"I am the resurrection," went forward towards the church, which was soon nearly filled. The service was read with the solemnity and pathos which so few know how to give to that beautiful composition, and the body was laid in the dark and narrow house, into which the friends who had followed it, continued to look while any part of the coffin remained uncovered. The sons turned, two and two, and walked towards their houses together, and the blessing of him whom their father worshipped was upon them.

R. E.

THE VISIONS OF YOUTH.

Oh! what delightful visions steal
Upon us, when the heart is young;
When first, with extacy, we feel

That all its strings to love are strung.
The heart, indeed, breathes music then:
There's minstrelsy in all its feeling,
As sweet as that which thrills us, when
Heaven's light upon the soul is stealing.
And there is one, one holy tone,

We fondly hope to part with never,
Whose echoes, tho' each joy be gone,
Will linger in the heart for ever.

What, tho' the envious world may frown,
Or, tho' a few may prove unkind;
Like April clouds, those frowns melt down,
And brighter glows the light behind.
We dream of nought but summer skies,
And flowers of summer ne'er to die;

And all our pleasures, as they rise,
Are c'er unmingled with a sigh.
Delightful hours! when thus we dream,
Ere chilling care the bosom closes ;
Whilst time seems lingering, and we deem,
The world is but a world of roses.

But, ah! how soon those visions fade!
How soon that heavenly music ceases!
Whilst, every hour, a deeper shade

The darkness of the breast increases.
How soon the cheated heart is taught,
Those lovely skies but falsely shone ;
That life with every woe is fraught-

That all our brightest joys are gone.
Now nought but gloom pervades the mind;
False hope has quenched its guiding fires;
And now, at every step, we find

The world is but a path of briars.

J. H. H.

THE LIFE OF AN EDITOR.

How fatiguing is the life of an editor! His labour, as they say of woman's, is never done; his cares, his anxieties, his researches, his cogitations, have no end. Every revolving scene brings him a fresh task; every coming night sends him to his pillow, not to sleep, but to meditate upon some subject which is likely to take with the public, and to increase the fame of the diurnal over which he presides; if tired nature should perchance yield him a prisoner to the arms of Morpheus, even then he does not become oblivious to the occupation of the day: the voice of the devil (the printer's I mean) still rings in his ears, bawling for copy: and whilst on one hand, some few flatterers are lauding his labours to the skies-on the other, the public are denouncing them as "as stale, flat, and unprofitable;" he wakes, and the same routine of duty as before hand, the same never-varying course of care and trouble, opens to his view.

Yet he has some pleasures, to counterbalance his pains and privations. In a certain niche, he is looked up to as the oracle of opinion-the arbiter of fashion and of taste. He hears his works quoted and perused; and finds all obedient to his nod, and ready to do any thing to acquire the distinction of being noticed by so important a personage as an editor. In the circle of his contributors too, he reigns supreme. There he can make himself amends for whatever slights the world' may cast upon him there, enthroned in all but imperial state, he issues forth his mandates, and dooms his victims to rigid criticism. On his fiat depends the fate of many a young and aspiring author; to him many a youth, whose mania for scribbling cannot be controlled, looks up with humble hope for the high honour of being admitted as a contributor to his pages: elated with the deference paid him, and proud of the distinction which it is in his power to confer, he forgets the bitters which mingle in his cup of sweets; he seems exalted to something above humanity, and at length, like Philip's

son,

"Assumes the God,

Affects to nod,

And seems to shake the spheres."

There are few among the numerous readers of a periodical journal, who are capable of appreciating the difficulties of an editor's situation; or who have any idea of the multifarious talents which the public require him to possess. In former times, if a newspaper contained notices of the foreign and home news, with a list of births, marriages, and deaths, like a parish register, it was quite sufficient to satisfy its readers. But those halcyon days for editors are over.

A journal now which aspires to distinction, must "fly at all in the ring;" no subject must be too high, none too low for attention; no science must be too abstruse, no amusement too trifling, for discussion;—the fate of empires must be adjusted, and the fashion of a lady's curl described, in the same page; and in one the

editor is required to fix the canon of criticism in the fine arts,-in another to describe a prize fight. He must be a diplomatist, an astronomer, a musician,-in fact, he must possess all knowledge, from that which is requisite in a first minister of state, to the humble acquirements of the fancy;-and he must be able to decide with the same degree of ease and promptitude in the disputes between two rival sovereigns, as in a casual set-to between a costermonger and a coal-man. It is needless to say, that where so much is required, something must be wanting; and that although the editor of a public journal is supposed by his readers to be endowed both with ubiquity and with omniscience-yet, that he is after all, only a man, he must sometimes fall short of their expectation, and disappoint them by the mediocrity, the paucity, or the incorrectness of his details.

