wrong and loose notions concerning the more serious purposes to which he ought to render his great powers subservient. In his prose writings, in like manner he handles every kind of key, and he handles many well-but this also, I should fear, may tend only to render him over careless in his choice-more slow in selecting some one field-or, if you will, more than one-on which to concentrate his energies, and make a sober, manly, determinate display of what nature has rendered him capable of doing. To do every thing is impossible. To do many things well is a very inferior matter to doing a few things-yes, or one thing-as well as it can be done; and this is a truth which I question not Mr. Wilson will soon learn, without any hints beyond those which his own keen observing eye must throw in his way. On the whole, when one remembers that he has not yet reached the time of life at which most of the great poets, even of our time, began to come before the public, there seems to be no reason to doubt that every thing is yet before him-and that, hereafter, the works which he has already published, may be referred to rather as curiosities, and as displaying the early richness and variety of his capacities, than as expressing the full vigour of that "imagi nation all compact," which shall then have found more perfect and more admirable vehicles in the more comprehensive thoughtfulness of matured genius and judgment. I regret his comparative want of popularity, chiefly for this reason, that I think the enthusiastic echoes of public approbation, directed loudly to any one production, would have afforded a fine and immediate stimulus for farther exertions in the same way-and such is his variety of powers, that I think it a matter of comparatively minor importance, on which of his many possible triumphs his ambition should be first fully concentrated. You will observe that I have been speaking solely with an eye to his larger productions. In many of his smaller ones-conceived, it is probable, and executed at a single heat-I see every thing to be commended, and nothing whatever to be found fault with. My chief favourites have always been, the Children's Dance-the Address to the Wild Deer, seen on some of the mountains

of Lochaber-and, best of all-the Scholar's Funeral. This last poem is, indeed, a most perfect master-piece in conception-in feeling-and in execution. The flow of it is entire and unbroken in its desolate music. Line follows line, and stanza follows stanza, with a grand, graceful, melancholy sweep, like the boughs of some large weeping willow, bending slowly and sadly to the dirges of the night-breeze, over some clear classical streamlet fed by the tears of Naiads.

It was in this part of Scotland, as you well know, that the chief struggles in behalf of the Presbyterian form of church government, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, occurred; and, in spite of the existence of many such individuals as the Philosophical Weaver I mentioned the other day, and of no inconsiderable extension of the tenets of the sceptical school of Scotch philosophy among persons of a higher order, it is here that the same love for the national system of faith and practice, out of which those struggles sprung, is seen still to survive, in not a little of its original fervour, in the breasts of the great majority of the people. I have witnessed many manifestations of the prevalence of this spirit since I came into the West of Scotland, and, I need not add, I have witnessed them with the sincerest pleasure. It is always a noble thing to see people preserving the old feelings and principles of their fathers; and here, there can be no doubt, there would have been a peculiar guilt of meanness, had the descendants of men, who, with all their minor faults, were so honest and so upright as these old Covenanters were, permitted themselves to be ashamed of adhering to the essentials of the system

for which they did and suffered so much, and so nobly. It is not to the people of the West of Scotlaud that the ener getic reproach of the poet can apply. I allude to the passage in which he speaks of

"All Scotia's weary days of civil strife-
When the poor Whig was lavish of his life,
And bought, stern rushing upon Clavers' spears,
The freedom and the scorn of after years."

The idle and foolish whimsies with which the religious fervour of the Covenanters was loaded and deformed, have ⚫given away before the calm, sober influences of reflection and improvement; but it is well that the spirit of innovation has spared every thing that was most precious in the cause which lent heroic vigour to the arms of that devout peasantry, and more than ghostly power to that simple priesthood.

