy, how reverend, beneath unoffended Heaven, is the head of old age! Walk on the mountain, wander down the valley, enter the humble hut,-the scarcely less humble kirk,—and you will know how sacred a thing is the hoary hair that lies on the temples of him who, during his long journey, forgot not his Maker, and feels that his old age shall be renewed into immortal youth!

"That strain I heard was of a higher mood!"

But now we must wake a lowlier measure;-and, gentle reader! thou wilt not refuse to go with us, who, in comparison with thee are old, for thou art in thy prime-and

be not, we implore thee, a prodigal of its blessings-into the little humming room, whose open window looks over the lilacs and laburnums now in all their glory almost painful to look on, so dazzling are they in their blue and yellow burnished array-and while away an hour withstart not at the name-the very living flesh-and-blood Christopher North, whose voice has often been with thee, as the voice of a solemn or sportive spirit, when rivers and seas rolled and flowed between, he lying under the birchtree's, and thou, perhaps, under the Banana's shade! Let us both be silent. Look at those faces on the wall-how mild! how meek! how magnificent! You know them, by an instinct for beauty and grandeur, to be the shadows of the spirits whose works have sanctified your sleeping and your waking dreams. The great poets!-Ay, you may gaze till twilight on that bust! Blind Melesigines!But hark! the front-door bell is ringing-then tap, tap, tap, tap-and lo! a bevy of beauty, matrons, and maids, who have all been a-Maying, and come to lay their wreaths and garlands at the old man's feet! Is our age deserted and forsaken-childless, wifeless though it be for the whole world knows that we are a bachelor-when subjected, in the benignity of Providence, to such visionary visitations as these? Visionary call them not-though lovelier than poet's dreams beside the Castalian fountain-for these are living locks of auburn braided over a living brow of snow-these tresses, black in their glossy richness as the raven's wing, are no work of glamoury-no shadow she with the light-blue laughing eyes-she, whose dark orbs are filled with the divine melancholy of genius,

"Like Lady of the Mere,
Sole-sitting by the shores of old Romance,"

bears, in her soul-fraught beauty, a soft, sweet, familiar Christian name—but, lo! like fair sea-birds, they all gather together, floating around the lord of the mansion—and is not Buchanan-Lodge the happiest, the pleasantest of dwellings, and old Christopher North the happiest and the pleasantest of men?

Perhaps, to see and hear us in another character of our

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