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hush-hush!-Yes, Mr. North, for weight too I'll back you against the world.

North. And I you, Sandy, at rod or bow.

Shepherd. As I'm a Christian, there has that cretur been staunin on his hind legs, a' this time, ever syne he spanged out o' the Sanctum, wi' his forepaws on the back o' North's chair, wi' his head owre his left shouther, cheek by jowl wi' him, just a joint-yeditor! O'Bronte, ma man, let yoursel' down on a' fowres like ony other dowg-for in that posture you're gettin' fearsome, and ane thinks o' horrible stories o' Black Familiars.

North. Ambrose! (Enter AMBROSE.) A chair for O'Bronte.

(MR. AMBROSE places a chair for "THE DowG," which he instantly occupies, between NORTH and CRAIGELLACHIE.)

Shepherd. I've changed ma min'-ma sair throat's gane—and I'll gie ye a bit sang.

Omnes. The Shepherd's song-the Shepherd's song-the Shepherd's song.

Shepherd (sings.)

Frae royal Wull that wears the crown*
To Yarrow's lowliest shepherd-clown,
Time wears unchancy mortals doun,

I've marked it late and air.
The souplest knee at length will crack,
The lythest arm, the sturdiest back-
And little siller Sampson lack

For cuttin' o' his hair.

Mysell for speed had not my marrow,
Thro' Teviot, Ettrick, Tweed, and Yarrow
Strang, straight, and swift like winged arrow,
At market, tryst, or fair.

But now I'm turned a hirplin' carle,
My back its ta'en the cobbler's swirl,
And deil a bodle I need birl

For cuttin' o' my hair.

On Boswell's green was nane like me,
My hough was firm, my foot was free,
The locks that cluster'd owre my bree
Cost many a hizzie sair.

The days are come I'm no sae crouse--
An ingle cheek-a cogie douce,

An' fash nae shears about the house

Wi' cuttin' o' my hair.

* William Henry, Duke of Clarence, third son of George III. born in August, 1765, became King of England, on the 26th June, 1830, on the death of George IV., his brother. Parliamentary Reform and the abolition of Slavery in all parts of the British Empire, were the great public enactments during his reign He died, June, 1837, having been seven years on the throne.

"CUTTIN' O' IIIS HAIR. 99

It was an awfu' head I trow,

It waur'd baith young an auld to cow
An burnin red as heather-lowe,

Gar'd neebors start and stare.
The mair ye cut the mair it grew
An' ay the fiercer flamed its hue-
I in my time hae paid enew

For cuttin' o' my hair.

But now there's scarce aneuch to grip-
When last I brought it to the clip,
It gied the shaver's skill the slip

On haffets lank and bare.
Henceforth to this resolve I'll cling,
Whate'er its shape, to let it hing,
And keep the cash for ither thing
Than cuttin' o' my hair.

117

(The usual applause.) Seward. Admirable — incomparable — inimitable—my matchless Shepherd.

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Shepherd. What's the use o' a' thae substantives, sir? I ken it's a gude sang-and weel sung too-say that-and ye say aneuch.

Seward. I beseech you for a copy-Jem, my jewel

Shepherd. What! wou'd you offer for to gang to sing't in ony Christian company, wi' a great, rough, black, toozy head of hair like that, man, that if thrawn intil the petrifyin' well at Barncluth, would, in future ages, be thocht by antyquawrians to be the stane head o' Nimrod, or o' ane o' the giants that melled wi' the dochters o' man afore the Flood? Hoots-toots-keep to the Caribineers. O'Bronte, gie's a sang.

Sandy,

O'Bronte. Bow-wow-wow-wow-bow-wow-wow-wow! Shepherd. Faldy aldy niddle noddle-bow-wow-wow! nian, canna ye accompany us on the "bit whussle ?"

O'Bronte. Whew-whew-whew-whew-whew-whew! Shepherd. That's pawthetic. Thank ye for your sang, O'Bronte, Now, creesh your craig. That's richt, North.

(MR. NORTH gives O'BRONTE a glass of brandy. He bows-bolts it-and licks his chops.)

Shepherd. Like maister like dowg. But we were promised some politics. Let's have them noo-and I propose that nane speak but Mr. North, Mr. Tickler, Mr. Buller, Mr. Shooard, and me; and when we hae settled the affairs o' the nation, then let us a' begin speakin' at ance through ither, and a' as fast an' loud's we are able; no' confinin' oursells to ony partiklar soobject, but embracing the haill range o' the awnimal, vegetable, and stane creawtion. Mr. North, begin, and tell us something aboot the new king's sons.

