"Shepherd" is the most original part of the the heavens and the earth—a benk o' auld balwork, but as we read the papers over we are lants, as yellow as the cowslips, in my hand or my occasionally forced to feel the brilliant un- bosom, and may be, sir, my ink-horn dangling at reality of the character. It is rather injudi- a button-hole, a bit stump o' pen, nae bigger cious of Professor Ferrier to exhaust the terms than an auld wife's pipe, in my mouth, and a of literary panegyric in admiration of the piece o' paper, torn out o' the hinder end of a Shepherd. Thus we are told in the preface:

In wisdom the Shepherd equals the Socrates of Plato, in humor he surpasses the Falstaff of Shakspeare. Clear and prompt, he might have stood up against Dr. Johnson in close and peremptory argument; fertile and copious, he might have rivalled Burke in amplitude of declamation; while his opulent imagination and powers of comical description invest all that he utters either with a picturesque vividness, or a graphic quaintness peculiarly his own.

That is extravagant eulogy, and a mistake of the advocate's sort, in overpainting a case. "The Socrates of Plato" had a breadth of generalization and artistic subtlety which makes its study at once an ethical exercise and an æsthetical pleasure, and even in translation its thoughts can be enjoyed in any tongue; but Shepherd is as local and national as Dandie Dinmont and Baillie Nicol Jarvie. "In close

"and peremptory argument" there can be no parallel between a character on paper, drawn at pleasure by the writer, and a real person like Johnson, redoubtable in crushing powers. The comparison with Burke is absurd, and the use of the word "declamation" in connection with that great thinker and writer betrays want of familiarity with his works.

Mr. North, hath your Shepherd seen visions volume, crunkling on my knee-on such a couch, and dreamed dreams; but his een were never steeked; and I continued aye to see and to hear a' outward things, although scarcely conscious at the time o' their real nature, so bright, wavering, and unsurelike was the haill livin world, frae my lair on the knowe beside the clear spring, to the distant weather gleam. (The Shepherd drinks.) This is the best jug I have made yet, sir.

That is very true, and scores of passages equally good abound in the volume. But, in order to see the beauties and defects of the character, we shall select some passages which mark where the Shepherd was strong and weak. Thus let us hear him describe a thun

derstorm:

Tickler: What was the matter, James, the last Thursday in Yarrow?

Shepherd: Ise tell you, and judge for yoursel. dubs were bearin, and the midden was as hard as At four in the mornin, it was hard frost that the

a rickle o' stanes. We couldna plant the potawtoes. But the lift was clear. Between eight and nine, a snaw-storm came down frae the mountains about Loch Skene, noo a whirl, and noo a blash, till the grun' was whitey-blue, wi' a sliddery sort o' sleet, and the Yarrow began to roar wi' the melted broo, alang its frost-bound But the Shepherd's claims to permanent in- borders, and aneath its banks, a' hanging wi' iciterest rest on pretensions too strong to be cles, nane o' them thinner than my twa arms. shaken by injudicious panegyric. Scotland is Weel then, about eleven it began to rain, for the wund had shifted, and afore dinner-time it was justly celebrated for the number of "its peasant an even doun pour. It fell lown about sax, and minds," whose genius soared without the the air grew close and sultry to a degree that artificial aid of education; and the phases of was fearsome. Wha wud hae expeckit a thunthat class of character are pointed out in the derstorm on the eve o' sic a day? But the heaShepherd with pictorial effect and metaphysical precision. The strong points of the character can be easily seen. Thus we are made to see the subjectivity of the Shepherd in the following passage :

North: Whence are all your poetic visions, James of Kilmeny, and Hynde, and the Chaldee manuscript?

