LINES ON A WHITE DOVE. Registrar. You are right, James, and I am wrong. 33 North (taking out his pocket-book). Why, here are some very pretty lines, James, by a young creature not fifteen-and I am sure you will say she is herself as innocent as any dove. LINES ON A WHITE DOVE. BY A GIRL. Emblem of Innocence! spotless and pure, There are birds of a sunnier land, gentle dove, For purity rests on thy feathers of snow, And e'en in the varying tones of thy coo, The eagle is queen of the cliff and the wave, When no one would list to my white dove's soft coo, Farewell, then, sweet dove! if the winter is cold, In sunny-clad beauty, to waken the song Of the sweet-throated warblers the forests among, Shepherd. She maun be a dear sweet bonny bit lassie-and I would like to ken her name. North. A gracious name it is, James. Shepherd. I canna mak out, Mr North, [Whispers it to him. the cause o' the effect o' novelty as a source o' pleasure. Some objects aye please, however common. VOL. IV. C 34 DAISIES VERSUS DOCKENS. THE SHEPHERD'S DOG. Tickler. Don't prose, Jamie. Shepherd. Ass! There's the Daisy. Naebody cares muckle about the Daisy-till you ask them-and then they feel they hae aye liked it, and quote Burns. Noo naebody tires o' the daisy. A' the warld would be sorry gin a' daisies were dead. Tickler. Puir auld silly body! Shepherd. There again are Dockens. What for are they a byword? They're saft, and smooth, and green, and hae nae bad smell. Yet a' the warld would be indifferent were a' dockens dead. Tickler. I would rather not. Shepherd. What for? Would a docken, think ye, Mr North, be "beauteous to see, a weed o' glorious feature," if it were scarce and a hot-house plant? Would leddies and gentlemen, gin it were ony ways an unique, pay to get a look at a docken? But I fin' that I'm no thrawin ae single particle o' licht on the subjeck; and the perplexing question will aye recur, "Why is the daisy, though sae common, never felt to be commonplace? and the docken aye ?” Tickler. The reason, undoubtedly, is Shepherd. Haud your arrogant tongue, Southside, and never again, immediately after I hae said that ony metapheezical subjeck's perplexing, hae the insolence and the silliness to say, "The reason, undoubtedly, is." If it's no coorse, it's rudeand a man had better be coorse nor rude ony day—but 0, sirs, what'n a pity that in the Tent there are nae dowgs! Tickler. I hate curs. Shepherd. A man ca'in himsel a Christian, and hatin poetry and dowgs! Tickler. Hang the brutes. Shepherd. There's nae sic perfeck happiness, I suspeck, sir, as that o' the brutes. No that I wuss I had been born a brute-yet aften hae I been tempted to envy a dowg. What gladness in the cretur's een, gin ye but speak a single word to him, when you and him's sittin thegither by your twa sels on the hill. Pat him on the head and say, 66 Hector, ma man!" and he whines wi' joy-snap your thooms, and he gangs dancin round you like a whirlwind-gie a whusslin hiss, and he loups frantic ower your head-cry halloo, and he's aff like a shot, chasing naething, as if he were mad. INSTINCT, REASON.-HOGG'S LAY SERMONS. North. Alas! poor Bronte! 35 338 Shepherd. Whisht, dinna think o' him, but in general o' dowgs. Love is the element a dowg leeves in, and a' that's necessary for his enjoyment o' life is the presence o' his master. Registrar. "With thee conversing he forgets all time." Shepherd. Yet, wi' a' his sense, he has nae idea o' death. True, he will lie upon his master's grave, and even howk wi' his paws in an affeckin manner, but for a' that, believe me, he has nae idea o' death. He snokes wi' his nose into the hole his paws are howkin, just as if he were after a moudie warp. North. God is the soul of the brute creatures. Shepherd. Ay, sir-instinct wi' them's the same's reason wi' us, only we ken what we intend-they do not; we reflect in a mathematical problem, for example, how best to big a house; they reflect nane, but what a house they big! Sir Isaac Newton, o' himsel, without learnin the lesson frae the bees, wadna hae contrived a hive o' hinney-combs, and biggen them up, cell by cell, hung the creation, like growing fruit, on the branch o' a tree ! North. I have read, my dearest James, Lay Sermons by the Ettrick Shepherd. 66 Shepherd. And may I just ask, sir, your candid opinion? North. The first few glances relieved my mind, James, from some painful fear; for I confess I was weak enough to lay my account with meeting, to use your own words in the Preface, cases of unsound tenets and bad taste," though I know, my dearest Shepherd, that your whole life has borne witness to the sincerity and strength of your religion. But nothing of the sort has once offended my eye, during several continued perusals of the unpretending, but most valuable little volume. Shepherd. I'm gladder ten times ower to hear you say't, sir, than gin they had been a volumm o' Poems. "A maist valuable little volumm." Comin frae sic a quarter, that's high praise; but it's no praise I'm wanting, though