North. Eh?

Shepherd. Say that I am ashamed to say, Mr. North, that though the evening's advancin', we hae yet had nae usefu' and impruvin' con versation, but hae a' been talkin' great havers. We are, this night, like an army twenty thousand strang-sae let's hae some polectical information, sir, frae yoursell and Mr. Tickler, and Mr. Buller, and Mr. Shooard, wha maun hae brung plenty o't wi' them frae Lunnun, whare it's a' brew'd. What kind o' chaps are the new king's sons?

North. The Fitzclarences are all fine fellows. The Colonel is an accomplished scholar, a zealous Orientalist, and a very clever writer of the English tongue. His "Hussar's Letters," in the United Service Journal, are, I think, about the very best of the many sketches on military doings produced in our time-truth, vigour, liveliness, and a great deal of right good fun.*

Shepherd. It's a pity he's no Prince o' Wales-but his father maun mak a lord, if no a deuk, of him belyve; and if he comes doon wi' the rest o' them, od let's gie him a denner at Awmrose's. What for no?

North. He deserves both distinctions, and shall have them. The days of dukedoms, indeed, are past and gone; but he will be an honour to the peerage.

Buller. He could not be a greater honour to it than his cousin of Richmond. There's the man that should be premier of England. I wish to God, Mr. North, I could agree with you in the view that I know you take of affairs! But I am sorry to say that I think it highly probable the Duke may succeed in what nobody can question to be his object-buying over, I mean, so many of the borough-mongering interests, both Whig and Tory (so called,) as to avoid the necessity of closing with either the Whig or Tory party. His purpose clearly is, to have a government of mere expediency: he is done the moment he is compelled to assert openly any one line of principle. There is as wide a difference between his system and that of Pitt as there ever was or

Mrs. Jordan, the celebrated comedian, was mistress of the Duke of Clarence (afterwards William IV.) for more than twenty-one years, during which time they had five sons and five daughters. When the Duke became King, his eldest son, Col. George Fitzclarence, was created Earl of Munster and Viscount Fitzclarence, and the rest of the family received precedence as if they had been the legitimate children of an Earl, whereby they became entitled, male and female respectively, to affix the title of Lord and Lady to his or her Christian name. The Earl of Munster had served with credit and distinction in the Peninsular War, and subsequently, in 1817, during the Mahratta War in India. In 1819, he published his Overland Tour, a work of some merit-though said to have been revised, if not re-written, by Mr. Jerdan, then of the Literary Gazette. In 1830, he was made a peer. In March, 1842, he committed suicide. He was an amiable man, rather well-meaning than able, and very proud (albeit illegitimate) of his descent. It is proper to add, that when his father parted with Mrs. Jordan, in 1811, in a capricious and even cruel manner, the Earl of Munster, then almost wholly depending on his pay as a subaltern in the army, hastened to his mother's aid-even at the risk of injuring his own situation and prospects.-M.

The Duke of Richmond, born in 1791. He was in office, a member of the Grey Cabinet, from 1830 to 1834, and resigned, (in company with the present Earl of Derby and Sir James Graham), because the Ministry contemplated appropriating the surplus revenue of "the Church of Eng land in Ireland," (as it is called,) to the secular purposes of education. Ever since, the Duke has been a Conservative, and is a strong Protectionist. He would have made a very indifferent Premier.-M.

SIR JAMES SCARLETT.

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will be between tyranny and law in the abstract. In short, I do not believe that we are so near the happy epoch of party and principle restored, as I know you sanguinely suppose.

Seward. I agree with my friend Buller, that the Duke's plan is to detach the great houses, one by one, from their hereditary principles and connexions, until he has chained to his chariot-wheels just as much vote-power as may suffice to drag the machine through. And upon my soul, sir, such have been the crawling baseness, the ineffable cowardice, the slimy selfishness, exhibited in high places within the last three years, that I consider it as far from impossible he may achieve this magnificent object of heroic ambition!

Shepherd. Capital!

.

North. Why, your sneer at the hero, Mr. Seward, appears to me rather misplaced. The Duke seems to be much of the same kidney with such of his predecessors in that line, as we know much about. At first sight, to be sure, one is melancholy contemplating the man whose great actions have filled the ear of Europe,-whose determined resolution, inexhaustible patience, and indomitable fire, were the appointed instruments of Providence for overthrowing a Napoleon,-one is vexed, and even feels a species of self-humiliation, in thinking of such a being as he is, spending what strength of mind and body may be left to him in the tracasseries of petticoat politics, and the bargaining of boudoirs! Shepherd. Mr. Jeems Scawrlett, where are you?