vens in the thundery airt, were like a dungeon, and I saw the lightning playing like meteors athwart the blackness lang before ony growl was in the gloom. Then, a' at ance, like a waukened lion, the thunder rose up in his den, and shakin his mane o' brindled clouds, broke out into sic a roar that the very sun shuddered in eclipse

and the grews and collies that happened to be sittin beside me on a bit knowe gaed whinin into the house wi' their tails atween their legs, just Shepherd Genius-genius, my dear Sir. May venturin a hafflin glance to the howlin heavens not a man dream when he is awake better dreams noo a' in low, for the fire was strong and fierce than when sleep dulls and deadens both cere-in electrical matter, and at intervals the illumibrum and cerebellum? O, happy days that nated mountains seemed to vomit out conflagrahave lain on the green hillside, with my plaid tion like verra volcanoes. around me, best mantle of inspiration, my faithful Hector sitting like a very Christian by my

side, glowring far aff into the glens after the sheep, or aiblins lifting up his ee to the gled hovering close aneath the marbled roof of clouds-bonny St. Mary's Loch lying like a smile below, and a softened sun, scarcely warmer than the moon hersel, adorning without dazzling the day, over

On such

dogs "just venturin a hafflin glance to the
That is truly graphic, and the sketch of the
howlin heavens" is close to nature.
themes we are never tired of the Shepherd.
"His foot's upon his native heath," and he
writes like one inspired by his theme. He

describes Scotch and North British scenery | yon, sirs; and wha that saw't would ever ask with the gusto of George Barrow sketching whether tragedy or the stage was moral, purging the gipsies of Spain. the soul as she did wi' pity and wi' terror?

But when the Shepherd discourses of a cosmopolite subject, about which many other That description is decidedly a failure. It is gifted intellects have written, we at once see an inventory of the points of the part, but not that the overwhelming power claimed for him an artistic picture. Take the broad Scotch by Professor Ferrier cannot be attributed to out of it, and when read in plain English it is him. "Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth" is as nothing more than the rhetoric of windy rapfine a theme as could be given for a master-ture. It could not stand comparison with description. The Shepherd evidently strains Talma's exquisite delineation of "Le Kain;” himself to rise to a level with that great sub- and the readers of "Villette" must recollect ject assigned to him by himself, and here we how sublimely the astonishing qualities of have his attempt:— Mlle. Rachel have been portrayed by the same pen that recorded the sorrows of " Jane Eyre." Shepherd: As Leddy Macbeth! Her gran' We could express many errors in detail in the high straicht nosed face, whiter than ashes! Fix- above picture. "That masquerade of passion" ed een, no like the een of the dead, yet hardly is a fatal slip in trying to intensify a description, mair like them o' the leevin; dim, and yet licht and "the glimmering apprehension" at once wi' an obscure lustre, through which the tor- recalls the admired passage in Colly Cibber mented sowl looked in the chains o' sleep and dreams wi' a' the destraction o' remorse and on Betterton:-" Pity it is that the charms of despair and oh! sic an expanse o' fore-acting cannot, like those of painting or poetry, head for a warld o' dreadfu' thochts aneath the be their own record; that the animated graces braided blackness o' her hair, that had neverthe- of the player can live no longer than the inless been put up wi' a steady and nae uncarefu' stant breath and motion which paint them, or haun before the troubled leddy had lain doun, at best can but faintly glimmer through the for it behooved ane so high-born as she, in the memory of a few surviving spectators!" middle o' her ruefu' trouble, no to neglect what she owed to her stately beauty, and to the head that lay on the couch of ane o' Scotland's thanes noo likewise about to be, during the short space o' the passing o' a thundercloud, her bluidy and usurping king.

