stood the outlying village of Anderston, and find night overtake me before I can get home. I never liked Ingram-Street since it was carried through Mr. Glassford's back garden, nor Wilson-Street, since the corporation of Nottingham became its lairds; so I walk home by the bridge over St. Enoch's burn, and along to the West Port, and through the Trongate. Many's the time, at the latest hour, I have passed St. Mary's steeple; but never yet did I turn up to note the hour upon its horologe—an easy thing, however mirk, since they burn the gas therebut I have seen, and wondered as I saw, just beneath the western face of that, upon the roof of the outstanding tenement, one storey high, built by the late John Bell, the blaze of glaring flame from two sky-light windows. It mattered not what was the hour-there was the light shining out from the slates. I have said the land was of one storey only. But what made me wonder-there was never a glimmer in the wall windows, or a skinkle in the shops below. Dwelling in the building I knew there was none. Entrance to it I was sure there was but one. "Preserve me," said I often, as I passed and still saw the light, "the company in that warehouse must be very busy in the dullest times, or else taking stock every night in the year"—for I knew by the sign on the front that it was a warehouse-" since the blazing of their candle or the burning of their gas is like the fire of the bottlework-an undevalling thing." I was satisfied with this for some time. But, by and bye, I could not rest contented with believing that that house had orders to pack up goods every night, and decided, when they moved to another part of the town, and their warehouse was empty, to try to get up the only stair-that at the right hand of the gateway to the Laigh Kirk-but the outer door was firmly locked. This was the case every time I attempted it. Never a watchman came on the station but I interrogated him if he knew whose apartments these were, where, like love, a flame for ever burneth." No one of them would own he knew. The packman at the stairfoot denied, in day-light, that there was any blaze on the leads at night at all! I could not endure this suspense. Was it a club of gamblers-or radicals—or young doctors met here? There was a secret in the thing. At last I durst not pass the place without trying to solve it, or leave it without regretting that I could not. On Thursday night last, I made another effort. The close to the west of the land where the street widens, I had often retraced, but,

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in desperation, I tried it again. Every nook in it I explored. At every door I knocked. At length, up what thought a blind entry I crept; but not a cranny was there there. I heard some sounds, however, and followed them. They were of singing. I listened, and my blood froze as I heard the chorus

"Cut away: cut away: cut away!"

I turned about to escape-stumbled-fell-forced open a door-found myself among about fifteen hard-working tailors-and saw the two sky-light windows shining forth their blaze of light above me!

QUESTIONS FOR DEBATING SOCIETIES.
No. II.

III." As the Boundaries of Science are enlarged, is the Empire of Imagination circumscribed?"

AUTHORITIES.-Edinburgh Review, XXI. 25; Hazlitt's Lectures on Poetry, p. 18; Akenside's Pleasures; Knox's Essays, &c.

IV.-" Is it of advantage to the Community that a power of pardoning Criminals should be vested in the Chief Magistrate of the State?

AUTHORITIES.-Bentham, Tr. de Legislation; Paley's Moral Philosophy; Montague on Criminal Law, &c.

[Letters offering co-operation in forming societies, such as suggested in our last, must have the name and address of the writer attached.-H. I. is of the right stamp.]

EULOGIUM ON DRUNKENNESS.

[The following, written in a tipsy-like staggering hand, was left at our Printer's by a young man, whose holiday apparel seemed a little soiled with mud, and his face somewhat flushed. Perhaps that it was on the 2d of January that he called, may account for both these circumstances, and the reeling style of the paper, and disinterested tone of the theme.]

"Who by disgrace, or by ill-fortune sunk,

Feels not his soul enliven'd when he's drunk?"-Swift.

THERE is nothing which has been so much talked at as Drunkenness, by a parcel of prigs whose temper, or whose

constitution, or whose purse does not permit them to taste of the pleasurable sensations which it communicates. They talk as religionists-as moralists-or as physicians. To what they urge in the first of these characters I do not intend to advert further than by reminding them of a certain passage in Scripture about a mote and a beam; and by observing that Christianity does not half so expressly rail against drunkenness as Mahometanism does--the first being a true religion—the latter one a humbug. Besides, if we do not occasionally employ ourselves in getting gloriously drunk, we shall have the more time for spending in backbiting and vanity. There is little wonder that Hypocris rails at drunkenness-since it is that which often affords the most powerful, and, frequently, indeed, infallible means of unmasking it, and showing it up, with the consent and aid of its wearer to boot, in all its native colours.

Canters, in the name of morality, in vain remind us that Alexander when drunk killed his old, fusty, and impertinent monitor, the ghost of his father's victories and monitions, Clitus-since the codger was confoundedly drunk himself. They prate too about the same monarch firing Persepolis when intoxicated. He ought to have taken lessons from Promachus, his acquaintance, who was, as we know, a twenty-pint or ten-bottle man.

