It is now the reign of "Good Queen Anne." With a daughter of the house of Stuart on the throne, it was deemed a fit time for reconciling the Jacobites to the new settlement; and an act of indemnity was passed in favour of all the Scottish adherents of the court of St Germains who should return and take up their abode at home, as loyal subjects, within a time limited. The number and peculiar character of the persons who migrated in a considerable stream from the Continent to Scotland, professing to take advantage of the indemnity, but, as the suspicious asserted, making it the shield of their designs, created considerable alarm. Lovat, Sir John Maclean, and some other Highland chiefs of suspicious note, passing to their respective countries, were conspicuous in the migratory group. The governor of Fort-William received intimation that the clans around him were to be gathered for a vast hunting-match, or driving of the deer-the very form in which the insurrection of 1715 began. There is no doubt that the Jacobites hoped to make an effective insurrection. Documents were found containing musters of the clans, and there was an understanding that the court of France would give hearty assistance when the internal organisation was complete. The great Duke of Berwick was spoken of as commander. Some commissions and letters of credence were actually issued by the court of St Germains to persons travelling to Scotland, though, of course, documents so extremely dangerous to those who possessed them would not be very numerous, nor would they be profusely exhibited. One man who possessed some of these documents, and also a secret note of confidence and trust from the exiled queen, arrived in London, and came in contact with Ferguson. He was a young, squarebuilt, clumsy, good-natured looking fellow, with a frank, unpolished demeanour; yet there was something in a shifting, watchful eye, and even in the unnecessary profuseness of his hearty manner, that made the visitor apt to revise the first impression of his character, and feel less easy in his presence. This person was introduced to Ferguson by a citizen of London named Clerk, who lived near the Monument; "and though his name was then concealed from me," says Ferguson, "yet I was made acquainted that he was one who had not only many friends in Scotland, but that he reckoned himself secure in being protected by some of the chiefest men in the government there." He says elsewhere, that his visitor was represented as "a man of bulk and grandeur." Ferguson seems to have been extremely annoyed by the mystery in which this personage concealed his identity and his objects. He spoke largely of his knowledge of all plots and devices that had been suggested for forty years. He could compromise the Duke of Marlborough in Britain, and knew enough to bring the Duke of Berwick to the block in France. Still the stout, young, good-natured stranger would not reciprocate, or afford any clue to his own designs. The two men thoroughly distrusted each other. In some scraps of conversation between the stranger and a friend, who had accompanied him, the latter was strongly recommended to consult Ferguson as an able and knowing adviser, "though he cautioned him not to trust him too far; because, he said, he knew he had a pension from St Germains, and he did not know but he might have a pension from the court here."* Ferguson now bent his whole energies to the discovery of this provoking mystery. Rumours were afloat about a deep-laid conspiracy: he saw that the stranger held the wires, and he must get them into his own hand. His eagerness was the more excited by finding that the stranger had to slink noiselessly one morning down to Gravesend in a boat, and thence find his way to Holland. Through means of Clerk, Ferguson got a letter transmitted to the fugitive. It had an important enough appearance to call forth an answer. That answer gave Ferguson a clue to a conveying *Collection of Original Papers about the Scots Plot, 1704-from which the information about this incident is derived. point in the channels through which the stranger's multifarious correspondence passed, and he laid a dexterous trap for intercepting all his letters. The result was eminently satisfactory. In the first place, the mysterious stranger turned out to be Simon Fraser of Beaufort, better known as Lord Lovat. But this was a small matter in comparison with the further revelations of the correspondence. It appears that when Lovat came with his credentials from the court of St Germains, they were suspiciously received by his Highland friends. They would not trust him; and he resolved, since he could not head a rising in the Highlands, to use the documents he possessed in a little plot of private vengeance. For this purpose he got secret access to Queensberry the Commissioner, and, by tampering with the documents, made it appear that they were destined for the Duke of Atholl, and some other persons, then of unquestionable Revolution principles. Queensberry, when this story was told to him, felt himself possessed of a portentous secret, and he preserved it until an opportunity should arrive of using it to trip up Atholl and his friends, and plunge them into disgrace. But in the meantime Ferguson had discovered the whole machination, and, chuckling at his superior sagacity, communicated to Atholl a warning against the pitfall prepared for him. Queensberry was overwhelmed with ridicule, and found it necessary to resign his high office. The revelation, though it was in some measure a personal one, alarmed the Governments both of England and Scotland. No one doubted that Ferguson knew more than he chose to tell about the intrigues of the Jacobites, or that he would have been himself deep in this plot, had he not found that Lovat was untrue to its authors. He was rigorously examined by the Secretary of State; but to no purpose. He was confronted with a more candid and loquacious