Thus we see that the Shepherd, like all other characters, has his weak points, and that under a cloud of Scotticisms, mingled with vehement English, he can occasionally show the contortions of false vigor. But his Gaelic pathos is pure and genuine, and our Laureate might get some hints on the art of composing Shepherd: Onwards she used to come-no with manly pathos. There is nothing puling Sarah Siddons-but just Leddy Macbeth hersel or sickly in the following description of the -though through that melancholy masquerade sad work done by an accomplished hypoo' passion, the spectator aye had a confused glim-crite ::merin apprehension o' the great actress-glidin

North: Whisht-Tickler-whisht-no coughing.

wi' the ghostlike motion o' nicht-wanderin un- Shepherd; Then to see him sittin' a' the rest, unconscious o' surroundin objects-for oh! time beside the verra bonniest bit lassie in a' the how could the glazed yet gleamin een see aught pairty! leanin his great, broad, yellow, sweaty in this material world ?-yet, by some mysteri- cheeks, within an inch of her innocent carnaous power o' instinct, never touchin ane o' the tions! Sweet simple girl-she thinks him the impediments that the furniture o' the auld castle holiest o' men; and is blind and deaf to his brumicht hae opposed to her haunted footsteps. On talities. O save the lintwhite frae the houlat's she came, wring, wringin her hauns, as if washin nest! But the puir bonny boardin-school lassie them in the cleansin dews frae the blouts o' has siller-a hantle o' siller-thousands o' poun's, blood-but wae's me for the murderess out they aiblins five or sax-and in twa-three years ye wad no be, ony mair than the stains on the spat see her walkin by her lane, wi' a girlish face, but o' the floor where some midnicht-slain Christian white and sorrowful, leadin a toddlin bairn in has groaned out his soul aneath the dagger's her hand, and anither visible aneath her breast, stroke, when the sleepin hoose heard not the nae husband near her, to gie her his arm in that shriek o' departing life. condition-nae decent servant lass to help her wi' the wean-but quite her lane, no very weel dressed, and careless, speaking to nane she meets, and saunterin wi' a sair heart down the unfrequented lanes, and awa into a field to sit down on the ditch-side weepin, while her wee boy is chasing the butterflies among the flowers.

Tickler: North, look at James's face. Confound me under the inspiration of the moment, if it is not like John Kemble's!

Shepherd Whether a' this, sirs, was natural or not, ye see I dinna-ken, because I never beheld ony woman, either gentle or semple, walkin in her sleep after having committed murder. But, Lord safe us! that hollow, broken-hearted The manner in which sense and reflection voice, "Out, damned spot," was o' itsel aneuch to tell to a' that heard it that crimes done in the are mingled with the poetical passages is pecuflesh during time will needs be punished in the liar to the "Noctes." But on a severe critispirit during eternity. It was a dreadfu' homily cism we discern some of the want of due dra

matic shadings and individual sustainment of view. And who has been their salvation ?—The character. Occasionally Tickler is just as Art of Blackwood's Magazine. poetic and picturesque as the Shepherd. Thus Tickler describes the Falls of the Clyde in a way that tantalizes us with the idea of a cool, fresh atmosphere:

North: The Fall of Foyers is terrible-a deep abyss savage rock-work, hideous groans, ghostlike vapors, and a rumble as if from eternity.

Tickler: The Falls of the Clyde are majestic. Over Corra Linn the river rolls exultingly; and, recovering itself from that headlong plunge, after some troubled struggles among the shattered cliffs, away it floats in stately pomp, dallying with the noble banks, and subsiding into a deep bright foaming current. Then what woods and groves crowning the noble rocks. How cheerful laughs the cottage pestered by the spray! and how vivid the verdure on each ivied ruin! The coming of the cushats is a solemn accompaniment to the cataract, and aloft in heaven the choughs reply to that voice of the Forest.

Dash that passage with a few Scotticisms, and you have the Shepherd. But these and similar errors are the faults of affluence of mind. In the same passage, after North declares that nature is all in all, and art stark nought, Tickler rejoins :

Tickler: Yet softly. Who planted those trees by that river side?-Art. Who pruned them?-Art. Who gave room to their giant arms to span that roaring chasm ?-Art. Who reared yon edifice on the cliff?-Art. Who flung that stately arch from rock to rock, under which the martins twitter over the unfeared cataract?

stone.

The last sentence is a capital stroke, and is highly characteristic of the "rattling" away in which the "Noctes" mingled the serious

and the droll.

