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NOCTES AMBROSIANÆ.

XXXIII.

(MAY 1834.)

ΧΡΗ ΔΕΝ ΣΥΜΠΟΣΙΩ ΚΥΛΙΚΩΝ ΠΕΡΙΝΙΣΣΟΜΕΝΑΩΝ
ΗΔΕΑ ΚΩΤΙΛΛΟΝΤΑ ΚΑΘΗΜΕΝΟΝ ΟΙΝΟΠΟΤΑΖΕΙΝ.

[This is a distich by wise old Phocylides,

PHOC. ap. Ath.

An ancient who wrote crabbed Greek in no silly days;

Meaning, "TIS RIGHT FOR GOOD WINE-BIBBING PEOPLE

NOT TO LET THE JUG PACE ROUND THE BOARD LIKE A CRIPPLE;

BUT GAILY TO CHAT WHILE DISCUSSING THEIR TIPPLE."

An excellent rule of the hearty old cock 'tis—

And a very fit motto to put to our Noctes.]

C. N. ap. Ambr.

Scene I.-Tent in the Fairy's Cleugh.-NORTH and the REGISTRAR' lying on the brae. (In attendance, AMBROSE and his Tail.)

Registrar.-"The day is placid in its going,

To a lingering motion bound,
Like a river in its flowing—

Can there be a softer sound?"

What, my dear North! Can't I waken you from your reverie even by a stanza of your own bard-Wordsworth?

1 "The Registrar" was Mr Samuel Anderson, formerly of the firm of Brougham and Anderson, wine-merchants, Edinburgh. He afterwards obtained from Lord Chancellor Brougham (his partner's brother) the appointment of Registrar of the Court of Chancery. He was an esteemed friend of Professor Wilson's, and a general favourite in society. He died in 1849.

VOL. IV.

A

2

NORTH DREAMING OF ELLERAY.

Hollo! are you asleep, you old somnolent sinner? (Shouting through the hollow of his hands into North's ear.) Nay, you must be dead. That posture grows every hour more alarming, and if this be not death, why then I pronounce it an admirable imitation. Laid out! Limb and body stiff and stark as a winter clod-mouth open-eyes ditto, and glazed like a window-pane in frost. How white his lips! And is there no breath? (Puts his pocket-mirror to North's mouth.) Thank heaven it dims-he lives! North, I say again, you old somnolent sinner, "awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!"

North (motionlessly soliloquising in a dream). Never in this well-wooded world, not even in the days of the Druids, could there have been such another Tree! It would be easier to suppose two Shakespeares.

Registrar. Sleeping or waking—always original. I must let the bald-headed bard enjoy a little while longer his delusion. (Pats North on the forehead.) What a pile !

North. Yet have I heard people say it is far from being a large Tree. A small one it cannot be with a house in its shadow. An unawakened house that looks as if it were dreaming! True, 'tis but a cottage-a Westmoreland cottage

Registrar. The buck is at the Lakes.

North. But then it has several roofs shelving away there in the lustre of loveliest lichens

Registrar. "And apt alliteration's artful aid." Yet methinks such affectations are beneath the dignity of his genius. Kit, you're a conceited callant.

North. Each roof with its own assortment of doves and pigeons pruning their plumage in the morning pleasance. Registrar. Again? Poo - poo-on such prettinesses, North.

North. The sun is not only a great genius, but what is far better, a good Christian.

Registrar. That's not so much amiss by way of an obs.

North. Now is he rising to illuminate all nature; yet in his universal mission, so far from despising this our little humble dwelling, God bless his gracious countenance! he looks as if for it and for us he were bringing back the beautiful day from the sea.

Registrar. The habits and customs of our waking life we carry along with us into dream-land. The unit calls himself Us.

THE SYCAMORE AT ELLERAY.

North. O sweetest and shadiest of all Sycamores-
Registrar. Incurable.

3

North. we love thee beyond all other Trees-because thou art here!1 May we be buried below thee, and our coffin clasped by thy roots-" and curst be he who stirs our bones!" Registrar. Again-our bones. Indeed there is little else of him now. The anatomie vivante would find it difficult to be much more of a skeleton were he a corpse. Yet he is a true Scotchman-for his bones are raw. Could it be as tradition reports that he was once inclining to corpulency-" like two single gentlemen rolled into one!" All the fat has melted in the fire of his genius,―gone "like snaw aff a dyke "—and a rickle o' stanes!" the dyke itself "

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North. Yet have we lived, all our lives, in the best sylvan society-we have the entrée of the soirées of the Pines, the Elms, the Ashes, and the Oaks, the oldest and highest families in Britain.

Registrar. The old Tory! Aristocratical in his dwawms! North. Nor have they disdained to receive us with open arms, when, after having been "absent long and distant far," we have found them again, on our return to park or chase, as stately as ever among the groups of deer!

Registrar. In Mar Forest-with the Thane.

North. But with this one single Tree-this sole sweet Sycamore—are we in love. Yet so spiritual is our passion, that we care not even if it be unreturned !

Registrar. In the Platonics.

North. Self-sufficient for its own happiness is our almost life-long affection, pure as it is profound-no jealousy ever disturbs its assured repose. SHE may hold dalliance with all the airs and lights and shadows of heaven-may open her bosom to the thunder-glooms-take to her inmost heart, in its delirious madness, the shivering storm.

Registrar. Who could have thought there was so much imagination left within those temples

"His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare!"

1 That is, at Elleray, Professor Wilson's seat on the banks of Windermere. Here he built a commodious house; but the original "cottage" was overshadowed by a luxuriant sycamore, of which he is now dreaming.

2 A rickle o' stanes-a heap of stones.

3 Lyart haffets-grey-haired temples.

THE SELFISHNESS OF LOVE.

North. Oh! blessed is the calm that breathes over all emotions inspired by the beauty of lifeless things! Love creates delight that dies not till she dies; and then, indeed, dead seems all the earth. But wherever Love journeys-ay, be it through the Great Desert-before her feet "Beauty pitches her tents." And oh how divine their slumber-of Love in the arms of Beauty-by the Palm-tree Well!

Registrar. What a pity the creature never wrote in verse! North. Alas! not so with Love- when Love, a male

spirit

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Registrar. That's heterodox, old boy-seraphs are of no

sex.

North. -is in love with the fairness of a Thing with life

Registrar. A Thing with life!

North.how often is the imagination alarmed, as by the tolling of a bell in the air for some unknown funeral; and while it knows not why, the whole region, even but now bathed in day, grows night-like! and the heart is troubled.

Registrar. Ay, ay-my dear friend, I too have felt that, for, gay as I am, North, to the public eye, you know, Kit, that I have had my sorrows.

North. That virgin, Heaven may have decreed, shall be the wife of your dearest foe. O! the cruel selfishness of Love's religion! That fear is worse than the thought even of her death! Rather than see her walking all in white, and with white roses in her hair, into the church, leaning on that arm, her fair face crimsoning with blushes at the altar, as if breathed from the shadow of a rosy cloud, Love would see her carried, all in white, with white roses in her hair then too, towards that hole in the churchyard—a hole into which distraction has crowded and heaped all that is most dismal on this side of hell-her pale face-though that he dares not dream of yellowing within her coffin.

Registrar. Nay, that's too much-hang me if I can stand that-ne quid nimis, North-and for having made me blubber, you shall have your face freshened, my lad, with the Woodburn.

[Runs down to the Wood-burn, fills his hat to the brim, and dashes the contents into the face of the Dormant.

North (starting up in a splutter). Whew! a water-spout! a

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