intriguer, Sir Thomas Stewart, who had been connected with him in his machinations; and we are told, in official authority, that Sir Thomas" fell into great compliments to Ferguson, in order to prevail with him to be ingenuous. He put Ferguson in mind of his having often said that if King James came back he would put a rope about his neck, and fall down at his feet to ask his pardon; and advised him now that they should join, and both together fall down in the same manner at the Queen's feet and beg her pardon, and deserve it by an ingenuous confession;" but this was not the method in which the plotter conducted business. Ferguson was extremely vain of this affair, and he published an account of his conduct in connection with it. In this document, forgetful of the Act of Succession, he avowed that his reason for not encouraging the Scottish plot was, that there was a Stuart on the throne, and that it was time enough to perform his duty when it was occupied by another family. This in itself was next door to treason. "The lords," says Tindal, were highly offended with Ferguson's papers, and passed a severe vote against those lords who had received such scandalous papers, and had not ordered him to be prosecuted, which they directed the Attorney-General to do. Ferguson never received the least punishment.” Of course not - the harmony and unity of his strange history would have been utterly spoiled if he had. 66 But The last notice we find of our hero is, in the words of Wodrow in 1713, "He is yet alive, in great want, and upwards of ninety years, and hath nothing but what he begs." He died in 1714. CARMINA LUSORIA. SCRAPS OF RHYMES. แ so many years' interest that he went and hanged himself. Versifier is happy that he had not found it before, for the search for it has led him through the sweetest mazes in the garden of poetry. Whatever the world may think of him, he now thinks well of himself. "Eupŋka” iз not only on his lips, but in his heart. He is the master of joy, and overmasters grief. He couples it to verse, and makes it go his own pace. He rhymes over the very grave, and thinks he has invented such a sauce as one might eat one's grandmother withal! It is only the versifier by instinct, by natural temperament-spontaneous, unpaid, unhired WINTER is over. March, that came in like a lion, has been led out like a lamb, tamed by Lady-Day. Even the east wind is away, "with sighing sent." Turbulence is subsiding; the Whigs are deposed; Manchester has only pretended to "raise the wind," and cannot bluster. There is at least a promise of something good. Hope and spring are beckoning. The serpent of Whig misrule has relaxed his hold, and summer invites us to clear off the slime it had left on the limbs of society. Youth begins to be its own spring; and age to "babble of green fields." All we want is to shun retrospect, and be happy. For looking backward, says Lord Kaimes, is like walk-of whom this, however, can be ing backward; it is not the way man should go. The path is growing_green that leads to pleasant woods. Let us fancy the little stream a Lethe, lie down by it, look into it, just to see how ugly we are with all the past year's troubles on our faces; and, 46 so to interpose a little ease"-one dip, and look again, how much better do we appear. We are prepared for a month's cheerfulness, and accept amusement. "I nunc et versus tecum meditare." And why not? Happy is the versifier. Great is the man whose whole want is centred in a rhyme- and to whom, when found, it is more precious than the philosopher's stone. He can take his eyes off the Koh-inoor diamond, and look upwards far out of its blaze, and fetch an idea brighter to his own fancy, and jingle it with delight. He may go in an omnibus without being robbed of it. It is his posy, without the burden and risk of the ring. They will not cut off his finger to get at it; yet he longeth that everybody should read it. He who finds a rhyme finds a treasure, and is contented with it: he is not like him who, finding a purse of money, was so vexed at not having found it before he had lost said; he who wraps him up in his own liberty, and rhymes as freely as he would whistle, and recks not his brain to stretch. Phobean credentials on Moses and Company's vestments-such may braggingly "twitch his mantle blue," and swear by Pindus that he has clad him in the habit of poetry; but it is sheer "Devil's dust," and, like Nessus's garment, burns and corrupts to the very bones, though he be a Hercules that wears it. Miserable wretches are they of the needle-and-thread poems, "tenui deducta poemata filo." They have it not ready at their fingers' ends, to pare off leisurely with the outer edge of the nail, but must bite to the very quick ere a rhyme will come, and then it comes unwillingly, and smutched, and ugly. No; the happy versifier must be a "freegoer." He makes no toil of his pleasure. In very childhood, "He lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." He is sui juris-one who can sit by his own winter fire, look into the grate, and see all Parnassus red in its glory, and the nine Muses beckoning to him from the summit; while Apollo is playing the fiddle, and Mer cury, god of eloquence, beating time; and when all crumbles and falls away, it is as if only the sacred hill had opened, and revealed Helicon at its source. Real summer is all his own; but he need not absolutely wait for that, for he makes for himself a moveable almanac. Autumn paints for him-he breathes inspiration from the breezy hills. He sees flowers at his footstep, and salutes them as if they had sprung up to wish him good day; but of all men, he has a thankful heart, and that is his greatest blessing. But are there no exceptions? Well, well-may be so. "Exceptio probat regulam." Now I fear I have left thee, happily self-deluded versifier, behind me-and have overtaken the poets, who look somewhat surlily, and seem to bid me go