SPEED THE PROW.

Not the ship that swiftest saileth,
But which longest holds her way
Onward, onward, never faileth,

Storm and calm, to win the day;
Earliest she the haven gains,
Which the hardest stress sustains.

O'er life's ocean, wide and pathless,
Thus would I with patience steer;
No vain hope of journeying scathless,
No proud boast to face down fear;
Dark or bright his Providence,
Trust in God be my defence.

Time there was,-'t is so no longer,-
When I crowded every sail,
Battled with the waves, and stronger
Grew, as stronger grew the gale;
But my strength sunk with the wind,
And the sea lay dead behind.

There my bark had founder'd surely,
But a power invisible
Breathed upon me;-then securely,
Borne along the gradual swell,
Helm and shrouds, and heart renew'd,
I my humbler course pursued.

Now, though evening shadows blacken,
And no star comes through the gloom,
On I move, nor will I slacken

Sail, though verging towards the tomb: Bright beyond, on heaven's high strand, Lo, the lighthouse!-land, land, land!

Cloud and sunshine, wind and weather,
Sense and sight are fleeing fast;
Time and tide must fail together,

Life and death will soon be past;
But where day's last spark declines,
Glory everlasting shines.

RECLUSE.

A FOUNTAIN issuing into light
Before a marble palace, threw
To heaven its column, pure and bright,
Returning thence in showers of dew;
But soon a humbler course it took,
And glid away a nameless brook.

Flowers on its grassy margin sprang,
Flies o'er its eddying surface play'd,
Birds midst the alder-branches sang,
Flocks through the verdant meadows stray'd;
The weary there lay down to rest,
And there the halcyon built her nest.

'Twas beautiful, to stand and watch
The fountain's crystal turn to gems,
And from the sky such colours catch,
As if 't were raining diadems;
Yet all was cold and curious art,

That charm'd the eye, but miss'd the heart.

Dearer to me the little stream,

Whose unimprison'd waters run,
Wild as the changes of a dream,
By rock and glen, through shade and sun;
Its lovely links had power to bind
In welcome chains my wandering mind.

So thought I, when I saw the face,
By happy portraiture reveal'd,
Of one, adorn'd with every grace,
-Her name and date from me conceal'd,
But not her story;-she had been
The pride of many a splendid scene.

She cast her glory round a court,
And frolic'd in the gayest ring,
Where fashion's high-born minions sport,
Like sparkling fire-flies on the wing;
But thence, when love had touch'd her soul,
To nature and to truth she stole.

From din, and pageantry, and strife,

Midst woods and mountains, vales and plains, She treads the paths of lowly life,

Yet in a bosom-circle reigns,
No fountain scattering diamond showers,
But the sweet streamlet watering flowers.

THE FIELD OF THE WORLD.

Sow in the morn thy seed,

At eve hold not thine hand; To doubt and fear give thou no heed, Broad-cast it o'er the land.

Beside all waters sow,

The highway furrows stock, Drop it where thorns and thistles grow, Scatter it on the rock.

The good, the fruitful ground,
Expect not here nor there;
O'er hill and dale, by plots, 't is found;
Go forth, then, everywhere.

Thou know'st not which may thrive,
The late or early sown:
Grace keeps the precious germs alive,
When and wherever strown.

And duly shall appear,

In verdure, beauty, strength,
The tender blade, the stalk, the ear,
And the full corn at length.

Thou canst not toil in vain;

Cold, heat, and moist, and dry,
Shall foster and mature the grain,
For garners in the sky.

Thence, when the glorious end,
The day of God is come,
The angel-reapers shall descend,

And heaven cry-" Harvest home."

THE Ettrick Shepherd was born in Selkirkshire in Scotland, on the twenty-fifth of January, 1772. His forefathers for five centuries had pursued the same humble calling among the solitudes of the Ettrick and the Yarrow, and when but seven years of age, the destined poet was compelled to earn his own bread by herding the cows of a neighbouring farmer. He had therefore no opportunity to acquire the ordinary education of the Scottish peasant. Of all the bards of his country, he was the only one really self-instructed. BURNS, compared with Hoge, had the accomplishments of a gentleman. He was taught to read, and he wrote a clear hand. But the subject of our biography, was in his twentieth year before he learned the alphabet. Knowing by rote the words of ballads he had heard his mother sing, in his long leisure on the hills he compared them with the printed pages, and by such slow process, advanced until "the hardest Scripture names could scarcely daunt him." The rough but forcible stanzas beginning

"My name is Donald McDonald,
I live in the Highlands sae grand,"

were sung throughout the empire before their author could distinguish a printed copy of them from a leaf of Blackstone. About the year 1802, he went to Edinburgh with a flock of sheep, for the disposal of which he was obliged to wait a few days in town. He could now write; he had acquired some local reputation by his traditionary songs and ballads; and he determined to have a small volume of them printed. He succeeded; the collection, which in his memoirs he declares was "extraordinar' stupit," attracted the attention of Scorr and others in the metropolis, and increased the consideration with which the shepherd was regarded by his class. It was not successful in a pecuniary point of view; but he was ambitious and undaunted; he soon had ready a second volume, for which Constable paid him a hundred and fifty pounds, and with this amount, and another hundred received for a treatise on the management of sheep, he deemed himself a rich man. He unwisely

settled as a tenant on a large farm; in three years was penniless, and went to Edinburgh to pursue the business of authorship. His first attempt was an unsalable book of verses; his second a weekly newspaper, which was sustained for more than a year; and when they failed, and his town friends began to desert him, he retired to a quiet old house in the suburbs, and wrote "The Queen's Wake," which surprised his acquaintances, and established on a firm basis his reputation as a poet. Removing once more into the denser portion of the city, he took up his quarters at the little tavern made famous afterward as the scene of the "Noctes Ambrosianæ," where he continued to reside for many years. He wrote the "Witch of Fife," "Queen Hynde," " Mador of the Moor," the "Pilgrims of the Sun," and other poems, and several volumes of tales and sketches, of various merit, besides his contributions to "Blackwood's Magazine," of which he was one of the principal founders.

This world-renowned periodical had been established by THOMAS PRINGLE and a Mr. CLEGHORN, who, disagreeing with the publisher, set up a rival under the auspices of Constable. Blackwood engaged WILSON, HOGG, and a few other writers, and continued his miscellany with such spirit and ability, that it soon acquired a vast circulation. The "Noctes Ambrosianæ," constituted the most remarkable series of papers ever printed in a periodical, and instead of being merely invented, as may have been supposed, were for a considerable period adaptations of what actually took place at Hogg's lodgings.

Among the Shepherd's various literary productions not before mentioned, were a compilation of "Jacobite Relics," and two novels entitled "The Three Perils of Man," and "The Three Perils of Woman," published by Longman, for which the author received some two hundred and fifty pounds.

HOGG was married in 1823, and embarking soon afterward in too extensive farming operations, he lost the money he had acquired by