Tickler. In the lowest depths of degradation in which ever Whig dived down into the dirt.* There let him stick-and be bammed.

North. Faugh on the slave! Good God! can Wellington-he that has breathed the breath of a hundred battles-that has struggled with the demigods-can he stoop to chaffer over uncertain votes with a Billy Holmes?-to arrange considerations with George Dawson ?t-to fawn on demireps?-to wheedle harridans? Faugh-faugh!-faugh!

Shepherd. Reenge your mouth, sir, wi' some speerits-od, ye look as if ye were pushioned

North. Not a whit-I was only mentioning what might, at first sight, or to a young man, be a not unnatural view of the subject. As for

* Sir James Scarlett, one of the ablest advocates who ever pleaded in an English Court of Law, had distinguished himself by the liberality of his political opinions. When Canning was made Premier, in 1827, he made Scarlett Solicitor-General. Early in 1828, when Wellington assumed the Premiership, certainly on anti-Canning principles, Scarlett, changing his politics, remained in office, greatly to the damage of his character as a public man. In 1829, he became AttorneyGeneral, and, goaded into loss of temper by public opinion, brought actions against some of the London journals, for libels on the Government and The Duke." The Whigs came into office in November, 1830. Had Scarlett been consistent, he must have been Lord Chancellor. Instead of him, however, Brougham was appointed. In 1834, on Peel's return to office, Scarlett was made Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and raised to the peerage, as Lord Abinger. He was irritable, as a judge, from ill-health, and showed a political bias on the bench. He died in 1844.-M.

William Holmes was the ministerial "whipper-in" of the House of Commons, at this time. George R. Dawson, (who, as M.P. for Londonderry, had given the first intimation at a public dinner there, in 1828, that Wellington would probably grant "Catholic Emancipation,") was brother-in-law of Sir Robert Peel, and is now Deputy-Chairman of the English Board of Customs. -M.

myself, I have no need to learn at this time of day, that a hero is not necessarily either an Alexander or a Cæsar. Marlborough, the night before Blenheim, could blow out a candle to save twopence worth of wax-Frederick could spend the very morning after Rosbach in composing a lampoon upon Madame Pompadour-Bonaparte, most of us know how he occupied himself the evening the allies entered Parisand all of us know that he, for some years of his life, made it his prime object to annoy Major-General Sir Hudson Lowe-and really, with these things in our recollection, I think we may spare our wonder on finding in the immortal Wellington, fifteen years after Waterloo-to speak civilly-rather more of the serpent than the eagle.

Seward. Most potent senior, I was not quite so raw as to merit all these fusées de la rhetorique. Nobody can have attached less of the schoolboy notion of the heroic to his grace than myself. I have always considered him as the coolest and clearest-headed of men,-a human being as devoid of nerves and feelings as his own Achilles,—and therefore understood easily enough why he should have baffled, one after another, a whole generation of bubble-brained Frenchmen. But I have also all along known something of his tricks-his choice of aides-decamp, for example—and was prepared to hear quite as composedly as yourself, that he who conquered in the field simply by the unrivalled simplicity of his tactics, might take the other tack in the cabinet, or, if you will, in the boudoir.

Shepherd. Od, he's surely an unco pawky chield, that Dyeuck o' Wallinton. I'm sure, if he had either the Whigs or the Tories buckled to him, I think them baith sic gowks, that I have nae doubt he might gar them follow his fancy just amaist as easy as thae puir worthless craturs that he's obliged to lippen to yenow.

Buller. His genius, sir, backed by his reputation, might have, under ordinary circumstances, secured him authority, enough to satisfy even his ambition, in a cabinet composed of materials of another stamp. But I suppose Seward thinks it is too late to try the experiment now.

Tickler. I know not what either Seward or Buller thinks, but I know what I think myself; and it is this :-Had Castlereagh lived, he would at this moment have been the honoured chief of a Tory cabinet, with the Duke for his alter ego. But that precious head and heart once removed, Wellington was left among all the elements of discordburning jealousies, petty spleens, timidity, arrogance, the obstinacy of old age, the petulance of youth, the audacity of a rival genius, the suppleness of a predestined sneaker, the restlessness of a quack here, the moroseness of a gin-horse there. It was obvious that Lord Liverpool's premiership was no more than a name-and that the battle must be decided between the Wellington of Waterloo and the Wellington of the House of Commons. The war commenced soon, and went on with steady bitterness in privacy, until an unlooked for event

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