silken covering, and more elegant than these embroidered ornaments are inseparably connected with it and the tea that has been sipped while seated there.

Miss P.-(Engagingly.)—Your picture, Mr. Heron, is not altogether a fancy one, I confess. I am glad you agree with me in liking the old-previously-fashioned-able, I should say—name of this article of furniture.

C. H.-And in receiving pleasurable sensations of elegant and literary ease and enjoyment in its use too, Madam, for both of us seem equally pleased with its name and its purpose.

Miss P.-There is certainly a charm and fascination about the one and the other. Here I have doated on the pages of Richardson; and just before your entré, I was wrapt up in the latest number of Brewster's Journal.

C. H.-(Bowing very profoundly.)-Like the fashion of the seat itself, on it one may combine the luxurious yet elegant ease of administering to Taste, with the solid advantage of attending to the laws of Science.

Miss P.-Do you know, Mr. Heron, that you remind me of a very curious paper in this number, upon a newly invented instrument, called the Kaleidophone, which can at once give out the sweetest sounds, make the most graceful motions, and leave the prettiest traces of these in correspondingly beautiful outlines of figures.

C. H.-You flatter, Madam. (Aside. And you remind me, faith, of the paper on Wire Drawing, in the same place, where we are told of the gold-plating on metal being attenuated till it is the ten-millionth part of an inch in thickness!)

Miss P.-Flattery, Mr. Charles, should occasionally fall from the lips of the sex whom men habitually instruct in the art.

C. H.-But when accomplished women condescend to use that weapon, like yours their flattery should resemble that wire described in the work we speak of, which is drawn so fine from a ruby, (penetrated to the extent of one twelve-hundredth part of an inch,) that its presence can only be felt, but is to the eye invisible.

Miss P.-Of such tenuity had better be the safety wire-screens there proposed to be hung between the actors and the auditory of a theatre; and then, without interrupting the view, one might sit and look at the prettiest of the daughters of Thespis, without being scorched by the flash of her eye-on Sir Humphrey Davy's principle-or hurt with any moral contagion, on that of the newly discovered property of wire-gauze, which is found to set infection at defiance.

C. H.-(Aside.-O Lord, she'll overwhelm me!)-By and by, Ma'am, I presume our ladies will be wearing veils of golden wire, if it can be so finely spun, and is so useful.

Miss P.-Too many of the modern day, Mr. Heron, have brazen faces, to shade them with golden veils!-He! he! he!

C. H.-Ha ha! ha!-Excellent, Madam. (Aside.-Your cast-iron countenance will not need that protection !) Besides, men, Madam, are already sufficiently addicted to looking at women through a golden medium!

Miss P.-I protest, Mr. Charles, you resemble those glass utensils in the Shetland Isles this excellent number makes us acquainted with, which give out musical sounds without any thing visible touching them.

C. H.-You forget, Miss Pensivillia, that it is supposed they only echo some music: so I but give back the sounds you create. (Aside, and wiping his mouth.—It will be long, I suspect, before your tumblers give any musical jingle!)

Miss P.-You appear thirsty, Mr. Heron; and it is little wonder. Would you choose any thing to refresh you? I can recommend some delicious butter-milk. Bell! Some sour milk

for Mr. Heron.

C. H.-(Drinking and "grewing.")—Delightful! Thick as a Connaughtman's brogue-soft as a Kerry beauty's lips in kissing! I wonder if it was salt butter

(Aside.-Butter-milk!

that left such sourness behind it!)

Miss P.-Why, Captain de Capel Brook does not rave more enthusiastically of the richness and flavour of rein-deer's milk-the finest lacteal beverage in the world, Mr. Charles.

C. H.-He indeed speaks with any thing rather than coldness of warm milk at the North Cape. But I crave leave-an engagement calls me.

Miss P.-But you have not yet told me a single word of literary news. Hear you of any thing new in preparation in our

quarter?

C. H.-O yes, Madam, even within our own circle. Our friend Chambers, the traditionist, is by this time in the wildest parts of the West Highlands, collecting oral, and written, and hitherto unedited materials for his History of the Rebellions of 15 and 45.

Miss P.-He is well fitted for the task,-erudite, enthusiastic, and indefatigable.

C. H.-True: and there is at present passing through the press of Oliver and Boyd the sheets of a volume of original poems, by a new candidate for the bays, whose claims to a seat on Parnassus are not likely to be disputed. Fame will, by and by, Ken a day of reckoning with the writer of "The Diamond Ring.'

Miss P.-And so Mrs. Dodds has come forth with a second course or new edition of her " Manual." It is the only cookery book a woman of any mind can look into.

C. H.—Or a man of any taste submit to eat from, now that it has the French, English, and Scotch systems in detail, hibits a 66 Holy Alliance" of an unexceptionable kind now. am reminded by it of my supper engagement.

Ad

It ex

But I

Miss P.-Stay but one moment. Is it true that "The Spate" has received the high commendation of one no less celebrated than Alaric Watts, and its author an invitation to send up papers for the next "Literary Souvenir"? I think I may surely

rely upon a proof copy, if that be the case.

C. H.-(With his hat elevated to hide his blushes.)—Good bye, dear Miss Pensivillia. I shall be late I fear. If I get to the Souvenir, the Souvenir shall get to you.

[Goes off in a hurry.]

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AY, THESE WERE NIGHTS.

Ay, these were nights of high delight,
So thrilling, yet so calm;

When Time unnoted winged his flight,
But seen when dropping balm.

