To his hills that encircle the sea.

Yet wandering, I found on my ruinous walk,

By the dial-stone agèd and green,

stalk,

To mark where a garden had been. Like a brotherless hermit, the last of its race,

All wild in the silence of nature, it drew From each wandering sun-beam a lonely embrace,

For the night-weed and thorn overshadow'd the place,

burgh University, was not successful; so, after visiting Germany, he returned to London, and in 1819 produced Specimens of the British Poets. In 1820, he became editor of the New Monthly One rose of the wilderness left on its Magazine, which he conducted till 1830. In 1824, besides issuing Theoderic and other Poems," he, along with Lord Brougham, took a leading part in the establishment of the London University. In 1827, and the two following years, he was elected Rector of the Glasgow University. His last literary works were lives of Mrs Siddons, and Petrarch, the Italian poet. In 1834, he made a voyage to Algiers, and returned by France, when he was presented to Louis Philippe. His health gave way soon after, and he settled at Bologne, for the benefit of its milder atmosphere. Here he died, on the 15th June 1844, in his 67th year. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. A monument to his memory is presently (1877) being erected in his native city.

LINES

WRITTEN ON VISITING A SCENE IN
ARGYLESHIRE.

At the silence of twilight's contemplative
hour,

I have mused in a sorrowful mood,
On the wind-shaken weeds that embosom

the bower,

Where the flower of my forefathers grew.

Sweet bud of the wilderness ! emblem of all

That remains in this desolate heart! The fabric of bliss to its centre may fall,

But patience shall never depart! Though the wilds of enchantment, all vernal and bright,

In the days of delusion by fancy combined

With the vanishing phantoms of love and delight,

Abandon my soul, like a dream of the night,

And leave but a desert behind.

Be hush'd, my dark spirit! for wisdom condemns

When the faint and the feeble deplore; Be strong as the rock of the ocean that

stems

A thousand wild waves on the shore!

Where the home of my forefathers Through the perils of chance, and the stood.

All ruin'd and wild is their roofless abode,

And lonely the dark raven's sheltering

tree:

And travell'd by few is the grass-cover'd road,

Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trode

scowl of disdain,

May thy front be unalter'd, thy courage elate !

Yea! even the name I have worshipp'd in vain

Shall awake not the sigh of remembrance again :

To bear is to conquer our fate.

WILLIAM TENNANT.

1784-1848.

THE antiquated little town of An- | which ended William's commercial struther, in Fife, has within one generation been the birth-place of three eminent men-Thomas Chalmers, William Tennant, and John Goodsir.

office, too, was congenial, and gave him access to the University library at St Andrew's. Here he added Arabic, Syriac, and Persian to the list of his linguistic acquirements. In 1814, he published a second edition of Anster Fair, on the publication of which Jeffrey reviewed it in The Edinburgh in very flattering terms. In 1816 he was promoted, chiefly through the influence of George Thomson, the friend and correspondent of Burns, to be parish teacher of Lasswade. In 1819, he was elected by the trustees of Dollar Academy, teacher of Classical and Oriental languages in that institution.

His last publication, "Hebrew Dramas," founded on incidents of Bible history, was published in 1845. Of this work Lord Jeffrey expressed a high opinion. It served to cover his retreat from the poetic arena with dignity, though it can hardly be said to have increased his fame. His death took place at Dollar, in 1848; and at his own request he was buried at Anstruther, where his friends and admirers have placed a monument over his remains.

