self or her with words, I quitted her in silence.

calm—and, not daring to trust either my-windows; for, unlike the generality of Scotch clergymen, the progenitors of Mr. Hamilton were rich, and the manse wears somewhat the look of an ancient manor

old gentleman, and with justice, prides himself. Even now it is beautiful: what then will it not be in summer? I often think how my sister would delight in that garden, with its luxuriant roses and jessamine-covered arbours. And how pleased the old gentleman looked when he shewed me his carnations and tulip-beds! “But those," said he, pointing to a bank of violets, are dearer to me than the rarest flowers in my garden: they were planted by Florence McIntyre, and they resemble her in their unpretending beauty."—Who, I wonder, is Florence McIntyre? There surely was a shade of sadness passing over his brow when he spoke of her. I longed to ask about her, but felt fearful of intruding. He is a charming old man—I hope he will often visit us.

A little while ago I heard the sound of the bagpipe, and I looked from the win-house. But it is the garden on which the dows, and saw the bridal party. I was so near to them that I heard the shouts of merriment uttered by the young men; it might have been fancy, but I thought I heard the coarse laughter of the bridegroom louder than all the rest; and I am sure I distinguished the dark locks and drooping form of the bride. No one else could have worn that air of despairing hopelessness; and she only could have managed her horse with such careless, but perfect grace. Poor thing! poor thing! I fear she has chosen a wayward destiny. 20th.-On this day-two months ago I lost my mother; and never was there a dearer or a kinder parent. She died of consumption. The fearful visitant came in all its fair but deceitful beauty. Yes, even to the very last, my mother was beautiful, and her eyes retained their gentle brightness; but as spring approached, and the earlier flowers began to unfold their blossoms, my mother, that dearest of my earthly treasures, drooped and died. From my chamber-windows I can see the green spot of earth that covers her grave in the lonely church-yard of Glenavon. I see the-such perusals and re-perusals of "The dark yew trees, standing like spectres in the shadowy moonlight. What a cold bleak blast there is groaning among the woods! How often have I sat with my mother on such a night as this, enjoying the blaze upon our hearth, and listening to her dear, gentle voice! Alas! that voice is now silent in the grave, and that beloved mother is mouldering in the dust.

28th.-A week of rain, and cold easterly winds: the sun has not shined upon us for the last eight days. I have seen no one, and have had nothing to insert in my diary. Oh, the misery of rainy weather in the highlands! Such long melancholy facessuch reading of books so often read before

Morning Post" and "The Evening Star ”. such raking up of the ashes of dull stories, that have long since died a natural death— such attempts at philosophical indifference about the weather and the roads. Defend me from another rainy week in the highlands! And this morning wears quite as unpromising an aspect-the same haze upon the hills-the same thick melancholy rain, without a breeze stirring the branches. How chilled and lifeless every thing appears-this is really horrible.

March 1st.-Rain, still rain, and every object without the walls cheerless and gloomy. But the objects within the walls— is it possible I have never yet described them? Is it possible I have never spoken

22d.-A day of unclouded sunshine; and we have had a visitor, too-the minister, Mr. Hamilton. I would I could de- || scribe him, with his mild benevolent countenance, and his thin silvery hair. Never have I seen a more interesting face. Truly he is a man of God-a disciple worthy of his glorious master. I walked with him to the manse-a building almost as interest-of my very pretty cousin, the lady of the ing and venerable as himself. Its original form is entirely lost in the wings and additions built by its various possessors. It is now a whimsical but picturesque mansion, composed of gable ends and bow

domain, with her laughing eyes, and her cheeks glowing like young rose-buds? Lucy has been four years a matron, and yet she is a very Hebe in her beauty. With that bright happy countenance, and

those pearly teeth so often displayed in her artless merriment, Lucy is at once the busiest and idlest of all living creatures ;her whole thoughts now engrossed in the culture of a flower, and now in a treatise on philosophy; and yet she is the most anxious, and the tenderest of mothers. Never was there a creature so made of contradictions, so composed of faults and fascinations. And have I never spoken of Lucy's baby-the sweetest and prettiest of babies-my companion in all mischief and frolic my little queen of merriment ? Have I never told how we seat ourselves upon the sunny hillocks, when they are

sunny, and string necklaces for ourselves of the fresh gowans, and collars of the same for our dear friend Dido-how I am teaching my pet to play on the old jingling piano, and how pleased she is with her own discordant harmony? Strange, that with such lack of matter I should have written so many pages of my diary, and yet have omitted all this-and Lucy's husband, too; but he is a sailor, and he is now on

The glad waters of the dark blue sea. Perhaps this quotation may not seem very apt-shall I draw my pen through it? No, I won't-it fills up a line, and shews that I read Byron.

