ment quotation about "casting pearls," but that would be too virulent, for the lady is actually a woman of sense and taste.

After all that has been said on the other side of the question, man is by no means a happy creature. I do not speak of the selected few, favored by partial heaven; whose souls are tuned to gladness amid riches and honours, and prudence and wisdom. I speak of the neglected many, whose nerves, whose sinews, whose days, are sold to the minions of fortune.

If I thought you had never seen it, I would transcribe for you a stanza of an old Scottish ballad, called, The life and age of man; beginning thus,

""Twas in the sixteenth hunder year

"Of God and fifty three,

"Frae Christ was born, that bought us dear,
"As writings testifie."

I had an old grand-uncle, with whom my mother lived a while in her girlish years; the good old man, for such he was, was long blind ere he died, during which time, his highest enjoyment was to sit down and cry, while my mother would sing the simple old song of The life and age of

тап.

It is this way of thinking, it is these melancholy truths, that make religion so precious to the poor, miserable children of men-If it is a mere phantom, existing only in the heated imagination of enthusiasm,

"What truth on earth so precious as the lie!"

My idle reasonings sometimes make me a little sceptical, but the necessities of my heart always give the cold philosophisings the lie. Who looks for the heart weaned from earth; the soul affianced to her God; the correspondence fixed with heaven; the pious supplication and devout thanksgiving, constant as the vicissitudes of even and morn; who thinks to meet with these in the court, the palace, in the glare of public life? No: to find them in their precious importance and divine efficacy, we must search among the obscure recesses of disappointment, affliction, poverty and distress.

I am sure, dear madam, you are now more than pleased with the length of my letters. I return to Ayrshire, middle of next week: and it quickens my pace to think that there will be a letter from you waiting me there. I must be here again very soon for my harvest.

No.

No. LX.

TO R. GRAHAM, or FINTRY, Esq.

SIR,

WHEN I had the honour of being introduced to you at Athole-house, I did not think so soon of asking a favour of you. When Lear, in Shakespear, asks old Kent why he wished to be in his service, he answers, "Because you have that in your face which I could like to call master." For some such reason, Sir, do I now solicit your patronage. You know, I dare say, of an application I lately made to your Board to be admitted an officer of excise. I have according to form been examined by a supervisor, and to-day I gave in his certificate with a request for an order for instructions. In this affair, if I succeed, I am afraid I shall but too much need a patronizing friend. Propriety of conduct as a man, and fidelity and attention as an officer, I dare engage for; but with any thing like business, except manual labor, I am totally unacquainted.

I had intended to have closed my late appearance on the stage of life, in the character of a country farmer; but after discharging some filial and fraternal claims, I find I could only fight for existence in that miserable manner, which I have lived to see throw a venerable parent into the jaws of a jail; whence death, the poor man's last and often best friend, rescued him.

I know, Sir, that to need your goodness is to have a claim on it; may I therefore beg your patronage to forward me in this affair, 'till I be appointed to a division, where, by the help of rigid œconomy I will try to support that independence so dear to my soul, but which has been too often so distant from my situation.

WHEN nature her great master-piece designed,
And fram'd her last, best work, the human-mind,
Her eye intent on all the mazy plan,

She form'd of various parts the various man.

Then first she calls the useful many forth; Plain plodding industry, and sober worth : Thence peasants, farmers, native sons of earth, And merchandise' whole genus take their birth:

Each

Each prudent cit a warm existence finds,
And all mechanics' many-aproned kinds.
Some other rarer sorts are wanted yet,

The lead and buoy are needful to the net :
The caput mortuum of gross
desires

Makes a material, for mere knights and squires ;

The martial phosphorus is taught to flow,

She kneads the lumpish philosophic dough,
Then marks th' unyielding mass with grave designs,

Law, physics, politics and deep divines :

Last, she sublimes th' Aurora of the poles,
The flashing elements of female souls.'

The ordered system fair before her stood,
Nature well pleased pronounced it very good;
But ere she gave creating labour o❜er,
Half-jest, she tried one curious labour more.
Some spumy, fiery, ignis fatuus matter;

Such as the slightest breath of air might scatter;
With arch-alacrity and conscious glee
(Nature may have her whim as well as we,
Her Hogarth-art perhaps she meant to show it)
She forms the thing and christens it-a poet.
Creature, tho' oft the prey of care and sorrow,
When blest to-day unmindful of to-morrow.
A being form'd t'amuse his graver friends,
Admir'd and prais'd-and there the homage ends:
A mortal quite unfit for fortune's strife,
Yet oft the sport of all the ills of life;
Prone to enjoy each pleasure riches give,
Yet haply wanting wherewithal to live;
Longing to wipe each tear, to heal each groan,
Yet frequent all unheeded in his own.

But