falls sounding for ever-here-there-everywhere-among the remoter woods. Northwards one fierce torrent dashes through the centre-but no villages-only a few woodmen's shielings will appear on its banks; for it is a torrent of precipices, where the shrubs that hang midway from the cleft are out of the reach of the spray of its cataracts, even when the red Garroch is in flood.

Many hours have we been in the wilderness, and our heart yearns again for the cheerful dwellings of men. Sweet infant streamlet, that flows by our feet without a murmur, so shallow are yet thy waters-wilt thou-short as hitherto has been thy journeying-wilt thou be our guide out into the green valleys and the blue heaven, and the sight once more of the bright sunshine and the fair fleecy clouds? No other clue to the labyrinth do we seek but that small, thin, pure, transparent thread of silver, which neither bush nor brier will break, and which will wind without entanglement round the roots of the old trees, and the bases of the shaggy rocks. As if glad to escape from its savage birthplace, the small rivulet now gives utterance to a song; and sliding down shelving rocks, so low in their mossy verdure as hardly to deserve that name, glides along the almost level lawns, here and there disclosing a little hermit flower. No danger now of its being imbibed wholly by the thirsty earth; for it has a channel and banks of its own -and there is a waterfall! Thenceforwards the rivulet never loses its merry voice-and in an hour it is a torrent. What beautiful symptoms now of its approach to the edge of the Forest! Wandering lights and whispering airs are here visitants-and there the blue eye of a wild violet looking up from the ground! The glades are more frequent-more frequent open spaces cleared by the woodman's axe-and the antique Oak-Tree all alone by itself, itself a grove. The torrent may be called noble now; and that deep blue atmosphere-or say rather, that glimmer of purple air-lies over the Strath in which a great River rolls along to the Sea.

Nothing in all nature more beautiful than the boundary of a great Highland Forest. Masses of rocks thrown together in magnificent confusion, many of them lichened and weatherstained with colours gorgeous as the eyed plumage of the peacock, the lustre of the rainbow, or the barred and clouded glories of setting suns-some towering aloft with trees sown

in the crevices by bird or breeze, and checkering the blue sky-others bare, black, abrupt, grim as volcanoes, and shattered as if by the lightning-stroke. Yet interspersed, places of perfect peace-circles among the tall heather, or taller ladyfern, smoothed into velvet, it is there easy to believe, by Fairies' feet-rocks where the undisturbed linnet hangs her nest among the blooming briers, all floating with dew-draperies of honeysuckle alive with bees-glades green as emerald, where lie the lambs in tempered sunshine, or haply a lovely doe reposes with her fawn; and further down, where the fields half belong to the mountain and half to the strath, the smoke of hidden huts—a log-bridge flung across the torrent—a hanging-garden, and a little broomy knoll, with a few laughing children at play, almost as wild-looking as the wanderers of the woods!

Turn your eyes, if you can, from that lovely wilderness, and behold down along a mile-broad Strath, fed by a thousand torrents, floweth the noblest of Scotia's rivers, the strongsweeping Spey! Let Imagination launch her canoe, and be thou a solitary steersman-for need is none of oar or sail; keep the middle course while all the groves go by, and ere the sun has sunk behind yon golden mountains-nay, mountains they are not, but a transitory pomp of clouds-thou mayest list the roaring, and behold the foaming of the Sea.

Was there ever such a descriptive dream of a coloured engraving of the Cushat, Quest, or Ring-Dove, dreamt before? Poor worn-out and glimmering candle!—whose wick of light and life in a few more flickerings will be no more—what a contrast dost thou present with thyself of eight hours ago! Then, truly, wert thou a shining light, and high aloft in the room-gloaming burned thy clear crest like a star-during its midnight silence, a memento mori of which our spirit was not afraid. Now thou art dying-dying-dead! Our cell is in darkness. But methinks we see another—a purer—a clearer light-one more directly from Heaven. We touch but a spring in a wooden shutter—and lo! the full blaze of day. Oh! why should we mortal beings dread that night-prison—the Grave?

DR KITCHINER.

FIRST COURSE.

Ir greatly grieved us to think that Dr Kitchiner should have died before our numerous avocations had allowed us an opportunity of dining with him, and subjecting to the test-act of our experienced palate his claims to immortality as a Cook and a Christian. The Doctor had, we know, a dread of Us-not altogether unalloyed by delight; and on the dinner to Us, which he had meditated for nearly a quarter of a century, he knew and felt must have hung his reputation with posterityhis posthumous fame. We understand that there is an unfinished sketch of that Dinner among the Doctor's papers, and that the design is magnificent. Yet, perhaps, it is better for his glory that Kitchiner should have died without attempting to embody in forms the Idea of that Dinner. It might have been a failure. How liable to imperfection the matériel on which he would have had to work! How defective the instruments! Yes-yes !-happier far was it for the good old man that he should have fallen asleep with the undimmed idea of that unattempted Dinner in his imagination, than, vainly contending with the physical evil inherent in matter, have detected the Bishop's foot in the first course, and died of a broken heart!

