write in seeming smiles, like murder in a mask, while scorpions gender round the hopeless heart: nay, even forget in part my sorrow, mid the tug and bustle of the mountain, and change of scene, but, let me sit down, as I have done here, and taste the little comforts and attentions of former life which habit have rendered necessary to existence, then from comparison remembrance starts forth in her sable cloak like some fell enchantress to marshal up the evil shades of the past-yes, man may write! but let necessity drive him into a wilderness of starvation like this to suffer hunger, or what is as bad, unwholesome food, with the whole catalogue of external wants, then let him say he is happy!-Yes, I may write, and philosophy, may lend its crutches to perseverence, but the heart-the scorpion-tortured heart's the same! What, because I am Jew shall religious or civil persecution make me invulnerable to the arrow of affliction? No, my friend, I have a tear left still for my own sorrows, as well as others; and I care not how soon this Tabernacle may moulder and decay, when mercy and compassion may cease to worship in it. Farewell my Highland maid,

again, for I could linger to admire that simplicity and beauty, which the ambition of mad avarice has not taught to rob and plunder, nor tortured a feature with its moral rackfarewell! Farewell to thee, too! Honor thy God, and be merciful to thy fellow man, is the prayer of, &c.

EXILE.

LETTER V.

HERE am I lost again in another of Lord Lovatt's almost treeless deer forests. Misfortunes come together. This is the evil of trusting to Highland miles. I am sure I have walked and run ten miles, by time, instead of the four named, and have torn both shoe soles off and missed my track. But here is whiskey, (from my good Mrs. C.'s) a cigar and feurschwam, a cave, and a last quarter moon for a candle: at such a time these are poetry to the soul. Terrible, strange, mixed poetry! The moon and heavens are the blue chamber of Blue Beard, and the whiskey the soul's key to it, which unlocks to the haunted chamber, and peoples it with the phantoms of the awed spirit! O, for a Byron's ghost, to wake with its unearthly harp a kindred inspiration in me! This must not be! The vibration would crack my less elastic nerves.-Peace, puny songster, and rest where fate has chained thee! Let the eagle dwell in his mid heaven, and walk his fields of air to contemplate the sun, the moon, the stars,

his God! whilst thou lookest on in trembling awe, lest he should plunge from his aërial throne and crush thee. Or, if thou must soar, and sing, sing to thy sphere-the earth, and not usurp the wing, the territory and unearthly scream of yond great golden bird, who but now swung from his giddy cradle in the mountain's crest, and up, like a meteor, to the third tide of the wind, sits with his golden bark and sail, in dreadful security, plowing his aërial moon-lit sea. He looks down and screams with horrible joy. The echos of the glen answer him, but I cannot-no-the strange sensation never must be told by mortal harp again.

Peace to the dead,

The soul is fled,

Who struck that harp string last;

'Twas he-the great-→→

The child of fate

Who played when whirlwinds past.

"The mists boil up around the glaziers; clouds

"Rise curling fast beneath me, white and sulphery,

"Like foam from the roused ocean of deep hell,

"Whose every wave breaks on a living shore,

"

Heaped with damned like pebbles-I am giddy.

(An Eagle passes.)

Ay thou winged and cloud cleaving minister, thou art gone

"Where the eye cannot follow thee, but thine

"Yet pierces downward, onward, or above, "With a pervading vision”.

Sublime !-the eye-ball aches to longer dwell,

Thy mighty wing is lost in space,

Mayhap in heaven!-But there I cannot trace;

Nor dare I give a thought of hell:

Enough we know that we must flee as well.
Now to the earth-and horned moon,

Who stalks from out her mountain bed,

Like eye half closed when thought is fled,
As if she had awoke to soar

To pass the watch of "midnight noon!"
The light-the blue-grey wat'ry light
Stands in the stagnant glen—

As when the wild fire sleeps 'ith fen

In witchcraft's breathless night!

So pales my waning horned sprite!

The death-mist creeps from out its cell,
And walks the mountain gloom-

Like spirit from a catacomb!

Or stilly disguised fiend from hell,

Who smiles, whilst tales of death he tell!
How slow it creeps the mountain steep,
And laves its fleecy robes in light!
The night-wind listens to this sprite !

For tho' like love it seem to sleep,

Death's the surer, the slower it may creep!

Hark-the wild cats at their lair,

Howling o'er the slaughtered sheep!
They wake the midnight's deadly sleep!
O'tis a cursed horrid prayer