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be very gay.

It has been any thing but that this week.

Sinclair

-a gentleman-a Scotsman-a man of taste, and finished singer, with a voice that would wile a bird from the bush, and supported, as in Midas, by Mrs. Boyle particularly, and indeed the whole of the company, with great spirit and effect-can have put little into his own pockets by the trip, and the Manager must have lost all he made by Miss Foote. Such is Glasgow taste, you will exclaim― and with some reason; but not in the way you think, for even Cline's fearfully beautiful feats on the tight-rope superadded, more germain as you may fancy these to be to we Goths, did not increase the attraction. He is the very poet of his airy art. Miss Holmes, poor little thing, was alternately lively and timid--sweet and out of tune-easy and awkward. Like the song of the Breast Knots, she has nothing in her, and they are equally silly, unless when the master of both lends his own graces to their insipidity.

-Did you notice the elegant letter Peel wrote, enclosing a hun“ dred pounds as the price of the "Baron of Renfrew's" ticket to the Assembly, which was to have been held for the charity fund of that county. It was like the king's own manner-suave and graceful. -The "Ant" is like the busy bee, "improving each shining hour," and going off, I am told, wonderfully, considering its humble pretensions. I have, as you desired, found out the Editor's name; it is SOLOMON SAVEALL-a fitting one for the keeper of an ant-hillock. The Contributors you can guess at—but one has proffered some lays you will be sure to like-a gifted countryman of yours-you know whom I mean. No less than three other Periodicals have started up since Curll's success. "The Collenever took a degree though.- -Gilfillan's Pictures for the Duke of Buckingham I described to you. I went to take another look of them on my return, but they were off to his Grace-and I can now only remember them wild and bold, beauty and freedom of touch.. Henderson is painting a Bacchante, cabinet size, for your friend, that would make one wish to be a child again—and be happy.- -The eloquent Private Soldier who speaks nightly at the Lyceum Room I have not yet been able to hear-a parcel of noisy Irish Catholic schoolmasters were always "in possession of the char" when I "dropped in," and the atmosphere of the room was like their style, too warm and thick for my relishing it.

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forgot to tell you, but must positively write a good story about portable gas and Paisley gumption. You know Lyon, who runs the coach that brings me so many good things in the shooting and pig-curing seasons from dear Dumfries, is the proprietor also of a lot of admirably managed "short stages," as the Cockneys call them, which promote civilization in Paisley, as the wicked say here, and carry us a tasting of some of that local and amiable spirit which is diffused into weakness in so large a town as ours, say the Paisley wits. He has made arrangements for fitting up these with a gas apparatus. An old lady had taken her place for eight o'clock in

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the evening, in the Sons of Commerce, but was so petrified on entering the coach to find gas burning, that she started back, declined to occupy her seat, and declared "It was na canny, for surely the pipes could na be laid a' the way frae the Sneddon to the Corse o' Glasgow, and besides it was nae travelling that, for ane might just as weel sit in their own parlour."-The New Year passed over very soberly with Harry Marten and our other friends. Tom says he was as melancholy and as idle as Coles, the Lottery-bill-sticker, who, like Othello, mourns "his occupation gone," and as grave as the faces of the Life Annuitants of a society, whom, as a director, he met, when he wished them a "Good New Year," but said he positively could not wish them "many of them.”—It is perfectly needless to plague me, Mary, about fashions and literature. Both are black here at present, and, but for what I have said of "The Ant," and the copy of the Scots Times, which, somehow or other, had got a hold of a tid-bit-the first page of the Life of Napoleon-that accompanies this, I would be as illiterate and stupid as one of the cigar smokers who parade the Trongate with the divine leaf lighted at the wrong end! But I forgot; there are literary news to conclude with. In Poland there is a periodical work of great popularity—a pretty sort of Souvenir, with the following delightful title :-" Rocznik Krelewskiego Towarzystwa Przyiaciol nruk Warszawskiego!"-Yours ever, dear Mary, C. H.

Our Letter-Box

Is crammed with communications of the most varied kinds and qualities, from the dull disquisition to the first book of an epic poem-from the long letter about nothing to the short epistle about anything. We have as much volunteer poetry on hand, on hot-pressed paper, as would build a wall round Parnassus, or go far to make a hill as high as Pindus; and although prosy favours are not quite so plentiful, like the rabbits in the parson's grace, "we have enough!" Our limits compel us to make but a limited use of these, although many of them are good-nay, some of them excellent, but not exactly of that peculiar nature that fits them for our present use, and of which we alone can judge-or reveal the secrets of editorial craft. To Museus, Alexis, &c. this may apply. As for Mary, who asks if we mean to notice the Fashions of the day, and hints that we should suggest a Charity Ball on a "great scale;" and Eliza, who transmits us an account of the Pollockshaws assembly-we wish they would favour us with their cards that we might answer them privately. It would not please our Lancashire friend were we to do so with him, and we insert his letter, as in next No. we shall try to make room for such other "hints" as are brief. Blythswood Hill, Monday.

SIR,-Are the ladies to be the only workers here in the good cause of charity? The gentlemen, I grant you, need not now try to manufacture any thing in the way of fancy," but I don't admit that as an excuse for idleness, and surely, or you will bely your name, neither will you. But how are they to work? By Playing, say I-Last year I personated a Lady's Abigail at the Annual Amateur Performance of a Play, in the Liverpool Theatre, for the benefit of-but I must whisper it here-the Lying-in Hospital, and this season am equally ready to play any thing from Othello to Priscilla Tomboy, for the unemployed-any part but that of a Mute.-Yours,

A LIVERPOOL YOUNG FELLOW.