a' the warld kens I'm fond o' praise-ay, to my shame be it spokeneven the worthless praise o' its ain hollow-hearted warldly sel; it's no praise I'm wanting, and I ken, on this occasion, you'll believe me when I say it, sir-ma wush is to do good. 336 NORTH ON SETTING FIRE TO THE BED. North. And he who takes Lay Sermons by the Ettrick Shepherd to bed with him, “a wiser and a better man will rise to-morrow's morn." It is a volume that may be read in bed without danger of setting fire to the curtains. Several successive houses of mine have been set on fire by sermons, and one, fortunately insured, was burnt to the ground. Shepherd. But did ye recover? For I aye thocht there was a savin clause in the insurance ack o' every Company, insurin theirsels again' ony insurer at their office, who could be proved to hae had his house burned by bein' set on fire in that way by a sermon. North. It has always puzzled me, James, to account, not for almost any sermon's almost always setting man or woman asleep in bed, but for almost any candle's almost always setting the bed on fire as soon as he or she has been fairly set asleep. These you perceive to be two separate problems; the solution of the first easy-of the second, perhaps not within the limits of the human understanding. Shepherd. It's at least no within the leemits o' mine. But the problem itsel's an established fack. North. I have tried to solve the problem, James, empirically. Shepherd. It's lucky you've used that word the noo, sir; for though I see't in every serious wark, I canna say I attach to it ony particular meaning. North. Experimentally, James, have I sometimes taken to bed with me a volume of that perilous class, and after reading a few paragraphs-perhaps as far as Firstly-have put it under my pillows, and pretended to fall asleep. But every now and then I kept looking out of the tail of my eye at the candlea stout mutton mould of four to the pound-resolved, the instant he so much as singed a particle of nap off my curtainsalways cotton-to spring out of bed-seize the incendiary, and extinguish him on the spot in the very basin in which he blazed; but in justice to one and all of the luminaries that have ever cheered my solitary midnight hours, I now publicly —that is, privately-declare, that not only did I never discover in the behaviour of any one of them a single circumstance that could justify in me the slightest suspicion of such a nefarious design, but that in most cases he visibly began to get as drowsy as myself; and with wick the length of my little finger hanging mournfully by his side, have I more than AN EXTRACT FROM HOGG'S LAY SERMONS. 37 once sorrowed to see a faithful mutton light expire by my bedside-not in the socket, James-oh! no, not in the socketfor that flicker and that evanishing are in the course of nature, and the soul of the survivor is soon reconciled to the lossbut with one side of the tallow continuing unmelted from head to heel-and the tallow a tall fellow, too, James-the spirit that animated him an hour ago, now mere snuff! Shepherd. You've sae impersonated him, sir, intil a leevin cretur, that I could amaist greet-were it no for the thocht o' that intolerable stink. I can thole the stink o' a brock better than o' a cawnle that has dee'd a natural death. But I perceive I'm thinkin o' death in the socket. North. Nor will your sermons, my dear James, set the shepherds asleep on the hill-as they lie perusing them, wrapped up in their plaids,—for you illustrate-and on the authority and example of Scripture-your doctrines by many a homely image, familiar to their eyes and hearts-and that is the way to awaken the spirit to a keen sense of their truth. Thus in your "Lay Sermon on Reason and Instinct "—the very mystery you were alluding to so beautifully a few moments ago—(taking the volume from the pocket of his sporting jacket)—— you say Shepherd (affected). Ma sermons in his pouch! North. "But the acuteness of the sheep's ear surpasses all things in nature that I know of. A ewe will distinguish her own lamb's bleat among a thousand, all braying at the same time, and making a noise a thousand times louder than the singing of psalms at a Cameronian sacrament in the fields, where thousands are congregated,—and that is no joke neither. Besides, the distinguishment of voice is perfectly reciprocal between the ewe and lamb, who, amid the deafening sound, run to meet one another. There are few things have ever amused me more than a sheep-shearing, and then the sport continues the whole day. We put the flock into a fold, set out all the lambs to the hill, and then set out the ewes to them as they are shorn. The moment that a lamb hears its dam's voice it rushes from the crowd to meet her, but instead of finding the rough, well-clad, comfortable mamma, which it left an hour, or a few hours ago, it meets a poor naked shriveling a most deplorable-looking creature. It wheels about, ing-a and uttering a loud tremulous bleat of perfect despair, flies |