True is her heart-were I under hiding, And fifty men in pursuit of my footsteps, I should find protection, when they surrounded me most closely, In the secret recess of that shieling. Easy is my bed, &c. Oh for the day for turning my face homeward, Are the brindled rock and the ridge! Easy is my bed, &c. Great is my esteem of the maiden Who parted from me by the west side of the enclosed field; Late yet again will she linger in that fold, Long after the kine are assembled. It is I myself that have taken no dislike to thee, It is for the thought of thee that sleep flies from me: Dear to me are the boundaries of the forest; My remembrance is of the hillocks of sheep, Oh for the red-streaked fissures of the rock, Oh for the crags towards which the wind is blowing- Easy is my bed, &c. The following describes Rob's feelings on the first discovery of his damsel's infidelity. The airs of both these pieces are his own, and, the Highland ladies say, very beautiful. Heavy to me is the shieling, and the hum that is in it, Since the ear that was wont to listen is no more on the watch. Where is Isabel the courteous, the conversable, a sister in kindness? Where is Anne, the slender-browed, the turret-breasted, whose glossy hair pleased me when yet a boy? Heich! what an hour was my returning! Pain such as that sunset brought, what availeth me to tell it? I traversed the fold, and upward among the trees Each place, far and near, wherein I was wont to salute my love. When I looked down from the crag, and beheld the fair-haired stranger dallying with his bride, I wished that I had never revisited the glen of my dreams. Such Such things came into my heart as that sun was going down, Thou callest me not to thy side; but love is to me for a messenger. And ever the closer it clings, and the delusion is growing to me as a tree. Anne, yellow-haired daughter of Donald, surely thou knowest not how it is with me That it is old love, unrepaid, which has worn down from me my strength; That when far from thee, beyond many mountains, the wound in my heart was throbbing, Stirring, and searching for ever, as when I sat beside thee on the turf. Haughtily and scornfully the maid looked upon me; Never will it be work for thy fingers to unloose the band from my curls, Thou hast been absent a twelvemonth, and six were seeking me diligently, Was thy superiority so high, that there should be no end of abiding for thee? Ha! ha! ha!-hast thou at last become sick? Is it love that is to give death to thee? Surely the enemy has been in no haste. But how shall I hate thee, even though towards me thou hast become cold? When my discourse is most angry concerning thy name in thine absence, Of a sudden thine image, with its old dearness, comes visibly into my mind, And a secret voice whispers that love will yet prevail ! And I become surety for it anew, darling, And it springs up at that hour lofty as a tower. Rude and bald as these things appear in a verbal translation, and rough as they might possibly appear, even were the originals intelligible, we confess we are disposed to think they would of themselves justify Dr. Mackay in placing this herdsman-lover among the true sons of song. If the Macdonnell, the M'Intyre, the Cormack, and other Highland bards of the last century, whose names, to us entirely new, the reverend editor so frequently mentions as of acknowledged rank and authority, have produced works of similar merit, we hope his publication of their remains also may proceed with diligence, and be liberally encouraged. VOL. XLV. NO. XC. 2 с But But surely he would give himself and his minstrels a thousand times a better chance of acceptance, if he would accompany the Gaelic verses with an interpretation of some kind. His own English memoir of Rob Donn has in many places an air of stiffness, as if he were writing in a language not entirely under his command; but practice, with such zeal as he possesses, would soon get the better of this; and from various passages in the essay, we are inclined to give him credit for genuine poetical feeling. There is little time to be lost, if the as yet unprinted literature of this unfortunate people is to be preserved at all. In spite of all that can be done by the clubs and societies to which some allusion has already been hazarded, the language of the Gael, like their peculiar manners, must ere long disappear from this island. Even of their blood, if things go on as they have been doing for the last forty years, there will, at no distant date, be more in Canada than in Scotland. But no semblance of their old system of society is at all likely to be built up again in the transatlantic wildernesses to which they are so rapidly removing themselves; and we fear but little of the more poetical part of their character will survive through more than a single generation those ties of patriarchal attachment and devotion which foreign violence could never disturb, and which the avarice of vanity has not hesitated to sever. The short-sighted chieftains, meanwhile, who have been systematically banishing their affectionate kindred for the sake of increased rentals, are already beginning to share the doom of their victims. Avenging justice is pressing on them nec pede claudo.' The habits of extravagance for which they sacrificed the people have been found too much for the soil. Their estates are rapidly breaking to pieces in their hands; new men, jobbers and usurers, are, year after year, pushing even the haughtiest of them from their stools. ART. III-A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy. By J. F. W. Herschel, Esq., M.A. of St. John's College, Cambridge. (Published in Dr. Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia.) London. 