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

PRICE THREEPENCE.

THE ANT.

No. V.-SATURDAY, 27th JANUARY, 1827.

Original.

THE FIRST SIGH.

AN ILLUSTRATION.

"THERE is not a sweeter word in the language," said Miss Clarissa Simper," than sigh. It has music in every letter ; and, in breathing it tenderly out, (for who can ever vulgarly and decidedly pronounce it ?) one fancies they hear the tone of an Eolian harp, the strings of which have been thrilled by the farewell breeze of Zephyrus, when with the setting sun of summer he bids the day, whose heats he has cooled, a tender farewell!"

Catharine Lightheart could hardly keep her gravity till this mellifluous sentence was finished. When it was ended, she burst out into a hearty exhilirating laugh, in which, spite of the rules of good-breeding and my Lord Chesterfield, she was joined by all the younger part of the company seated round the tea-table.

"Ah! Catharine," was the only answer of Clarissa, for "Ah! she was sweet-tempered, though sentimental. Catharine, I do not envy you that hearty laugh, if are insensible to the sweeter and more refining pleasure received from a sigh."

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"Well, well, Clara," rejoined Catharine, "may I laugh my way through life, but I am not so ill-tempered and cross as to wish you may sigh yourself on through the journey."

"The happiest condition, my dear young friends," here remarked Mrs. Beatson, an elderly widow lady, who had tasted both the joys and the more gentle sorrows of the world, "is where there is not too much of either in the incidents of life, not that which is never occasionally enlivened by both.-You smile at the use of the word enlivened, Catharine-but I am prepared to justify the appropriation of the term, in speaking of the sighs your cousin alluded to; for she, though an admirer of sadness, has never yet been schooled by grief. My first sigh was my

youngest blessing, and if not a joy itself, at least the fruitful parent of many."

Catharine seemed surprised, and asked how that could -possibly be adding, that as far as her memory served her, she never sighed in her life;" for you cannot mean, Clara, that sobbing and sighing are the same. I have sobbed for a rose in winter-a Christmas cake in July-and when my aunt's monkey killed my poor bulfinch Harry."

"You are correct in your distinction, Catharine," answered Clara, “the sigh of the heart and the sob of disappointment or grief I have never confounded together. Mrs. Beatson will perhaps instruct, at all events she will amuse us, by being kind enough to give us the history of her First Sigh."

"I will do so willingly," said Mrs. Beatson, "for the recollections associated with it are more pleasing to me than the memory of the most mirthful moments of my life. When I was fifteen years of age, my father, who was then my only guardian, was forced, by the state of his health, to reside for a short time in a warmer climate than that of his native country. We took up our abode in the neighbourhood of Lisbon. The site of our house was beautiful in the extreme, and the season of the year delightfully serene. In a short time, though of an extremely volatile disposition, I became mistress of the language of Camoens and Xavier.

"One lovely evening, shortly after we had removed to a situation farther in the interior of the country than our former one, and while I was yet unacquainted with the environs, in default of a more amusing employment, there being little of what could be called society in the neighbourhood, I retired to an arbour in the farther end of the garden, and began to dip into the immortal epic of Luis de Camoens. I felt interested in its perusal more than I had ever been in any thing before. Till then, literature had been my aversion, and I had hardly ever read one book from the beginning to the end. Now I felt new and unaccountable pleasure-my sympathies were touched and my imagination was fired. I read on from the place where I had opened with eager avidity, and hardly condescended to raise my head to ascertain the cause of a singular rustling I heard among the leaves of the climbing plants, which were twined around the place where I sat and shaded it from the scorching sunbeams. The origin of the disturbance was not eagerly sought, and of course could not be instantly discovered. In a moment after I

had risen I was again entranced in the new world of ro mance and poetry, of which I had so lately and unexpect edly become a denizen. The noise was again heard but was even less observed than before. Hours flew away in rapid and unnoticed succession, and it was evening ere I was aware that it was far beyond the hour of noon. My father had gone down to Lisbon to superintend the disembarkation of some furniture from England, and my absence had not been observed by any of the domestics. I was deeply interested in the progress of the story-of the conquest of India; the more so that all the emotions which it excited were perfectly new to me. They had been latent in my bosom, and were now called into play in all the young freshness and vigour of new existence. I had arrived near the close of the third book, and when I came to the touching passage which describes the appearance of the lovely and helpless Inez de Castro and her babes before the throne of their enraged grandsire, Alonzo, I wept -Oh! sweeter tears than ever I had wept before. În vain she urged a mother's rights and love-in vain she pleaded and appealed. Oh! shame to knighthood,' Camoens may well exclaim-' she fell-a murdered corse before the heartless tyrant's throne.' My feelings now o'ermastered me—I wept aloud—and heaved for hapless Inez the first and the sweetest sigh that ever throbbed my bosom. Imagine my fear and astonishment at seeing a young and beautiful cavalier at this moment throw himself at my feet.

"His dress was splendid and tasteful, but it was negligently thrown on; and, joined to this, and the agitation with which he appeared to be overcome, it made me intuitively shrink back in alarm from him. I would have called for help, for I dreaded violence from the mental derangement with which I fancied him affected, but fear held me dumb.

"For a moment he kneeled at my feet without essaying to address me. At length, after, with an appearance of respectful gallantry, kissing the hem of my robe, he, in excellent English, briefly conjured me not to be alarmed, and implored my protection.

"Fair lady," said he, for two days I have lurked in this garden, without sustenance, and exposed to the noon-tide sun, and the breeze of night. I have not dared to show myself, for were I to be discovered, my life— would it were but my life that was deemed necessary to expiate my misfortunes!-would pay for my rashness.

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