Scattered through the convivial colloquies are a variety of dicta on the contemporary reputations of the time, delivered in a tome between jest and earnest. Vast pretensions are humorously assailed in a coarse style of banter. It is impossible not to laugh at the figure Doctor Parr makes :

:

North: As an original thinker, I own he was Nemo-nobody; but as a scholar

Tickler: Hum-hummior-hummissimus,-he was a mere Parolles in a Pedagogue's wig. His preface to Bellendenus, as all the world knows, was never looked into but for its oddities; first, that it talked about Fox, and Burke, and Lord North, in Latin-when others talked of them in English; secondly, that this Latin, as he called it, was a monster of deformity, being in facto a cento made up from every Roman on God's earth, beginning with Fabius Pictor, and the "Stercus Ennii," down to the "rank African

isms" (to use Milton's phrase) of Arnobius. An English history could not be more extravagant, composed out of the hoary archaisms of Robert of Gloucester, compounded with the "threepiled" Gibbonisms of Sharon Turner. "He had been at a great feast of languages, and had stolen the scraps."

North: I cannot help admiring his Spital ser

mon, as

Tickler: Beyond all comparison the most empty balderdash that ever attempted to soar without gas into the ethereal regions.

North His dissertation on the word Sublime

at the end of Dugald Stewart's Philosophical Essays?

-Art. Who darkened that long line of precipice with dreadful or glorious associations ?Art, polity, law, war, outrage, and history, writ ing her hieroglyphics with fire on the scarred visage of those natural battlements. Is that a Tickler: Ay, a sublime treatise on Mud, with hermit's cell? Art scooped it out of the living some superior remarks on the preposition Sub. Is that an oratory? Art smoothed the The whole amount from a world of pother, floor for the knee of the penitent. Are the bones parade, and pseudo-learning, is, that Sublime of the holy slumbering in that cemetery? Art means, not that which is under the mud, but changed the hollow rock into a tomb, and when that which is above it. the dead saint was laid into the sepulchre, Art joined its music with the torrent's roar, and the Not the least interesting part of these most mingled anthem rose to the stars which Art had interesting papers are the comic and sentinumbered and sprinkled into stations over the mental songs; but we must reserve our refirmament of Heaven. What then would Bowle's marks upon them until another occasion. In be at, and why more last words to Roscoe ? Who made his ink, his pens and his paper? the meantime we will recommend this volume Art. Who published his books?-Art. Who as containing plenty of "light summer readcriticised them?-Art. Who would fain have ing," elevated with much originality of thought damned them -The Art of the Edinburgh Re-and intensity of true poetical passion.

From the Examiner.

Memoirs of Lieutenant Joseph René Bellot, Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, Member of the Geographical Societies of London and Paris, etc. With his Journal of a Voyage in the Polar Seas in Search of Sir John Franklin. 2 vols. Hurst and Blackett.

ever, to assume more firmness in the position in which I stand, and bethink me that I must absoing gratitude for all that has been done for me, lutely arrive at something, The desire of showought, of itself to constitute a very sufficient motive for me. Ought I not also to reflect that I am destined to support a numerous and beloved family, of whom I am the sole hope? I am considered ambitious, I am sure-and it is true; but THIS is a book welcome to the hearts of is there a nobler aim than that for the ambition Englishmen, for dear to the English is the me- of a young man? This laudable feeling, I well mory of Joseph René Bellot. The young know, is not the only one that makes me thus Frenchman, he perished at the age of twen- contemplate all my projects of glory and adty-seven,-who won so much love and confi-vancement; perhaps even there is too much selfdence on every side, and, fired with a gener-together must make me desirous of prompt adlove in all my schemes; but these two motives ous sympathy for Lady Franklin, became shipvancement. I must work to win a good reputamate with our Arctic sailors, proving himself tion, instead of lapping myself to sleep in ease as able and fine-hearted as any in their gallant and supineness, barely tolerable in a young man band, gains a fresh hold on the affection of this whose parents are wealthy. I too often forget country by the posthumous publication of this what I have been: I do not reflect that my father memoir, and of the frank unassuming journal is a poor workman, with a large family; that he that it prefaces. has made very great sacrifices for me; that all the money I spend uselessly would be of great help at home. I ought to consider, that in those moments of forgetfulness, in which I lavish my money as if I was habituated to abundance, my poor mother is perhaps at her wit's end to provide for the necessities of the family.