MODERN MANNERS.

THERE are persons who, wearied with tents, and other things; and previously, at the insipidity of modern life, deeply regret the taking of Barfleur, so much was acthat "the days of old iron are out;" that quired, that the boys of the army set no all that was chivalrous, spirit-stirring, and value on gowns trimmed with fur." What picturesque, has departed, leaving not a exhibition of modern times can possibly wreck of its magnificence behind: a period create so strong a degree of interest as that in which the mind was kept in a continual which was excited by such novel importastate of excitation; when prodigies were of tions. The tulle robe, the chapeau en paracommon occurrence, and no knight or lady pluie, from the most fashionable Parisian could stir five miles from the old ancestral || milliner, nay the Burmese state coach itcastle without being involved in a series of self, sinks to nothing in the comparison: strange adventures; when demons infested one stare of wonder, or one glance of lanthe wastes and forests, the church-yards || guid enjoyment, is all that can be elicited were haunted by ghosts, and every hamlet by the most striking inventions of brainwas tenanted by a witch; when enter- racked artists, from a multitude who have prizing spirits, dissatisfied with the coarse seen every thing that the habitable globe fare and clumsy domestic furniture of their contains through the medium of travel, of own homes, sallied forth, sword in hand, pictures, and of books. crossed the wide and pathless ocean to foreign lands, and brought back the luxurious plunder of more refined nations to their wives and daughters. "There was hardly a female," observes a celebrated antiquary of our own times," of the fourteenth century, who could be styled a gentlewoman, that had not in her house some portion of the spoils of furniture, silk, plate, or jewels, from Caen, Calais, or the cities beyond the sea; and those who, like the knight of Chaucer, had been at Alexandria, when it was won' by Peter, King of Cyprus, returned with great riches in cloth of gold, velvets, and precious stones. The English at Poitiers were so laden with valuable booty, that they despised armour,

||

It is not, however, necessary to go so far back in our lamentation for departed glories, to grieve over the loss of the tournament, the pageant, and the stately banquets of the middle ages: in times much nearer our own, before the invention of easy stage-coaches and canals, those fatal precursors of MacAdamized roads and steam-boats, there was quite enough to occupy and delight the mind. England was then a perpetual carnival, a masquerade, where every person supported a distinct character, instead of the endless repetition of dominos, which spread their dull insipidity throughout all society; people then spoke, and acted, and thought according to their stations and professions, un

restrained by the fear of being deemed odd or vulgar, which influences modern manners, to the utter destruction of originality. The dandy naval officer, who now wears spurs on shore, writes articles in the magazines, or launches forth as an author, drives a cabriolet, and collects pictures, was formerly a wild sea-captain, known by his rolling gait and nautical phrases—a lover of grog and a contemner of perfume-honest,|| open-hearted, and rough-simple and superstitious, and perchance a little vulgar, but altogether a most entertaining personage. The red-coat-the very name is linked with delightful associations-the Lothario of a country town, at whose approach mothers locked up their daughters, and the provincial beaux hid their diminished heads --who performed the part attributed to the lover of Ally Croaker with the mothers, danced with the young ladies, drank with the fathers, and gamed with the brotherswhat is he now? a dainty, scornful, affect ed being, who keeps himself aloof from general society, and can only be bribed to shew his fine person at a dinner by a French cook, and the rarest and most expensive wines.