One of the most remarkable features which I have observed in the manners of the Scottish people, is their wonderfully strict observance of the Sabbath-and this strictness seems to be carried to a still greater height here than even in Edinburgh. The contrast which the streets afford on this day, to every other day in the week, is indeed- most striking. They are all as deserted and still during the hours of divine service, as if they belonged to a City of the Dead. Not a sound to be heard from end to end, except perhaps a solitary echo answering here and there to the step of some member of my own profession-the only class of persons who, without some considerable sacrifice of character, may venture to be seen abroad at an hour so sacred. But then what a throng and bustle while the bell is ringing-one would think every house had emptied itself from garret to cellar-such is the endless stream that pours along, gathering as it goes, toward every place from which that allattractive solemn summons is heard. The attire of the lower orders, on these occasions, is particularly gay and smart above all, of the women, who bedizen themselves in this mercantile city in a most gorgeous manner indeed. They seem almost all to sport silk stockings and clean gloves, and large tufts of feathers float from every bonnet; but

un

every one carries a richly-bound Bible and Psalm book in her hand, as the most conspicuous part of all her finery, less when there is a threatening of rain, in which case the same precious books are carried, wrapt up carefully, in the folds of a snow-white pocket handkerchief. When the service is over at any particular place of worship--(for which moment the Scotch have, in their language, an appropriate and picturesque term, the kirk-skailing,)—the rush is, of course, still more huge and impetuous. To advance up a street, in the teeth of one of their congregations coming forth in this way, is as impossible as it would be to skull it up a cataract. There is nothing for it but facing about, and allowing yourself to be borne along, submissive and resigned, with the furious and conglomerated roll of this human tide. I never saw any thing out of Scotland that bore the least resemblance to this; even the emptying of a London theatre is a joke to the stream that wedges up the whole channel of the main street of Glasgow, when the congregation of one of the popular ministers of the place begins to disperse itself. For the most part, the whole of the pious mass moves in perfect silence; and if you catch a few low words from some group that advances by your side, you are sure to find them the vehicles of nothing but some criticism on what has just been said by the preacher. Altogether, the effect of the thing is prodigious, and would, in one moment, knock down the whole prejudices of the Quarterly Reviewer, or any other English High-Churchman, who thinks the Scotch a nation of sheer infidels.

Yesterday, being Sunday, I threw myself into the midst of one of these overwhelming streams, and allowed myself to float on its swelling waves to the church of the most celebrated preacher in this place, or rather, I should say, the most celebrated preacher of the day in the whole of Scotland-Dr. Chalmers. I had heard so much of this remarkable man in Edinburgh, that my curiosity, in regard to him, had been wound up to a high pitch, even before I found myself in the midst of this population, to which his extraordinary character and genius furnish by far the greatest ob

ject of interest and attention. I had received a letter of introduction to him from Mr. J——, (for the Critic and he are great friends,)-so I called at his house in a day or two after my arrival in Glasgow, but he had gone to visit his friends in a parish of which he was formerly minister, in the county of Fife, so that I was, for the time, disappointed. My landlady, however, who is one of his admirers, had heard of his return the evening before, and she took care to communicate this piece of intelligence to me at breakfast. I was very happy in receiving it, and determined to go immediately; upon which Mrs. Jardine requested me to accept the loan of her own best psalm-book, and her daughter, Miss Currie. (a very comely young lady,) was so good as to show me the way to her pew in the church. Such, I presume, is the intense interest attracted to this preacher, that a hotel in Glasgow could not pretend to be complete in all its establishment, without having attached to it a spacious and convenient pew in this church for the accommodation of its visiters. As for trusting, as in other churches, to finding somewhere a seat unappropriated, this is a thing which will by no means do for a stranger who has set his heart upon hearing a sermon of Dr. Chalmers.

I was a good deal surprised and perplexed with the first glimpse I obtained of his countenance, for the light that streamed faintly upon it for the moment, did not reveal any thing like that general outline of feature and visage for which my fancy had, by some strange working of presentiment, prepared me. By and bye, however, the light became stronger, and I was enabled to study the minutiæ of his face pretty leisurely, while he leaned forward and read aloud the words of the psalm-for that is always done in Scotland, not by the clerk, but the clergyman himself. At first sight, no doubt, his face is a coarse one-but a mysterious kind of meaning breathes from every part of it, that such as have eyes to see, cannot be long without discovering. It is very pale, and the large half-closed eye-lids have a certain drooping melancholy weight about them, which interested me very much, I understood not why. The lips, too, are singularly pensive in their mode of falling down at