or

into the sickly whine of a mendicant, as though Isaiah had become an old Jew clothesman." A Mr. Anderson, of Glasgow, of pulpit prowess, "so paints perdition, that you seem to hear the roar of its sleepless fires, and the tossing of the victims on the unmade beds of despair." Michael Angelo, "pious as he was, would have broken up the true cross for pencils, and studied chiaroscuro at Calvary." "The idea of Doctor Milton is ludicrous. As well speak almost of Dr. Isaiah, Professor Melchisedec, -Ezekiel, Esq." "We can well fancy Adam Black, or John Murray, saying to Milton, 'Splendid poem, sir-great genius in it; but it won't sell, we fear-far too long too many learned words in it-odd episode that on Sin and Death. If you could rub it down into a tragedy, and secure Macready for Satan, and Helen Faucett for Eve, it might take; or, if you could write a few songs on the third French Revolution, or something in the style of Dombey and Son. Good morning, Mr. Milton."" Swedenborg's intellect "kept him cool amid the most fiery and horrible details of damnation; he was a mere meter to the gas of the everlasting fire." Eschylus was the laureate of that fallen house, "the Stuarts of the skies-till a dying cockney-boy, with power projected from eternity, with hectic heat and unearthly beauty, sang Hyperion." Shelley was a hectic hero; a Titan in a deep decline.' In his "Prometheus," the "thought is often drowned in a diarrhoea of words ;" and the "last act is to us a mere dance of darkness." St. Peter is the "Oliver Goldsmith of the New Testament." And, to conclude,—what thinks the worthy peripatetic custos in the Nineveh room of the British Museum, of the following éloge of his department:-"You could talk under the dome of the Crystal Palace-the Ninevehtic remains, which seemed the fragments of the blast of the breath of God's nostrils, made you silent. What could do but you gasp for breath, and cling convulsively to your seat," &c., &c., &c.

.

66

But enough. It is a solace to know how impervious Mr. Gilfillan is to the criticisms of "puny, passing malignants," to which category he will doubtless consign us-and how sublimely impenetrable he must be to their disposition to hint a fault and hesitate dislike. Yet he does now and then evince a susceptibility to be "riled" a little; and this fact creates in us some apprehension lest even our obscurity should be assailed by a pitiless storm of the "fragments of the blast of the breath" of his vengeance. Mr. Macaulay has already incurred his personal displeasure, from some incapacity on the historian's part to appreciate his brilliancy. The North American Review criticised his "Bards on the Bible" in a manner "which did vex him ;" and he waxes irate about "that stupidest of all Old Granny's' effusions. She has lost all her teeth, poor body; and her tongue is not very clean. I fear the worst for her." And because the Athenæum saw reason to speak slightly of Mr. Gilfillan, he denounces that journal as containing only "dry and sapless critiques where ill-temper, spite, and mean jealousy are mistaken for honesty and truth; and the clique connected with which are, as a whole, destitute alike of insight, heart, and enthusiasm.” Probably, we are fathoms and fathoms below Mr. Gilfillan's contempt; but if he should call us bad names, and meditate the ruin of the Magazine, we shall soothe ourselves with remembering the good company with which his anathema associates us. Meanwhile, we have "nothing exaggerated,” and are certain we have "set down nought in malice.'

ESBEN.*

FROM THE DANISH OF S. S. BLICHER.

BY MRS. BUSHBY.

The greatest sorrow that this world can give,
Is, far away from those one loves-to live.

SOMETIMES, when I have wandered away-away over the wild and apparently endless moors, where I could see nothing but the brown heath below, and the blue skies above me; when I have roamed on far from men, from their busy haunts, and the signs and tokens of their active worldly labours, which, after all, are but molehills, that Time, or some restless and turbulent Tamerlane, shall again level to the ground; when I have strayed, light of heart and proudly free as a Bedouin, whom no fixed domicile, no narrow circumscribed fields chain to one spot, but who, as its owner, occupies all he beholds; who does not indeed dwell, but pitches his tent where he will; if then my keen searching glances along the horizon have discovered a house, how often-God forgive me! has not the passing thought arisen in my mind--for it was no settled desire -to wish that the human habitation was annihilated. There, must dwell trouble and sorrow; there, must exist disputes about mine and thine! Ah! the happy desert is both thine and mine, is every one's, is A lover of the woods would have contented himself with wishing a whole colony of trees planted there; I have wished that the heath could have remained as it was a thousand years ago, uncultivated by human hands, untrodden by human feet! Yet this wish was not always satisfactory to myself, for when fatigued, overheated, suffering from hunger and thirst, I have endeavoured to turn my thoughts with longing to an Arab's tent and rude hospitality, I have caught myself thanking heaven that a house thatched with broom-at not a mile's distancepromised me shelter and refreshment.

no one's.