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Travelling," it is remarked by our poor dear dead Doctor in his "Traveller's Oracle," "is a recreation to be recommended, especially to those whose employments are sedentary -who are engaged in abstract studies-whose minds have been sunk in a state of morbid melancholy by hypochondriasis, or, by what is worst of all, a lack of domestic felicity. Nature, however, will not suffer any sudden transition; and therefore it is improper for people accustomed to a sedentary life to undertake suddenly a journey, during which they will be

exposed to long and violent jolting. The case here is the same as if one accustomed to drink water should, all at once, begin to drink wine."

Had the Doctor been alive, we should have asked him what he meant by "long and violent jolting?" Jolting is now absolutely unknown in England, and it is of England the Doctor speaks. No doubt, some occasional jolting might still be discovered among the lanes and cross-roads; but, though violent, it could not be long: and we defy the most sedentary gentleman living to be more so, when sitting in an easy-chair by his parlour fireside, than in a cushioned carriage spinning along the turnpike. But for the trees and hedgerows all galloping by, he would never know that he was himself in motion. The truth is, that no gentleman can be said, nowadays, to lead a sedentary life, who is not constantly travelling before the insensible touch of M'Adam. Look at the first twenty people that come towering by on the roof of a Highflier or a Defiance. What can be more sedentary? Only look at that elderly gentleman with the wig, evidently a parson, jammed in between a brace of buxom virgins on their way down to Doncaster races. Could he be more sedentary, during the psalm, in his own pulpit?

We must object, too, to the illustration of wine and water. Let no man who has been so unfortunate as to be accustomed to drink water, be afraid all at once to begin to drink wine. Let him, without fear or trembling, boldly fill bumpers to the Throne-the Navy-and the Army. These three bumpers will have made him a new man. We have no objection whatever to his drinking, in animated succession, the Apotheosis of the Whigs-the Angler's delight-the cause of Liberty all over the World-Christopher North-Maga the Immortal.— "Nature will not suffer any sudden transition! " Will she not? Look at our water-drinker now! His very own mother could not know him-he has lost all resemblance to his twinbrother, from whom, two short hours ago, you could not have distinguished him but for a slight scar on his brow-so completely is his apparent personal identity lost, that it would be impossible for him to establish an alibi. He sees a figure in the mirror above the chimney-piece, but has not the slightest suspicion that the rosy-faced Bacchanal is himself, the waterdrinker; but then he takes care to imitate the manual exer

cise of the phantom-lifting his glass to his lips at the very same moment, as if they were both moved by one soul.

The Doctor then wisely remarks, that it is "impossible to lay down any rule by which to regulate the number of miles a man may journey in a day, or to prescribe the precise number of ounces he ought to eat; but that nature has given us a very excellent guide in a sense of lassitude, which is as unerring in exercise as the sense of satiety is in eating."

We say the Doctor wisely remarks, yet not altogether wisely; for the rule does not seem to hold always good either in exercise or in eating. What more common than to feel oneself very much fatigued-quite done up as it were, and unwilling to stir hand or foot. Up goes a lark in heaven— tira-lira-or suddenly the breezes blow among the clouds, who forthwith all begin campaigning in the sky, or, quick as lightning, the sunshine in a moment resuscitates a drowned day—or tripping along, all by her happy self, to the sweet accompaniment of her joy-varied songs, the woodman's daughter passes by on her way, with a basket in her hand, to her father in the forest, who has already laid down his axe on the meridian shadow darkening one side of the straight stem of an oak, beneath whose grove might be drawn up five-score of plumed chivalry! Where is your sense of lassitude now, nature's unerring guide in exercise?" You spring up from the mossy wayside bank, and renewed both in mind and body, "rejoicing in Nature's joy," you continue to pass over houseless moors, by small, single, solitary, straw-roofed huts, through villages gathered round Stone Cross, Elm Grove, or old Monastic Tower, till, unwearied in lith and limb, you see sunset beautifying all the west, and drop in, perhaps, among the hush of the Cottar's Saturday Night-for it is in sweet Scotland we are walking in our dream—and know not, till we have stretched ourselves on a bed of rushes or of heather, that "kind Nature's sweet restorer balmy sleep," is yet among the number of our bosom friends-alas! daily diminishing beneath fate or fortune, the sweeping scythe-stroke of death, or the whisper of some one poor, puny, idle, and unmeaning word!

Then, as to "the sense of satiety in eating." It is produced in us by three platefuls of hotch-potch-and, to the eyes of an ordinary observer, our dinner would seem to be at