Now for the Pharmacopeian tribe-those who wish to substitute Epsom salts for madeira, and castor oil for olives and old port. Shade of Hippocrates, thou good old soul of a tippler!-Spirit of Dr. thou glass and model of all jolly soakers! I need not your assistance to prove humbug what are on the face of them so, the stories of people taking fire in the guts, and the tale of an Irish whisky-drinker who blew up himself in blowing out a candle. I have sufficient in the reluctant admission of all thy would-be abstinent brethren, that a little of the comforter either as claret, tokay, gin and bitters, or blue ruin solus, is good for man, as Solomon said before them. Now, if I recollect Euclid aright, a line is a line still, however extended; and if my memory serves me, Cocker has proved that if one is one, two is two-and if one be a good and a strong number, two is twice as good and as powerful; consequently if one glass, &c.—the inference is clear and irresistible.

Talking of that old fellow, Hippocrates, I will quote him here quite pat. "It does a man good," says he, in his work on man, "to get drunk once a-month." Can any

thing be more obvious than if it does so, as who will dare to doubt what the father of medicine asserts, it must be twice as beneficial to be "immortal" once a-fortnightand so on? That thousands believe so, the experience of all saves me the trouble of proving-and what the mass of mankind practise, and have practised, and will practise, it is mere foppery to impugn. Hippocrates is a classic authority. These are the models-the standards—the authorities of all the more pigmy-like race of writers who have succeeded them;—and I have them all-positively all of the best at least on my side. Horace, a pretty good authority, tells us that poets who drink water can never make good verses; and Athenæus assures us that Alcaus and Aristophanes wrote their best pieces when intoxicated. Socrates was a very clever fellow, and, according to Lucian, he was always drunk; for, in conformity to his own confession, he saw all things double. Ovid never wrote bad poetry till he was banished to Scythia, where the vine was not cultivated. What was Anacreon's inspirer? wine —what his subjects? liquors and goblets. There is not a page of Pindar but what is redolent of grape; and Horace, the aforesaid, never chanted the charms of his Glycera till mellowed by its juice. These facts prove the opinions and practice of ancient men of genius to have been all in favour of drunkenness. The great body of the people of ancient states held similar doctrines, else Hermagorus had never been banished Ephesus for too great sobriety.

But, alas! the ages of Anacreon and of G. A. Steevens, Sir George Delaval, and the Earl of March, have passed away, and a puny tribe of effeminate and Frenchified dressers now fill their place in the Haut-ton. They are never drunk, forsooth, for no better reason than that a man that is so, say they, walks ungracefully. Walks ungracefully!-why, if properly and classically, or even Irishly so, the devil a bit of him can walk at all! But if he should attempt it, in confutation of this senile objection, let me add, that Hogarth in his profound analysis of beauty lays it down as an axiom, that, though "all the common and necessary motions for the purposes of life are performed by men in plain or straight lines, all the graceful and ornamental movements are made in curve ones." And such are all the movements of man, woman, or child, when tolerably drunk!

CONSTANCY; or, PRAY, WILL IT LAST?

I CARE not, if true, that her heart is as light
As her step, if as modest it be;

If her eye upon others can beam with delight,
Shall I shrink when it sparkles to me?-
No, prate not-enough 'tis I bask in its beams
For some hours of an else gloomy day;

Shall I chase from my pillow what soothes me in dreams,
Since they pass with the morning away?

No-o'er the bright present they're fools who would cast
The shadowing question of-Pray, will it last?

Did Mahomet want for his heaven a recruit,
You admit that in Jessie he'd find

A black-eyed bright beauty at once that would suit,
"If ten minutes she were of a mind!".
Well, well—if the fragrance that's wafted along
From the breeze-rifled sweets of the rose
Is to pass by another, it surely were wrong
With a wise shrug to cork up my nose.

No, no-o'er the present they're fools who would cast
The shadowy doubting of-Pray, will it last?

THE HERON CORRESPONDENCE. No. III. MY DEAR COUSIN MARY,

The letter to my Aunt will have told you all needful to be known concerning my safe return here-and every thing in short but what you wish to know-if the Subscription Concerts are to be worth your coming sixty miles to hear, and the Assemblies as many to see -with the gossip of the great city of the west, since your coz. orally communicated every little bit of scandal he could pick for your dear curiosity, previous to his Christmas visit. That budget

was so large, however, as to beggar him for a time, and make-he fears-his letters less worth your while than his chat-the vain creature! But you shall have what he can muster.The Concerts will unquestionably be first-rate. Vaughan is the first English tenor of the day; and Bellamy, though old, is of the purest school and finest science. Miss Travis-no, Mrs. Knyvett now-was, when I saw her last, about the sweetest and most modest-looking of women and singers I ever heard or saw. Her style is purely orchestral, and, unlike stage-singers, lady-like. I know not what instrumental force is to be mustered, but Seymour, I think, will not rely on city talent alone. He should bring Finlay Dun for a night, who both sings and plays beautifully; and something of additional elegance ought to be given to the house. All the aristocracy of the west are already on the subscription list, so the Theatre will