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croscopic acuteness, he sees innumerable of their own, replete with equal plenty insects, many of which, if he is not a prac- and joyousness. The wild animals, meantised entomologist, are minute and bril- time, occasionally scud past him, intent liant strangers; and if he is, are constant- upon their pastime, from which his inly putting his knowledge to a severe test; trusion on their haunts startles them ; all full of life and enjoyment, leaping some of the nobler ones, whose stately about with incredible agility, climbing up

forms excite his admiration, gaze at him the spiry grass, or disporting on the flowers at a distance, and pass on. Through an with which it is embroidered ; amongst opening vista of the wooded solitude, he these the bee is plying its busy harvest, sees a whole herd of these moving as by and filling up every interval of labour with one impulse ; every motion as buoyant as its song ; a conspicuous example, perhaps, though they were almost aerial. And far of the happy business of every inferior beyond the bounds of the surrounding dowing. If he chance to look to the roots main, a still more magnificent prospect of his verdant pillow, still he sees nature spreads before him. The surface of the swarming with animation; innumerable earth, to the distant horizon, is tesselated terrene insects strike his notice, many of with enclosures, and glows with many cothem, perhaps, resting during the sultry loured crops. Here the pastures are clothed hours, but whose labours he would have with flocks; there the valleys are covered witnessed had he been there at the dewy over with corn; the little hills rejoice on dawn instead of the close of the day, in every side ; they shout for joy, they also innumerable shining threads suspended sing ! Human habitations are sprinkled from every point of grass, and investing over the prospect, like gems on the manthe whole surface of the meads with a tle of nature; and here and there they film of inconceivable fineness and lustre. cluster into a town; while the temples of Whichever way he looks, there is not a Divine worship,' which point with taper plant or a flower without its appropriate spire to heaven,' are seen rising as far as population. Further from him he sees the eye can stretch, and crown the happy throngs still more innumerable,

prospect with the proof, that mankind are • Which flutter joyous in the solar beam,

neither insensate nor ungrateful; that And fill the air, or float the dimpling stream,'

they know who it is that gives them

rain and fruitful seasons, filling their all expressing, as far as motion and ap

hearts with food and gladness.' He gazes pearance without language can express it, till the tints of day fade, and the glorious the utmost measure of enjoyment. Nor prospect recedes from his sight. The busy are even sounds wanting to signify the tribes of life are hushed in repose, one soreign of universal pleasure. Far more

litary and unrivalled songster only keeps unequivocal than the busy noise arising up the vigil in the temple of nature, but from the crowded haunts of human beings,

in what strains does she charm the lisis that continuous murmur of unnumbered tening shades, and teach the night his wings, and the ceaseless hum, with which

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NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS.

A REJECTED Contributor is the bitterest of all enemies--but likewise the most impotent. To be rejected seems worse than to be cut up-and yet reason says that to be buried in the Balaam-Box is not so bad as to be scarified by the Knout. Observe-We never insult our Contributors, gentle or semple, as many editors do—but simply send the stupid ones asleep among the sumphs. Why then all that spleen-bile-and gall spluttered on Maga by unsuccessful suitors ? Though she,-capricious coquette, --repels, rejects, shuns, or declines their amorous advances, yet never never does she, like some vain beauties we could name, blab to the public ear the secret of their discountenanced loves. Why then should they themselves betray it, by sneakingly seeking to disparage her peerless charms ? A single syllable muttered against Maga lets the cat out of the bag- and all the world exclaims, “ Oh, ho!" Thenceforth the whey-faced whiner is known wherever he goes, to be a rejected article—other Magas look on him with suspicious eyes, conjecturing that there must be something amiss—and he dies at last of the yellow or black jaundice. Such conduct, to say the least of it, is very ungrateful. Were Maga to encourage the advances of elderly gentlemen, by softly treading upon their toes, laying her silken hand of long, white, slender, pink-nailed fingers on their arm, and with her warm, red, balmy mouth, almost touching their ear, asking in a silvery whisper “ If it did not thunder”-shrinking to their side all the while, with her frame all on the tremor like a sensitive plant quivering to the touch, then indeed would it be highly culpable in her, the coquette, to say—in reply to the question when popped—“No-no-sir-you must excuse me-no-no-no!” And were she to add to the cruelty of refusal, the shame of exposure, publishing a monthly list of all the wretches who for her sake must wear the willow-then indeed might the rejected articles, unsatisfied with sympathy, call aloud for punishment. But how far different is her conduct! Never does she consign à suitor to the Balaam-Box without a tear! She sighs to see the tin-lid heaving to the “hotch” of the poor Contributor below! She shudders when

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“ awhile the living hill
Heaves with convulsive throes, and all is still."