unfortunates of the nineteenth century are constrained to live: it was girt around with pleasant meadows, and accessible to the sweet air of heaven. The whole of the fashionable world congregated south of Oxford Street, and were to be found in Westminster, and in the parishes of St. James and St. George: few encroached upon this silent territory, and those only to stare, gape at, and admire their superiors, without the slightest intention of vying with them, as the manner is, or rather would be now, if the higher ranks of the nobility quitted their entrenchments and participated in amusements open to all. In these times the peerage of England did not object to mingle freely with the gentlemen and gentlewomen of the middle order— an entire and separate class from the elbowing upstarts, who are now kept at such an immeasurable distance by the haut ton; people who, possessed of wealth, think themselves privileged to assume an equality with high rank, and in the hope that, by dint of continual exertion, they shall at some period be admitted into the guarded precincts, look down with supreme contempt upon persons who have less chance Then there were the sober merchant, of this exaltation than themselves. Before and the prim lawyer, the pedant vain of this present era of general refinement, those his learning, the pert city prig, the formal who could not boast of birth were confine gentleman, with his bows and his tented to remain quietly in the station courtly speeches, the gay rake, the bois- allotted to them in society, and to gaze, at terous fox-hunter, in endless and delightful an humble distance, at the privileged pervarieties. If you moved from London to sons who composed the court, and these the country you went into a new world, distinguished fashionables enjoying the and associated with people perfectly diffe- height of happiness in the polite circle rent from those whom you had left behind. || around them. The great world, as it was What a splendid contrast was there between called-the only world whose denizens London and the country! The metropolis were highly bred, highly accomplished, was the only place in which the court and polished by travel, and acquainted with fashionable part of the community could the belles-lettres-considered it the worst of breathe; they hated every thing that was banishments to leave the joys of London, rustic and rural, and were persuaded to when to winter balls succeeded fêtes, quit the green wildernesses of St. James's champêtres, regattas on the broad and Park, and the lamplight of Mary-le-bone sparkling waters of that beautiful river, Gardens, only for scenes nearly as much which was the scene of continual pleasure sophisticated-the straight avenues, nod- to our ancestors, though now shut out ding groves, and formal parterres of Twic- from view by tall dark buildings—and midkenham and Richmond. Lord Chester-night promenades in illuminated gardens, field was wont to declare, that London was the best place to live in during summer, and that in winter there was no other; but the capital which was thus lauded, was not the heated, crowded Babylon, wherein the No. 19.-Vol. IV,

to rust and moulder in the country, amid people who had never even dreamed of the joys of London; knew nothing, saw nothing, and cared for nothing beyond their own fields, and a race or an assize

E

WANDERINGS IN THE LAND OF HAFIZ.
(Continued from Vol. III, page 255.)

THE SEVEN PARADISES OF ISPAHAN.

beauties!

In drawing near, indeed, the spell is in part dissolved; for time and neglect have been at work. We find gay pavilions, it is true; but like waning beauties, fading to decay. Yet there still remains the fantastic grace of the capricious architecture-the Asiatic, mingling with the Grecian-or with every added ornament that can be produced by colour, carving, gilding, and look

A STRIKING harmony of design prevails || palaces, repose on roses, and listen all day in the general aspect of these celebrated to soft music, the food of their immortal gardens; and one conspicuous feature, are the long vistas of Persian plane, called by the natives the chinar tree. Its branches are peculiarly umbrageous, and of a most beautiful foliage. These shady avenues are every where enriched with the most delicious fruit-trees and flowering shrubs, in full blossom and blow. Bright canals stretch down the fine perspective, usually terminating at their extremities in some magnificent marble basin, or brilliantly-ing-glass; prodigious quantities of the latter sparkling fountain, adding its flashing waters to the liquid mirror beneath. Formal as this outline may seem in description, the effect to the sight produced no sensation of stiffness; it was grandeur and elegance combined; and the whole scene, rapturously verdant, appeared the very haunt of freshness and repose, wooing the solitary wanderer to their cool and green retreats. Indeed the vistas and canals stretch to so extended a sylvan depth, that when viewed from any point, they seem parts of a vast wooded forest, intersected by a thousand gliding streams; and through this enchanted scene (for such might have been the model of the fabled wood of Armida) we descry, at various openings, the several palaces which give their appropriate names to each distinct compartment of this constellation of earthly paradises; or rather mimicry of fairy-land! for they glitter at the end of each umbrageous aisle, like so many structures of shining gems. Such is the impression when beheld from a distance; and all then is forgotten by the entranced gazer, but that he has read the "Arabian Nights," and that he is now standing amid the very scenes they tell of; or that the fairy Parabanoo has just wafted him into the centre of her garden of love, where her sweet sisters inhabit jewelled

species of decoration being inserted, in a thousand different forms, on every part of the buildings, and all shining at once under the unclouded sun, appear a mass of light, and, dazzling the sight with the imagination, leave the spectator lost in wonder. But the really most magnificent of these extraordinary mansions is the Chehel Setoon, or palace of forty pillars. The exhaustless profusion of its splendid materials reflects, by a masterly arrangement, not merely their own golden and crystal lights, but all the variegated colours of the garden; so that the whole surface of the building seems set with precious stones, moving and changing their hues according to the bright or shadowed aspect of the sky above them. In short, the scene might well be supposed the apparition of an eastern poet's dream; and here, my companion told me, Shah Abbas passed his happiest waking hours, with his beloved Azule. Her footsteps now, to my fancy, consecrated every spot, and the thought that her eye had rested on its objects clothed each to me with softer beauty.

In approaching, we found the entire front of the palace open to the garden; the roof being sustained by a double colonnade, each pillar measuring forty feet in height, shooting up from a pedestal formed