Then there is another species of correspondents, who under the pretence of giving advice, are the most abominable, saucy. and impudent fellows in the world; and who modestly give their crude suggestions as infallible axioms, which if you do not obey, you must lose their invaluable friendship and support. Thus, one will tell you, your paper is insupportably dull, and he can't read it, unless it contains an account of all the prize fights, and other occurrences in the sporting world" another declares that" if you pollute your volumes with such trash, he will cease to take in your journal." One correspondent thinks your paper of too literary a cast, and wishes you to give a little more variety, and now and then to pop in a few remarkable and horrid accidents-or a bloody murder: "those are the things," says he, "to make it sell." A second says, that you " fill your paper with a collection of stories only fit for old women-and begs to have a luminous critique on the various works of taste and imagination, as they appear." Mr. Dismal says, the paper is "too dull" whilst Miss Prue thinks," it has not a sufficiently serious turn." Miss Languish begs for "a little more poetry," and hopes, 66 you will let it be all about love;" whilst Farmer Giles writes to you "to leave out all that stuff of poetics, and put in more about the price of corn, and such like." A sentimental young lady, who signs herself Flirtilla, begs that you " will put in all the pretty little love stories you can pick up ;"-whilst her maiden aunt says, you ought not to suffer the word love to appear in print." Horace Gadabout wishes you to be particular in giving spirited and copious notices of the drama;" whilst Mr. Cantwell desires, that "his paper may be discontinued, unless you omit all mention of such heinous and abominable proceedings."-Thus every man wishes his own particular taste to be gratified, without any regard to his neighbours; and the only way in which an editor can act, is, to disregard all such partial solicitations, and to keep on the even tenor of his way, without paying any respect to the confined views of his correspondents. ONE IN THE SECRET.

66

ORIGINAL LETTER OF BURNS.

WE have, this day, the pleasure of laying before our readers, a letter from the celebrated Scotch poet, Burns, which has not before met the public eye. We hope to be indebted to the gentleman, who has favoured us with it, for many other interesting communications, as we are well aware of the extent and value of the store which his extensive connexions, his taste, and his industry, have enabled him to collect.

On the authenticity of the poet's epistle, we deem it unnecessary to say more than that the copy from which our's was taken, was made from the original, while in the possession of the individual to whom it was addressed; and it was given to us, accompanied with the following explanatory account of the circumstances in which it originated

"The following letter from the celebrated poet, Burns, was written to the late Mr. Robert Pn, of Alnwick. Mr. P. was eminently distinguished as a pious and philanthropic character; and he was also capable of appreciating highly the beauty of Burns' poems; but he felt the deepest regret that many of them were of an immoral and dangerous tendency to the minds of his readers, as well as injurious to the best interests of the bard himself."

Sir, I have always held it a maxim in life, that in this bad world, those who truly wish us well, are entitled to a pretty large share at least of our gratitude; that you are so obliging as to interest yourself in my most important concerns, I can easily see by your rather extraordinary letter.

When good will to a fellow creature leads us a little out of the ordinary line, it is not only excusable, but highly laudable. Accept my thanks, Sir, as sincere as your advice, and believe me to be, Your obliged humble servant,

Edinburgh-Nov. 14th, 1787.

R. BURNS.

Burns has been characterized by one who stands "if not first, in the very first line" of literary men in this country, as a person who was utterly inaccessible to all friendly advice." But advice is a medicine which few people know how to administer; and we doubt not, that in the way in which it was often administered to Burns, its effects were very different from those which were expected. To the manner in which he received admonition, when he was convinced that the adviser had no selfish feeling to gratify, the letter which we have here introduced to the public will bear honourable testimony. It was written in the very noon-tide of his popularity, at the commencement of the second winter which he spent in Edinburgh, when every man whom Scotland was proud of, vied with his fellow in doing him honour; and when his prospects of the future were all that a poet delights to image. He had just returned from an extensive tour; with all the devotion of a pilgrim, he had visited the fields which the

valour of the heroes of other days had immortalized, and the mountains which fathered the storms of his dear native country; and he had been received with welcome and gratulation in the venerable halls of her hereditary nobles,-when he received a letter of admonition and advice from a stranger, of whose name he had never heard: but the letter of his monitor bore the impress of sincerity, and it was received in the spirit of one who looked only at the inotive which dictated it.

Perhaps no poet was ever, during his life, so much honoured in his own land, as Burns was in Scotland. He is, in fact, the poet of his nation. His is not the reputation of Milton, nor the reputation of Shakspeare, which, great as it is, and during as it may be, is but as a distant echo to the great body of living men, even in this our native country. His works form part of the library of every Scotchman; and they are read with equal delight in the cottage of the shepherd, and in the mansion of the duke.

We have often thought it surprising, that the spirit of the dialect in which this gifted individual wrote, should be understood so thoroughly as it is in a district which comprehends all Scotland; when, in England, the local songs of one country are often nearly unintelligible in every other.

We made an incursion during the summer into the land of clouds and darkness, where we bought a little collection of songs in the patios of the district, called the TYNESIDE SONGSTER. Now we had fancied ourselves able to master almost any thing printed in the modern roman character; but really this collection of northern melodies has put us a little out of conceit with our skill. What think our readers of the following stanza from an anthem entitled,

"BAB CRANKY'S SIZE SUNDAY?"

Ki Geordy, we leave i' yen raw, wyet,
l' yen corf we byeth gan belaw, wyet;
At aw things aw've play'd
And to hew aw'm not flay'd

Wi' sic in a chep as Bab Cranky.

Or of the following, from what appears to be an account of a voyage

in

We doubt not that our readers are generally as unable as we profess ourselves to be to estimate the merits of these stanzas; but we were informed, notwithstanding, "in the place where they grew," that the compositions from which they are extracted are very meritorious compositions.