But farther. Though rejected twenty times, if you be a man or woman of talents or genius, persevere; and who knows but that on the twenty-first attempt, “ Your joy is like a deep affright,” to find yourself figuring before the whole world in a leading article ? Some people are so huffy ! An Editor must in with their article instanter—that very month-though perhaps the parcel arrives on the twentieth-the very day our excellent friend, Captain Bain, has gone blazing away out of the mouth of the Frith with the James Watt rejoicing in a ten thousand impression of a double number. Had his article been the only article in the whole wide world, it might perhaps have had some small chance of insertion--some time or other-before he died; but when you consider, that, on the very day his article arrived and not only on that day, but every day before or since-scores of articles, over and above his article, had come flying from “a’ the airts the win' can blaw”—an absolute shower of whitey-brown-you must see at once that there was no more chance of his article in particular being snapt up by Maga, than of any one particular fly being snapt up by one trout when all the Tweed was alive with green-tails. Yet the idiot—if he will allow us to call him so—after searching in vain all through our July number for his article-even among the Deaths and Marriages, and in among the Appendix of Bills-scrawls his rage by return of post-screeching for his article—the restoration of his article-totally unaware—o the blind minds of men !- that his article had, on the very day of its arrival in Modern Athens, received Christian Burial, along with many other unfortunates who had been swept off by the same epidemic, and interred deep down below the power of Hare or Knos, under the Balaam-Box, that Patent Sare.

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Such contributors continue clamorous for years. Some of them go mad -others get silly; but though they never tax the elements with unkindness, they never cease abusing Old Christopher North, who keeps his temper to a miracle-lets them weary the Post-office with letters ed, disappointed, unreceived,”—and merely once a-month wishes them and their articles all at the devil.

Now we put it to all such impatient and irritable contributors, if it be not most unreasonable to lose their tempers at that rate, and to take offence when and where no offence is intended, but, on the other hand, the utmost amenity and mild manners ? Time and tide wait for no man, and chance rules the world. Are we alone to be denied the privilege of submission to these powers ? What though their articles “ rot in cold obstruction” for a time, times, and half a time? Think of the thousand and one causes that may have, without much or any blame on our part, condemned them to a temporary or an eternal oblivion! How often are jewels mislaid? “ We hunt half a day for a forgotten dream,” nor recover it at last, though all the laws of association have been brought into play. So must it often be with articles. Most mysteriously do they slip aside, and disappear into crannies in the “great globe itself,” wherein, no doubt, they will be found by future ages, and the unrolled papyri deciphered for the benefit of generations yet unborn. Many fly up to the moon, and the Man there pubJishes them in his Magazine. Human life is proverbially short, and is it to be expected or wished by any contributor professing the Christian creed that We, upwards of seventy, should, instead of preparing ourselves for another world, waste the few fleeting hours yet left to us in hunting, night and day, even in“ impossible places,” for lost articles ? Besides, we are not only always very old, but also often very sick; and our gout alone, to say nothing of almost periodical attacks of cholera morbus, ought, with all men of common humanity, to be sustained as a valid excuse for the irrecoverable loss of an occasional article. Then are we to be debarred the ordinary amusements of this weary world ? May we not, like the rest of our brethren of mankind, make a tour of the Lakes, or the Highlands, or Switzerland, or the Tyrol ? And during our absence, must not hundreds of articles lie dormant ? The man lives not to whom we would trust the keys. We hate descending into particulars—but we owe it to our much injured selves to remind all such captious and querulous contributors that, for months past, we have been on the move from No. 17, Prince's Street to 45, George's Street--and that in that long-protracted bustle a thousand things have been necessarily forgotten for a time, or lost to all eternity. The Balaam-Box itself made a narrow escape. A strong-backed villain, obviously in the pay of one of the Southron Magazines, clutched it out of the hurley, and off with it on his shoulders down Leith Walk, before a west wind that was then filling the sails of a London-bound Berwick smack. Providentially We were hobbling from our lunch at Picardy's, and met the mid-day highway robber full in the face. We should have known the Balaam-Box among ten thousand trunks. One tip of the crutch laid the bearer in the kennel and Sir David Gam and Tappitoury who had been eyeing us from a window, were instantly on the spot, and proud were they to bear the treasure to the Sanctum Sanctorum. If