Ay, these were nights!—the brightest day
Seemed tediously to last,

And even December's briefest ray

But all too slowly past.

Ay, these were nights!-whose darkness beamed
Bright with thy speaking eye;

And, near thee placed, I almost deemed

That heaven itself was nigh!

Ay, these were nights!—when passioned thoughts
Found burning words to tell

Their meaning!-Still my memory doats

On every minute's spell!

Ay, these were nights!—they've past—we're changed—
Nor wish them now returned:

Our hearts are cold, or, worse, estranged;

Our love in pride inurned !

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

The verses of the "Constant Reader "-(we have fifteen hundred of these)-are pretty, but unequal.-Somebody in Kilmarnock, calling us "Dear Sir," with a condescension we cannot be too grateful for, has sent us verses signed " W. K." He should have put E A between these letters. -The gentleman who, at a certain Watering-Place, was so lavish of his abuse of last number, without having read it, has our best thanks. The praise of such would be-" censure in disguise."-The lines on "Darkness" have both feeling and power, but, perhaps from the nature of the subject, are obscure, and want distinctive features.

Next Saturday, our Twenty-First No., wholly made up of Original matter, will appear. The Twenty-Second, with the usual amount of Selections, will be published on the following week, and we shall so alternate a No. of each description, till our Twenty-Sixth, and then close our labours.

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Printed by James Curll, 55, Bell-Street, and sold by all Booksellers.

PRICE THREEPENCE.

No. XXI.-SATURDAY, 11th AUGUST, 1827.

Original.

THE WATERING-PLACES. No. IV.
Largs.

"Out of the world and into Largs."-Old Saw.

"I sing the sweets of Largo's vale."-John Carnegie.
"Girnwell.-Health, quotha! would you have me go and seek,
Near Folly's temple, for the shrine of Health?

La Rosiere.-Where air is balm, like breath on beauty's lip,
Where Phoebus leaps across the eastward hills,

And lingers on the occidental peaks

With lovers' ardour, and with love's delay,

O say not Folly dwells.

Yet not for health

Seek there, where lurks the death of many a heart,
Ready to shoot from eyes of morn's own blue!
-I've ta'en a wound which-

Girnwell.- -Change of air will cure."-The Law of Largo. THE metropolis of Scotland is, perhaps, more happily situated than any other large city in Britain, in regard to the picturesque beauty of its immediate vicinity. The noblest attributes of an imposing landscape hem it around, nay, almost form part of itself; and the walks in its neighbourhood are not more interesting from their classical and historical associations, than from their intrinsic beauty, as portions of that great combination of charms which entitle Scotland, however rugged its climate may be, to rank next to Switzerland, Italy, and Greece, in the estimation of the lovers of the unadorned beauties of external nature. Roslin, Laswade, Hawthornden, and the hills of Pentland and of Braid, are all within the compass of an evening's walk from Edinburgh. Glasgow is less happily situated. The lovely villages of Govan and Cathcart are close to its suburbs, but Camlachie and Shettleston are closer still. Fine as is the public Green of the one, it is not to be compared, as a landscape feature, with the Calton Hill of the other; and if we can hardly be too proud of the majestic Clyde, that washes the ancient city walls of Balclutha, and also divides, into nearly equal portions, the modern Glasgow, we must not forget that the mighty sea may be seen in all its summer beauty, or its sterner

grandeur, within five minutes' walk of the Post Office of Edinburgh, and that its glorious bosom may be clasped by the man who, fifteen minutes after, shakes hands with you in Prince's-Street.

But if you come to compare the advantages the rival queens possess in the tracts of country, which, at a greater distance, are still easily accessible, within the compass of a day's excursion to their inhabitants, the amazing difference in favour of the western lady will be obvious in one moment. Where can the Solicitor to the Supreme Courts bestow himself on a fine Saturday afternoon, like the Maker of Mulled Muslins? He may eat his dinner at "The Hunter's Tryst," or measure the longitude of a degree in the streets of Kirkaldy; but what are these enjoyments to a sail along the whole extent of the finest lake in Europe-a ride to near the source of the noblest stream in Scotland-a pilgrimage to the summit of one of the hundred hills which lift up their green heads around us-a voyage and portage to Inverary by Loch Eck, or Loch Goil-or a trip to Helensburgh-an escape to Gourock-a navigation to Rothsay-a disembarkation at Dunoon-or a descent on the sunny and smiling shore of LARGS!

Whether or not the associations of boyhood's happiness, with the first draughts of that deep love for nature which I there inhaled, make me partial to Largs, I will not examine, but, at all events, I am sure its charms stand in need of no such alliance. To those who have not seen it, it would not be easy to convey an idea of the universality of a beauty which is so distributed that no feature of it detracts from the effect of the rest; and to those who have, it would be needless to remind them of what, if they can forget, they would feel but little pleasure in having recalled.

When last I visited it, evening was closing in, as, gently restraining rather than urging the speed of the horse of a friend whose kindness does not stop at that point where so much profession abruptly terminates namely, at but I never lend my mare or dennet,"-I silently descended from the elevated plateau which comes so close to the sea, as to leave only a stripe of land beneath its precipitous supporting-wall, and gives occasion to the poetical exaggeration of my proverbial motto. The solemn and gloomy beauty of the woods that skirt its base, and even climb through the crevice of its glen, as if ambitious of crowning its very summit, filled my mind with a pleas