In every sense this French lieutenant was a noble fellow. Born in Paris, one of the four children of a common smith and farrier who removed when Joseph René was about five years old to Rochefort, Bellot always called himself a Rochefort man, for its municipality saw in him a child of promise, and materially helped to secure him the advantage of a solid education. At the instance of the

Mayor, it gave him a demi-bourse at the Rochefort College; and because Mayor and Municipality had every reason to know that their protégé was worthy of protection, they helped to maintain him afterwards on his admission to the naval school. Truly then Bellot was a Rochefort man, for Rochefort it was in a worldly sense that made a man of him. Grateful to it, grateful to his father for all sacrifice endured on his account, full of high aspirations, and with all his dreams of young ambition joining the home shapes that he loved, and the home duties he was proud to think that he might in atter days fulfil, young Bellot became a midshipman in the French navy, and set sail on his first service. He kept a private journal, and what manner of gentle and noble heart it was that communed with itself in secret after the following fashion, let any reader feel :

heart, to have had the courage to explore its reI am glad to have scrutinized the state of my places; perhaps I shall also have the courage to cesses, and put my hand on all the unsound cure them. I will try, at any rate, and by the end of a certain time I shall perhaps come to enjoy that self-esteem which satisfies and renders one happy in all circumstances in which a man may be placed.

31st October. I do nothing but think of France, my good mother, and my sisters; and when I am an officer, if it be possible to realize shall cover the walls of my cabin; this will, permy desires, the portraits of these dear friends haps, make the distance that divides us seem less to me. I have not yet found the strength to execute my projects of yesterday. There is one I have already formed, which is to copy the roles of the Jena; I know not if I shall fulfil it: at all events I shall try to do so. I would fain work, but all I could undertake disgusts and wearies me beforehand: I have so much to do that I know not which I was so desirous of learning, remain still at which end to begin. Drawing and music, strangers to me. The most useful things to which I should apply myself are still unknown to me. I see that my good resolutions always melt away. I must, however, look well to myself.

*

*

**

My negligence and apathy are extreme; I have not had the courage to write home; so here is an opportunity lost to me through my own fault. It is the first, but I must keep watch over myself, otherwise I shall fall into the greatest sloth. In It is plain I do not stand very well with the spite of all my fine resolutions to work, and my commander; I hardly know why, for I have alrecriminations against the jokes of my compan-ways been conscious of the sympathy I might inions, I have done nothing yet since our departure spire in any one; and though he has always been from France; and I am likewise afraid of letting very polite towards me, I am sure he ranks me myself give way to a fault from which I cannot in his affections greatly below X—. I am, guard myself too carefully. I am not so blind as perhaps, too childish, and attach too much imnot to see all these things, and yet I have not the portance to trifles, or those little commonplace strength to repress these defects. I ought, how-reproaches which are addressed to everybody;

but, after all, I have more confidence in my in- more exact the comparison becomes, the more I stinct than in my reason: the end will prove find myself out of sorts. I walk the deck; but whether or not I have been mistaken. Be the am thrown violently against the bulwark. Álas! solution of the question what it may, I must ap-in vain I try to conceal it from myself, I am seaply myself steadfastly to doing my duty well, and especially to the assumption of more gravity; for I am conscious that I show myself greatly inferior in reason to all my comrades.