, after considering these things, and a thousand collateral circumstances, the contributors to whom we allude still regard us with angry feelings, we have only to say,

“ Away to heaven, respective Lenity,

And fire-eyed Fury be my conduct now !" And here we are reminded of one especial blockhead, who transmitted to us a good many months ago, through a distinguished friend, some elegant and graceful verses by a lady. We had designed them a place of honour, but our arrangements prevented their appearance at the time we wished; and perhaps we should have stated to the fair writer the reason of the inevitable delay. We now request her to accept our humble apology, and the assurance of our high esteem. The person who demanded the verses back, and who occupies, we believe, some humble and obscure place under government, informed us, in his ill-spelt letter, with much severity and little grammar, that the itch was the Scottish plague. That is a Cockney notion. Cutaneous diseases are more or less prevalent in all countries, and we believe especially in poor ones—such as the Highlands of Scotland, where the people live chiefly on oatmeal. But the Highlanders—though poorare hospitable--generous--and brave ; and their hands, though haply sometimes rather rough in the cuticle, can well handle the claymore and the bayonetted musket. Beyond all the nations of the earth, in manners they are-even the poorest of the poor-gentlemen; and that would be painfully felt by this wretched creature, were he ever to stoop his head as low beneath the door-lintel of a Highland hut, as he stoops it every day before the master who gives him bread. A slight eruption on the skin-rare now in any part of Scotland, for English cleanliness has of late years become domesticated here-is a mere trifle compared with a leprosy of the liverthe incurable disease in which he pines; and oatmeal, earned by honest labour, even although, but for the gracious antidote of Glenlivet, it may sometimes induce the itch, is preferable food to turtle-soup purchased by the proceeds of a shameless sinecure; nor is the worst scurvy that can afflict the body so calamitous as the scurvy that eats into the soul. The one is a misfortune, which religion enables a good man to bear—the other is a vice, which any little religion the sufferer may possess serves but to shew more odious, and which an evil conscience renders altogether unendurable. Hinc illa lachrymæ !

But now that we are established in our new Sanctum, we shall speedily bring up all our arrears. The clerk of the Balaam-Box shall be kept more assiduously to his duty-and our Contributors may depend, erelong, on a general jail-delivery of all our Escrutoires. Much misconception prevails in the public mind respecting the character of the contents of the BalaamBox. Many brilliant articles are hidden in that gloom-but like comets their tails are too long, and would, if admitted into the heaven of Maga, sweep out the stars. But a comet judiciously curtailed may occasionally illumine the horizon-nay, we have known a planet there brighter than any fixed star-than either Castor or Pollux ;-and the Georgium Sidus has sometimes“ paled its ineffectual light” beside a wandering luminary under the name of Balaam. As for our Escrutoires-they

possess treasures beyond the Treasures of the Deep, so beautifully sung by The Hemans—and we purpose, before another moon wanes, to descend in a diving-bell into their abysses, and to rifle the mermaid's caves of all their pearls—therewith to adorn the brow of Maga, to the joy of all Contributors.

We have been wafted away on the wings of poetry from the querulous disturbers of our peace. But some contributors there are, of a far other character and complexion indeed--and them to reject Christopher could almost weep. Nay- he rejects them not. Their pretty poems—their elegant prose-essays—their graceful epistles—and their touching tales—he peruses with pleasure and with pride. Their sex protects them and he puts them gently into the Escrutoire called the Dovecot, where they soon murmur themselves asleep. Now and then he selects a sonnet, or an elegy, or a tale,-and in Maga, it meets the eyes, perhaps, of the fair enthusiast, who breathed it when a virgin, and who now blushes, while she reads, to look down on a couple of chubby boys pulling one another's noses in frantic quarrel about some seedcake, at the knee of her a six-year's wedded wife, still lovely, though her waist be not so slim as we once knew it by about three quarters of a yard.