66

The works already noticed are all that he published in a collected form; yet, besides a number of small poems Here settled in a highly agreeable and ballads, he contributed prose transand interesting locality, and in a posi-lations from Greek and German to the tion suited to his tastes, it was expected | Edinburgh Literary Journal, in 1830, that the promise of Anster Fair would and in the same periodical, carried on a be redeemed by something worthy of correspondence with the "Ettrick his literary and scholastic reputation. | Shepherd,” anent a new metrical transAccordingly, much interest was excited lation of the Psalms, which was pubwhen, in 1822, his second poem, "The | lished separately. In 1836-37, he conThane of Fife," appeared. The public tributed a series of five Hebrew expectation was disappointed, for the Idylls" to the Scottish Christian Herald, poem was a manifest falling off, and if which, with a project for an edition of not an entire failure, so much so, that the Scottish poets, for which he wrote its second part never was published. a life of Allan Ramsay, and a Synopsis Of his next three poems it will be of Syriac Grammar, published in 1840, enough to give the names, seeing none form all his literary labours which apof them added to his reputation. They pear to have been published. The fame were issued in the following order: of his linguistic acquirements conveys "Papistry Stormed, or the Dingin' the impression that his power of masterDown o' the Cathedral;" "Cardinal ing languages was something wonderBethune, a Drama in 5 acts;" "John ful. In character he was humble Baliol, an Historical Drama.' unassuming, and unaffectedly pious simple in his tastes, and fond of nature and innocent enjoyment, had a quick sense of the ludicrous in all things; and was an acute observer of men and

In 1834, a vacancy occurred in the chair of Oriental languages in St Mary's College, St Andrew's, and he was at once appointed to the professorship by his friend Jeffrey, then Lord Advocate.

manners.

the little elf and his wife, and having got hold of them, by his magic power he crammed the one into a pepper-box, and the other into a mustard-pot, there to remain till the hand of the fairest Scottish maid should be won in public

As a poet, he fills a niche in Scottish literature which had not been pre-occupied. He is another of the poets whom the university did not deprive of the use of his native tongue, and his less known poems are a mine of Scottish words, and as such are valued by our anti-competition by the most accomplished quarian collectors. Anster Fair, his passport to immortality, he treated as a sort of illegitimate progeny of his Muse in her frolicsome and unbridled youth, and he never lost hope of being able to produce something that would bear his poetic reputation more in keeping with his notions of respectability. His weakness as a poet was the want of passion; and the success of Anster Fair is owing to its being of that rare species of poetry in which passion has no place.

It is a poem to be enjoyed-as "Tickler" said; to be taken in the pocket on your trip to Holland, and read in the Zuyder Zee. "It is a fine thing, North! full of life, and glee, and glamour."

athlete in Scotland. The mustard-pot in the course of ages having come into the possession of Maggie Lauder, by special permission of Oberon, Tommy is liberated from his prison long enough to advise her-the fairest Scottish maidhow she may obtain the fairest man in Scotland as her husband. The manner proposed is to offer her hand as the prize of a competition at next Anster Fair. A public proclamation throughout Scotland is made to this effect, and Rob the Ranter, the cleverest man in Scotland, is successful in carrying off the fair prize. The event on which their imprisonment depended being thus brought about, the two fairies regain their liberty. The chief part of the poem, however, is devoted to a description of the various incidents of the Fair

LEGEND OF ANSTER FAIR. and competition, and the various parties,

ANSTER FAIR is unique in British literature, and may be defined as a descriptive poem, with two love stories and a fairy tale, the evolution of whose plots depended upon one another. The outline is as follows :-The fairy, Tommy Puck, incensed at Susan Scott, niece of Sir Michael the Wizard, for meanly jilting her lover, Melville of Carnbee, put the latter up to a plan by which he revenged the indignity. sir Michael having discovered the real author of the plot, determined to punish

including the King (James V.), who are attracted to them.

Thousands and tens of thousands reel And now a section of his face appears,

now, they, mountant from the A thousand stakes are rooted in the scaffold's planks,

And now, like cat, upon their dexterous A thousand fiddles squeak and squeal it shanks

They light, and of new monsters cheat A thousand stormy drones out-gasp in the sky;

And from Balhouffie to Kilrennymill, Meanwhile the sun, fatigued (as well he Vaulted with blankets, crofts and meadows