It so happened that some years ago, one calm warm September day, I found myself on the same heath that, in my Arabian dreams, I called mine. Not a breath of wind crept among the purple heather; the air was sultry and heavy, the distant hills that bounded the view seemed to float like clouds around the immense plain, and assumed the appearances of houses, towns, castles, men, and animals; but all was vague in outline, and ever shifting, as the images seen in dreams. A cottage would expand into a church, and that again into a pyramid; here, suddenly uprose one spire; there, as suddenly sank another; a man turned into a horse, and that again into an elephant; here, glided a little boat, and there, a ship with every sail spread. Long did my delighted eyes gaze on these fantastic figures-a panorama that only the mariner or the wanderer of the desert has ever the pleasure of beholding—when, becoming a prey to hunger and to thirst, I began to look for a real house among the many false ones in my sight. I longed most earnestly to exchange all my beautiful fairy palaces for one single peasant's cottage. *The title of this tale in the original is "Hosekrämmeren" ("The Hosier"). The translator has changed it to that of "Esben," the name of its hero.

My wishes were granted; I descried at length a real tenement, without spires or towers, whose outline became sharper and more defined the nearer I approached, and which, flanked by stacks of peat, looked larger than it really was.

The inhabitants were unknown to me. Their clothing was poor; their furniture of the plainest description; but I knew that the dwellers on the heath often hid their precious metal in some secret depository, and that a tattered garb sometimes concealed a well-lined pocket-book. When, on going in, I observed a recess filled with stockings, I shrewdly guessed that I had introduced myself into the abode of a wealthy hosier (in a parenthesis be it said, that I never knew a poor one).

An elderly, grey-haired, but still vigorous man, advanced to meet me, and with a cordial "welcome" offered me his hand. 66 May I be permitted to ask," he added, "where my guest comes from ?" One must not take umbrage at so blunt and unmannerly a question. The rustic of the heath is almost as hospitable as the Scotch lairds, though rather more inquisitive; but, after all, one cannot blame him that he seeks to know whom he entertains. When I had enlightened him as to who I was and whence I came, he called his wife, who without loss of time set before me the best the house contained, kindly inviting me to partake of it; an invitation which I was not slow in accepting.

I was in the midst of my repast, and also in the midst of a political conversation with mine host, when a young and uncommonly beautiful girl came in, whom I should indubitably have pronounced to have been a young lady in disguise, who had made her escape from cruel parents or hateful guardians, had not her red hands and country dialect convinced me that there was no travestissement in the case. She curtsied with a pleasant smile, looked under the table, went hastily out, and soon returned to the room with a dish of bread and milk, which she placed on the ground, saying, "Your dog will probably also want something to eat."

I thanked her for her kind consideration; but my gratitude was nothing compared to that of the great dog, whose greed had soon caused the dish to be emptied, and who then thanked the fair donor after his own fashion, by jumping roughly upon her; and when she, in some alarm, threw her arms up in the air, Chasseur mistook her meaning, sprung up higher, and brought the shrieking girl to the ground. I called the dog off, of course, and endeavoured to convince the damsel of his good intentions. I should not have drawn the reader's attention to so trivial a matter, but to introduce a remark, namely, that everything is becoming to beauty; for every motion and every look of this rural fair one had a natural and charm, which the well-tutored coquette might in vain try to assume. When she had left the room, I asked the good people if she was their daughter. They answered in the affirmative, adding that she was their only child.

"You will not have her long with you,'
." I remarked.

grace

"God help us! what do you mean?" asked the father; but a sort of self-satisfied smile showed me that he full well understood my meaning. "I think," I replied, "that she is likely to have a great many wooers."

Oh!" muttered he, "wooers are in plenty; but unless they are worth something, what is the use of talking of them. To come a wooing

with a watch and silver-mounted pipe is nothing to the purpose-great cry and little wool-and faith!" he exclaimed, setting both his elbows on the table, and stooping to look out at the low windows, "here comes one of them, a fellow who has just raised his head above the heather-one of these pedlars who travel about with a pair or two of stockings in their wallet as samples, forsooth. The cur-dog, he wants to play the sweetheart to my daughter, with his two miserable oxen, and his cow and a half! Yes, there he is, skulking along, the pauper!"

The object of these execrations, and the person on whom were bent looks as lowering as if he had been a thief, was now approaching the house, but was still far enough off for me to ask my host who he was, and to be told that he was the son of his nearest neighbour, who, however, lived at the distance of more than a mile; that his father possessed only a small farm, upon the security of which he owed the hosier 200 dollars; that the son, who had for some years hawked about woollen goods, had lately presumed to propose for the beautiful Cecilia, but had received a flat refusal.