There are a prodigious number of clever people at present alive and kicking--and, judging from our own list, we should suppose, that in Great Britain and Ireland, contributors must amount to a million. There is a contributor in about every fourth family. In one domestic circle he is papa-a stout gentleman about forty, with red cheeks, and a brown wig; in another, grand-papa, a fine military-looking old fellow, six feet high, with hair white as snow-nay, an article is now penes me, the handwriting of which could only have been put upon paper by the "oldest inhabitant,” rejoicing in the third consecutive little Tommy, all lineally descended from himself, the great Tom of Lincoln. In another family again, the happy mother

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articles. In this house, a pale delicate girl-an only daughter-who can scarcely walk in the wind without being wafted away to heaven like a feather-is inditing a tender epistle to Odoherty; in that, three red-armed sisters, well to do in the world—with constitutions strong as horses and each on the death of her father, the tallow-chandler, entitled to a fortune of fifteen hundred pounds, are all hard at work with their respective articles, -one at the pathetic, another at the picturesque, and the eldest and most formidable at the sublime. Now, not to indulge farther in imaginary pictures, drawn from the contributing population of these realms, we appeal to the candour of that population—nay, we fling ourselves upon it—and ask the Million to reflect for a few moments with themselves, in society or solitude, on the condition of an Editor in this life. For our single selves, we lay our hands upon our hearts, and before heaven, declare, that it would not be in our power to overtake and satisfy even our fair friends-our female contributors alone-were we the Editor, publisher, and proprietor, of twenty periodicals, instead of Editor of merely one. Add to them the male monsters, with swingeing articles twenty pages long, and the multitudes of children, who, in this precocious age, have absolutely all their little articles ready ere they are twelve years old, and the most stony-hearted will concede, that Christopher North is to be compassionated as much as admired, and that he is far less an object of envy than the vain world, blinded by the blaze of his glory, has for so many years so foolishly supposed ;–He is often sick of life.

You might think that it never could be our interest to quarrel with clever contributors. But if you think so, we assure you that you are mistaken, and that clever contributors have brought many a periodical to an untimely grave. Pray, what is the meaning of the word clever? Try it by examples: a clever horse is a horse of good action-who can trot easily twelve miles an hour-clear a four-foot fence--and who never refuses his oats. At present, as horses go, he may be worth about five-and-thirty pounds. He carries you to cover-but surely you do not hunt him ? Clever as he is, if you do that, he is blown on the first burst, and, during a run of twenty minutes, has been regularly tailing il, till at the death, while the Duke, and Elcho, and Reddie, and Stein, are all in, you are not only out, but appear to the rustics of another county to be a regular Bagman. Just so with your clever contributor. He can perform a paragraph at a fair pace-a short article on the corn laws, perhaps, or the Methuen Treaty ; but when the work to be done requires not only bone but blood, say a review of Moore's Byron, or Monk's Bentley, or Wellington's Waterloo, then your clever contributor breaks down, and you wish him back in his original dray. In the affairs of common life, we have no great objection to a clever contributor; but from this Magazine “Procul! o procul, este, profani,”—for about some seven years ago, such was the rush upon us of clever contributors, that our sale, for two months stationary, began on the third absolutely to retrograde. We immediately unharnessed about a dozen clever contributors, turned them out of the team, and away went Maga, up hill and down dale, along the royal road of philosophy, literature, and human life, like a young one, with all the other eighty monthlies dragged in triumph at her chariotwheels !

But to be less figurative. It is one thing to be even extremely clever in the circle in which you move, and another thing to be rather clever in Blackwood. An old or elderly maid or virgin, who has cultivated her conversational talents at tea-tables through the long space of fifty revolving years, and been handed about in manuscript, up and down various brilliant coteries-while her chin, “ bearded like the pard,” is sunk on her midnight pillow, is visited, we shall suppose, in a dream, by Christopher North. He calms her agitation, and assures her that she has no need to shriek. All that he wants is an article. The phantom melts away from her longing arms—and turning herself in bed, lo! by the rosy dawn, George Buchanan, with a beard considerably longer than her own, lying chin by chin, with Deborah on the self-same bolster. Aye, many are the virgins-young-01;! -and middle-aged, who sleep with Blackwood in their bosom.“ Ran: