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note of the heart's strain, whose cadence is loveliest because the last. Lover.-One who loses possession of himself—to obtain possession of another.

GRACE GADABOUT TO THE EDITOR, ON THE WATERING PLACES.

MY DEAR SOLOMON SAVEALL,-If I remember aright, (for I curled my hair with it,) you gave a pledge in the first number of your ponderous work, to insert a series of Sketches of our Watering Places in the West, beginning with Gourock-as the oldest and ugliest, I presume. Now, although you boast of never having broken a promise, it may not be amiss to remind you that the time of fulfilling one has arrived; for, already half-a-dozen of my friends are down the water, and enjoying the sea-shore promenades. There is-but I won't mention names, although all would make capital portraits, if sketched by your master hand, old Solomon. So, begin, and spare not; let us have Gourock next week, and then you may go to Largs, and get it over before it becomes crowded. Indeed, for my own part, I would rather you began with it, since probably upon your account of Summer Society there may depend whether I shall begin to plague papa in the first week of June, or wait till the middle of that month-my usual time of attack-when I think he has recovered his good humour, and forgotten the cost of my Spring costume. Do, dear Solomon, begin with Largsand I'll try to assist you in the mixing up of your colours for that picture myself! But I have a great many questions to ask you. First, then-When will you be done? for although you chat agreeably enough, I always like to know how long a speaker means to keep all the conversation to himself,-in other words, when will you finish your volumes? and where will I get all the numbers of my set re-supplied that have either been torn up to light tapers--bedewed with tears, drawn from their cells by your pathos, dear Solomon-or spoilt with butter from a breakfast roll? And then,

it is well thought on, where shall I procure the numbers as they appear that are published when papa does go to lodgings down the river? I assure you Largs itself would be intolerable if its distance deprived me of your lucubrations and still more exquisite Selections. Do satisfy me on these points.

Dear Mr. SAVEALL, believe me, yours very truly, GRACE GADABOUT. P. S.-L hope you will not think I am desirous that you should sketch the Watering Places before I visit them, lest you would give me a corner of your pictures? G. G. [Miss GRACE need not be at all afraid of our either misapprehending her motives for hastening on the fulfilment of our promises, or of our being likely to forget them. Gourock must come

first, we fear, however; but Largs shall have its breadth of canvass. As to her queries: We shall lay aside our coat of Antique fashion when it has been worn a year: it was just made to last that time. Our volume of original, as well as that of select matter, will then be complete, and the bookbinders of Scotland supplied with three months' employment. Buttered numbers may be replaced for threepence by all the booksellers; but Mr. Curll pledges himself to supply copies gratis for all those that are tear-bedewed, if well authenticated. The stewards of the steam-boats will convey to the many longing and bright eyes that wait it, the gladness of our presence once a-fortnight.—ED.]

THE HERON CORRESPONDENCE.

CHARLES HERON TO HIS UNCLE.

No. XII.

MY DEAR AND RESPECTED SIR,-It was indeed a compliment to your nephew to introduce to him the truly respectable clergyman of the Secession church, who came from the south last week to attend the Synod. To be thought worthy of the friendship of the wise and good, is next to being so. I accompanied him to the chapel where the meetings of the venerable assembly were held, and certainly did not refrain from expressing my regret that that powerful body were not in possession of suitable accommodation for such meetings, without being awkwardly seated, in a place where the squabbles of even clergymen should never be heard. That these did occur on this occasion, it were needless to conceal. The most important part of the business was considering of the reception of the Declaration of Faith and Discipline, earnestly urged upon the Body by that part of it formerly called Anti-Burghers, and received but lukewarmly by the other, and, permit me, Dear Sir, to say to you as I said to your friend, in this instance, the more liberal portion. For, however necessary certain boundaries of discipline may be in building up a visible church, surely to condescend upon the more minute points of speculative faith, and to expect that one hundred thousand individuals, differently constituted in the relative grasp of their comprehensions, shall, without a trenching upon their consciences, be able to bind themselves to one formula of explication, is about as just as to insist on every stomach deriving the same amount of nutriment from similar food. But this I shall talk over with you and your worthy friend, when I pay him that visit I have promised. -The Relief Synod have received into their arms the man they yet thought worthy of a public rebuke for gross licentiousness!- Trade decidedly revives, and the aspect of every body and every thing, is getting cheerful, as is always, when he re-assures his uncle of his unfeigned love and respect, Your nephew and friend,

CHARLES HERON.

CHARLES HERON TO HIS COUSIN MARY.

O MARY, I actually yawned as I concluded a letter I have just sealed for your father! Tell it not at Gowan Glen, and publish it not in the breakfast parlour. It was very sensible, I assure you, though, and perhaps it was that which occasioned my gape. I told uncle, in it, all about the Synod, except that there were every day many exceedingly well-dressed and pretty looking Seceders present, who might catch a stray disciple if you ever turn me off from my allegiance to the mother church of your beauty-and relationship. I durst not conceal that fact from you, though, to whom every flirtation of mine is duly made known-either by myself as a precaution, or some obliging friend as a piece of news. I must, to be sure, be very flagrant on that score this time, for so enchanted have I been with the feminine elegance, and arch naivette, and, above all, exquisite musical power, and skill, and taste, and feeling of Miss Graddon, who has been at our theatre for a few nights, that I gladly availed myself of an invitation to meet her at an elegant party, got up on her account by one of the numerous families of first respectability, to whom she bore corresponding introductions-and would have lost my heart, if you, Mary, had not had the keeping of it. She is equal to Stephens. I need say no more to you. If she is less uniformly excellent and touching, she is often more finished. Her shake is surpassingly beautiful; and I may say I have not heard "Bid me Discourse" sung-in public, mind, only—so exquisitely as by her. Melrose, of whom I wrote to Tom, is to have his benefit on Saturday;-will you permit me to ask -to it, for I know she likes to see a good house? and if deserving will bring an audience, he will have one. Mr. Seymour brought forward three new operas in one week-Faustus by Terry-Maid Marian by Planche, the Covent-Garden author-of-all-work, and clever at most-and Wade's Two Houses of Grenada. This was an activity which required the good-will of the corps dramatique to second, and in this the "good-looking Mr. Felton" you admired (plague take him) was conspicuous.Alexander, as his full prices excluded some additional sweeps, &c. has seen it fit to reduce them a half, to foster good taste among that part of the community, and got poor Aitken to draw a house by advertising an oration in reply to "certain calumnies" nobody cared a farthing about till they heard an oral answer announced. Charity, which covers a multitude of sins-those against good taste among the number, I hope-made me drop in on the night generously enough given to the Infirmary funds. The story of the Hunchbacks, from Cruikshank's Points, was then enacted, and really I was exceedingly diverted with my old acquaintance dramatised. But it is not only in the Theatre-Royal that I have been dramatically happy. T'other day a card was mysteriously put

into my hand, and in the evening it acted as a "Sesame" in opening up to me a large and splendid dining-room which an indulgent father had fitted up as a theatre for his happy family. It was as large, and certainly more tasteful than that at Blenheim, and there I saw five individuals personate successively all the leading characters of Rob Roy, with a self-possession and versatility quite surprising. Truly this is popularity, when the boy of nine can receive delight as intense as the man of fifty, from the works of the same wonderful author, and enter into and appreciate his characters and scenes. -You ask me to tell you something about the dinner to Mr. Campbell, as if what I wrote Tom was not enough. Well, then, here is your share: The Professors spoke well; but they fell into a usual corporation error-they thought nobody else could. The gentleman who praised Moore and the ladies, I am told has the thanks of neither. Is it so? and do women dislike May compliments as the month is not a marrying one?

In

a week or two every body will either be moving to their country mansions, or changing their town ones. A worthy friend of mine insists that our Exchange should also flit at Whitsunday; but, as the majority of disinterested people seem to think it has not been fairly warned away, I should not wonder but that you will find it where it was, and where, for a long time, it should be. Commerce is not like -'s wife -dying to get to Blythswood hill.- -I have read nothing but novels since I wrote. The Busy Bodies is an admirable specimen of a now almost forgotten kind in the world of every-day dialogue; and Falkland is-not for your reading.

I forget; I have read all the numbers published of the Library of Knowledge, but, then, every human being here has done, or means to do so; and also young Macauley's admirable article on Machiavelli, in last Edinburgh Review, and Blackwood, and the periodicals, of course. But you see by the length of time I tire you, that there are now other employments more delightful than reading the Prairie or Cyril Thornton; and that is, dearest, the opportunity of again saying I am thine, C. H.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Felix is an ass-or, worse, a blockhead.-The lovelines of the one Testudo satirises, ought to protect her from either his praise or censure.-We cannot possibly insert the Essay on the Phenomena of Black Moustaches being on the same face with Red Whiskers, by the gentleman just returned from the remote Island of Eggolinton.-The packet addressed to one of our number, as the editor of a collection with which he has no other than a business connection, has been handed to the proper quarter.-We are inclined to think that it must have been ourang-outangs, escaped from caravans on their way to some fair, that annoyed the sisters of our Correspondents who complain of Captain Graham respecting them. They, of course, could not be gentlemen, and their claims to even manhood are doubtful. The worthy Superintendent takes no cognizance of monkeys.-R. R. is so beautiful in many parts as to have made us weep, but so irregular that we cannot insert his lines.

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THE ANT.

No. XIV. SATURDAY, 2d JUNE, 1827.

Original.

LEAVES FROM A LOUNGER'S NOTE-BOOK. No. III.

VIRGINIUS is a tragedy which, neither in its subject nor its execution, its plot nor its language, can be called uninteresting or common-place. I am proud that our city, barren as it is in dramatic taste, and neglectful though it has been of native merit, has yet become the birth-place of this work, for here it was written, and here it was given to the world on the 27th April, 1820. As a piece for the stage, it has few faults; as a poem for the closet it may have deficiencies, but I cannot envy the perspicacious nicety of him who would delight to dwell upon these, till at least he had well nigh exhausted himself in panegyrising its manifold beauties.

The stoic virtue of the Roman captain, and the hapless fate of his daughter," a second but unstained Lucretia," are well known. Livy and Vertot have detailed the overthrow of the Decemvirate in such a form as to leave little to the dramatist in the arrangement of the plot. The incidents are picturesquely, and at the same time, I presume, faithfully related by these historians, and from the actions of individuals it is easy to deduce the peculiarities of their character.

The fourth act includes as much of the narrative as the author has found useful for his purposes: it ends with the death of Virginia, and in the fifth he throws himself upon his own resources. Many are led to expect that with the rising of the curtain for the farther developement of the piece, they will see Virginius animating the Roman legions, and leading them from the camp to the overthrow of Appius Claudius and the Decemvirate. The author has chosen a less inspiriting, but a more tender and deeply affecting circumstance, for the termination of the play. He has preserved the honour of Virginia by the filiacidal deed of her father, but, upon the head of that almost justifiable and meritorious murderer, he has, with the highest moral purpose, and the most thrilling effect, visited the violation of that innate and sacred sense,

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