Whilst I was listening to this little history, Cecilia herself came in ; and her anxious and sorrowful looks, which wandered, by turns, between her father and the traveller without, enabled me to guess that she did not coincide in the old man's view of affairs. As soon as the young man entered by one door, she disappeared by another, not however without casting on him a hurried, but kind and speaking glance. My host turned towards the new comer, grasped the table with both his hands, as if he found some support needful, and acknowledged the young man's "God's peace be here," and "Good day," with a dry "Welcome." The uninvited guest stood for a few moments while he cast his eyes slowly round the room, took a tobacco-pouch from one pocket and a tobaccopipe from another, knocked it on the stove by his side and filled it again. All this was done leisurely, and in a kind of measured manner, while my host remained motionless, in the attitude he had assumed.

The stranger was a very handsome youth, a worthy son of our northern clime, where, though men are slow of growth, their frames become lofty and strong. He had light hair, blue eyes, fair complexion, ruddy cheeks, and a chin on whose downy smoothness the razor had not yet played, although its owner had numbered his twentieth year. His dress was not that of a common peasant, it was the costume generally adopted by tradesmen, but was much superior in its texture and its smartness to that of the rich hosier himself. He wore a frock coat, white trousers, a striped red vest, and a cotton cravat; he looked, at least, no unworthy suitor to the lovely Cecilia. His pleasant, open countenance pleased me: it was expressive of that enduring patience and power of unswerving perseverance, which form such prominent features in the Cimbric national cha

racter.

A long time elapsed before either of them would break silence; at length my host was the first to open his mouth, which he did by asking slowly, and in a cold and indifferent tone and manner, "Whither bound to-day, Esben ?"

The other answered, without at all hurrying himself, while he lighted his pipe leisurely, and took a long whiff, "No farther to-day, but tomorrow I am off to Holstein."

Thereupon there occurred another long pause, during which Esben looked at all the chairs one after another, took one, and finally sat down. At that moment the mother and daughter entered, and the young man nodded to them with such an unaltered and tranquil air, that I should have thought he was quite indifferent to the beautiful Cecilia, had I not known that love, in a breast such as his, might be not the less strong that it lay concealed; that it is not the blaze, which flashes and sparkles, but the steady fire that burns and warms the longest.

Cecilia, with a sigh, placed herself at the farthest end of the table, and began immediately to knit; her mother condescended to say, “ Welcome, Esben!" as she settled herself at her spinning-wheel.

"Are you going on account of business?" drawled out the hosier at length.

"If any offers,” replied the visitor. "One can but try what may be done in the south. My errand here is, to beg that you will not be in too great a hurry to get Cecil married, but will wait till I come back, and we can see what my luck has been."

Cecilia coloured, but continued to look stedfastly at her work. The mother stopped her spinning-wheel with one hand, laid the other on her lap, and looked hard at the speaker; but the father said, as he turned with a wink to me, "While the grass grows'—you know the rest of the proverb. How can you ask that Cecil shall wait for you? You may stay very long away, perhaps, even-you may never come back."

"It is your own fault, Michel Krænsen!" replied Esben, with some impetuosity. "But listen to what I say; if you compel Cecil to marry any one else, you will do grievous wrong both to her and to me."

So saying, he arose, held out his hand to both the old people, and bade them a short and stiff farewell. To their daughter he said, but in a more tender and somewhat faltering voice, "Farewell, Cecil! and thanks for all your kindness. Think of me sometimes, unless you are obliged to God be with you, and with you all! Farewell!"

He turned towards the door, thrust his tobacco-pouch and pipe into his pocket, seized his hat, and went forth without casting one look behind. The old man smiled triumphantly, his wife sighed aloud an "Ah, dear!" as she set her spinning-wheel in motion again, but large tears rapidly coursed each other over Cecilia's now pale cheeks.

I had the greatest possible inclination to invite a discussion of the principle which actuated these parents in regard to their child's marriage. I could have reminded them, that wealth does not suffice to ensure happiness in married life; that the heart must also have its share; that prudence counsels to think more of integrity, industry, and a good disposition, than of mere riches. I could have remonstrated with the father (for the mother seemed at least neutral) on his harshness to his only daughter. But I knew the nature of the lower orders too well to waste useless words on such subjects; I knew that money takes precedence of everything else in that class; but-is it otherwise with other classes? I knew, moreover, the dogged firmness of the peasantry, approaching almost to obstinacy, especially when any controversy with one in a superior rank of life was in question, and that the less they felt themselves able to argue, the more stiff-necked they became in adhering to their own notions. There came yet another reflection to prevent me, unbidden,