sick. O shame! O despair! I look round to see who are the witnesses of my dishonor; fortunately I have none but accomplices. Mr. Leask and Mr. Hepburn, the only two whom this fatal sickness spares, are not present. I wear Need it be said that a young sailor so mind- myself out in efforts to read and write, but can ed was not a man to miss the love of his com- do neither. Yet I have great need of applicarades or the confidence of his commander, tion. Oh, the nothingness of human nature! certainly not a man to miss opportunities of Be the most remarkable man, the most accommultiplying his acquirements, or of displaying foot on board a ship, and there you are reduced plished savant, be Arago, Lamartine-put your in action promptitude and ardor. He display- to naught, not an idea left you. Du plus grand ed the last at Tamatave, and repeatedly he des humains voilà ce qui vous reste! A shadow inwas reported to the Government at home in capable of pronouncing anything but inarticulate terms of the most emphatic admiration. He sounds. A smell of whisky proves to me that was but a boy when they made the artisan's all my shipmates are not sick only from the moson Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. But tion of the ship; and that some of them, before be still joined all pleasure of success to becoming real teetotallers, have been bidding a thoughts of home. Of a little brother he last farewell to the powers of this world. wrote, "I must show a good example to our tion of the sea, and offer to Neptune a sacrifice I bethink me of the pagan practice of invocayoung Alphonse." Of his sisters his dream he cannot fail to appreciate at its true worth. I was, I will write books that shall be their cut off a superb beard, and his wrath is appeasmarriage portions." Of his mother, he wrote ed. Quos ego-at last I can admire, at my ease, to Mr. Barrow at the Admiralty, when ambi- the northern coasts of Scotland, and the snowtious of appreciation by the English, and ap-topped mountains reflecting the rays of the sun. preciated by them thoroughly already, he was

66

setting out on his first arctic Expedition, "You His surprising aptitude for knowledge, and have been so kind to me already, that I am his ardor in the acquisition of it, had already almost ashamed to ask fresh services at your hands. I shall be doubtlessly deprived of opportunities to write to my family, and I would ask you whenever an English paper gives any news about the Prince Albert, to cut out the paragraph and send it to Madame Bellot, Rochefort-sur-Mer.

made him master of four languages. He hoped also, he said, to pick up Russian on the northern coasts, and on board the Prince Albert we find a line set down to note that he was "preparing a dictionary of the language of the Esquimaux." Here is an account of an Esquimaux hut visited by him :

It is his own journal of the voyage in the Prince Albert that has now been published. It was not without the help of one of the byThe intention with which it was written, how-standers that I could guess that an opening hardever, was not that it should be published as a ly two feet high, and covered with a skin, was diary. It was merely kept in this form with the door. Puffs of hot air loaded with fetid a view to the ultimate publication of a book-emanations reach me; I feel my courage waver, a sister's marriage portion-which would have but at last I make my way in, after crawling a been if we are right in our impression, the couple of yards through a sort of sewer with first Arctic book by a French sailor. When damp walls, the foot of which rests in a muddy he set out, in a true spirit of chivalry, court- shall never forget the impression made on me compost of blood, water, oil, and grease. No; I ing danger and honor, but declining Lady by what I saw, though I thought myself preparFranklin's offered pay, M. Bellot was only a ed for everything by the numerous descriptions midshipman in his own navy. But the French I had read of these miserable hovels. This one, Ministry of Marine, prompt to reward distinguished merit, promoted him at once to a lieutenancy, and favored in other respects the opening career of a man who promised to become an honor to his country.

Like a true Frenchman he must set out on

too, is in a place comparatively civilized, where the example of Europeans must, and does, create wants and notions of comfort unknown to wandering tribes, in an establishment visited every year by an inspector sent by the government of Copenhagen. A rectangular enclosure of stones, covered on the outside with a

his voyage with sea-sickness, and thus good-thick layer of earth, and on the interior with humoredly he records his deep humiliation :-three or four planks, forms the body of the hut;

at each of the doors and at the further end, a sort of trellis, a foot from the ground, and three or four feet wide, serving for bed and table. In the middle space, of about three feet, lies half a seal, from which the fat has been removed, but