1830. HE history and philosophy of physical science are attractive topics to many to whom science itself appears thorny and repulsive; and to present these in a manner at the same time lucid and profound, is justly considered as a task demanding a tone and expansion of mind which the successful cultivators of such knowledge in its details do not always possess. We need not affect to undervalue our own vocation; but, at the same time, we are as ready as others to allow that it is eminently fortunate for the world when men of high scien tific tific eminence, and of large speculative views, are led to promulgate, in a distinct and separate form, their notions of the general character and bearing of those portions of human knowledge into which they have the clearest insight. Such surveys may naturally take a far wider range, and offer a more connected picture, than critiques of particular books or authors can do ; and the name of a writer who is principally known by abstruse and technical writings, unapproachable by the common reader, gives a peculiar charm to his less professional views of the philosophy and history of his studies; for these, by bringing before us principles and opinions in which he appeals to our common sympathy and understanding, seem to admit us within the barrier with which the passionless discussions and repulsive formularies of science generally surround him. The present generation may be held to have been fortunate in obtaining from some of the greatest of the great men who have lived in it, expositions of this character. It would be difficult to find two names higher in European reputation than those of Cuvier and Berzelius. From the former we had, in 1808, his Histoire des Progrès des Sciences Naturelles depuis 1789 jusqu'à ce jour;' and this work may be considered as continued to our own times by the annual reports on the same subject, and éloges of deceased academicians, which his office of Secretary to the Institute has elicited from him; and in the lectures which he is, we believe, at present delivering in Paris, he is supplying, in a manner in which no other person could do it, the still earlier history of these provinces of knowledge. Berzelius has, ever since 1822, published an Annual Report on the Progress of the Physical Sciences;' and has in this, with a knowledge and candour almost peculiar to him, endeavoured to do justice to the yearly additions made to the stores of the scientific community. England has not hitherto contributed her share to this kind of literature from pens of so much authority; but it is unnecessary to dwell on a deficiency which (thanks to the Cabinet Cyclopædia, and the Family Library) there is every reason to think will now be speedily supplied.* So We may here notice what appears to us a want in the constitution of the English scientific world-the absence of any distinct and periodical call on any man of science to make such a survey of our intellectual acquisitions as we have referred to above. The valuable works of which we have spoken in the text are Reports given, in the one instance, to the French government and to the Institute, in the other, to the Academy of Sciences at Stockholm. The annual reports of such men as Cuvier on the advance of the natural sciences, Berzelius on chemistry and physics, Fourrier on pure and applied mathematics, and the occasional reports of committees, such as are appointed by the Institute, are inevitably of great weight and of most beneficial efficacy. It is worth the while of an investigator to toil and think, when he is sure of having all that is really valuable in his results estimated at its true worth, connected with the history of science, and com mended to the notice of scientific Europe by such men as these. We cannot imagine 2 c 2 why So far as the remarkable volume before us belongs to the kind of review of which we have spoken (which, however, is only one of its objects), it is worthy to stand by the side of the productions of Cuvier and Berzelius; exhibiting an intimate acquaintance with modern research, and a most scrupulous and active spirit of justice, like the qualities which characterize the Swedish chemist; along with a striking mode of presenting recondite truths, and an imaginative vivacity, which has its charm no less than the brilliant eloquence of the great naturalist of France. Mr. Herschel is, indeed, a person eminently qualified for this task, being a distinguished example of a person possessing a profound and complete knowledge of almost every branch of physics; and thus an instance of a combination which, amidst the modern multiplication of the divisions and details of these studies, is becoming rare. Having been thoroughly disciplined in all that can form the character of an accomplished man of science, he has shown himself with singular alacrity at every point of the frontier of human knowledge, where there seemed to be a chance that the boundary line might be pushed forwards. In pure mathematics he very early established his name as one of the first mathematicians in England; and might have been one of the first in Europe, if he had not been more strongly drawn to other pursuits. In the singularly splendid and striking researches of physical optics, one of the pages of discovery as yet but half unfolded, he has placed himself among the very small number of those who have both added important experimental laws to those which were previously known, and have weighed the relation of these discoveries to the refined and recondite theory towards which they seem to point. In chemistry, his researches on the hyposulphites,-in galvanism, his examination of the motions of fluid conductors,-exhibit the same readiness to press forward with the advance; and we need hardly remind our readers that by far the most striking fact which has been for centuries added to our knowledge of the heavens-the rotation of the double stars,-first caught sight of by one Herschel, has owed its final and distinct confirmation to another. We might add acoustics and magnetism, mineralogy and geology, to the subwhy Englishmen are not to present, and have presented to them, similar reports. We conceive that those who seek to add to the efficacy and dignity of our scientific bodies, could take no method so effectual towards their object, as this, of requiring from competent persons in appropriate situations annual reviews on science in general, or occasional reports on particular branches of it. They would thus find for the most abstruse communications of the cultivators of science fit audience, though few;' and the few might extend the communication, and, in some measure, the fitness, to a wider circle. The want of the habit of connecting what is discovered in this country with the general body of knowledge, and with the contemporary labours of foreigners, is one of the most powerful obstacles in the way of estimating the good at its true worth, and consequently of discountenancing what is trifling or erroneous. jects |