back. Henceforth, therefore, will I be humble the more so because I am about to confess myself a versifier, but a poor pedlar in rhyme. I have, too, my pack with me, and am ready to show my wares, and can boast they are honestly come by. Here they are. Where shall I have my humble exhibition? Yet, on second thoughts, not humble either- - for Maga's crystal palace will lend my goods a lustre; and, let me proudly say, that is a crystal palace that will never be taken down-and will have within it its hortus siccus and its hortus renascens, to the last days of England and England's language. When Mercury saw his ugly son, the new-born Pan, was he not proud of him? Beauty was so common, that the rarity of ugliness was preferable to a lower grade in beauty. So what did he do with him? He tied him up in a hare-skin, made a bundle of him, and flew with him to Olympus-laid his package at the feet of Jupiter and the gods in council-and, untying it, cried out with the greatest gravity, "Look ye all at my beautiful child." So it is with me. I have brought my bundle; it contains the bantling of my brain. No presuming ChildWisdom, or Wisdom-Child, beat out, like Pallas, from the front of a Jupiter, with a hammer-but a simple thing, only born for amusement, and that began to sing as soon as he was born. Olympians ye, that sit judges on Maga's hill, would it please you to hear him sing? If he have not the power to keep you long awake, your dreams may be the pleasanter for his music. The hurdy-gurdy may at times succeed Apollo's lute. The grinding organ is alone intolerable. Take my rhymes, and pardon the prosy prologomena. But this notion of the child singing reminds me of an anecdote which I must tell. I suppose, originally, all the boys on the foundation at our great schools were intended to be choristers as well as scholars. Whether through fear of any present or future Whistons I know not, but the form of choosing is kept up at Winchester College. The grave ones, the wardens of the two colleges of St Mary at Oxford and Winton, with the two Posers as they are called, the Informator or head master, sit assembled in the election chamber. The candidates appear one by one in this solemn assembly, and are examined in some Latin book. This ended, the warden (at the time I speak of, it was the Bishop of Hereford, Huntingford) always said to the boy these formal words, "Sing, child-sing." The boy was expected not indeed to sing, but to say in reply, "All people that on earth do dwell," and there was an end of it: his competency was proved, and the examination over. But it happened on one occasion that a boy-candidate entered the election chamber untutored as regards this custom. He took the command in its literal sense, and, having strong pipes, set up lustily either "Black-eyed Susan,' or "When I was a boy in my Father's Mud Edifice," or some such matter, to the astonishment of the solemn Divan. What became of gravity I don't remember-for the two wardens had a very awful gravity; but it may easily be imagined that the Posers were posed to keep theirs in any equilibrium. Now, as this anecdote has taken me back to school days, it may not be amiss if these Carmina Lusoria begin with my poor attempts upon the Latin of a school-usher, who, if a sloven in dress, was the neatest of men in his verse that pleasant Latinist, Vincent Bourne of Westminster School. But as a portrait is best taken after long acquaintance, and many sittings unpremeditated, and Vincent Bourne deserves being charactered, I am tempted to offer the effigies of the man by the hand of Cowper, contained in a letter to Newton. He says— "I love the memory of Vinny Bourne. I think him a better Latin poet than Tibullus, Propertius, Ausonius, or any of the writers in his way, except Ovid, and not at all inferior to him. I love him, too, with a love of partiality, because he was usher of the fifth form at Westminster when I passed through it. He was so good-natured, and so indolent, that I lost more than I got by him; for he made me as idle as himself. He was such a sloven, as if he had trusted to his genius as a cloak for everything that could disgust you in his person; and, indeed, in his writings he has almost made amends for all. His humour is entirely original. He can speak of a magpie or a cat, in terms so exquisitely appropriated to the character he draws, that one would suppose him animated by the spirit of the creature he describes. And with all his drollery, there is a mixture of rational, and even religious reflection at times; and always an air of pleasantry, good nature, and humanity, that makes him, in my mind, one of the most amiable writers in the world. It is not common to meet with an author who can make you smile, and yet at nobody's expense; who is always entertaining, and yet always harmless; and who, though always elegant and classical to a degree not always to be found in the classics themselves, charms more by the simplicity and playfulness of his ideas, than by the neatness and purity of his verse; yet such was poor Vinny; I remember seeing the Duke of Richmond set fire to his greasy locks, and box his ears to put it out again." And may we not say poor Cowper too? He made some sad mistakes with his own rich mind; and he made one here in his estimate of the effect of Vinny Bourne upon himself. The amiable Cowper thought his playful pieces sinful; and too lightly viewed the playfulness of the usher's genius, which certainly coloured his own. Nor did he rightly understand the kind of indolence which, at that time probably, if not during their lives, infected both. Both might truly have said, in the words of another playful genius "Strenua nos exercet inertia." Busiest thoughts pass through the mind, and many brightest and best are arrested as they pass, and become instantly a creation for immortality, when the body is most inert. The limbs are mastered and spell-bound by the wand-touch of the genius within, and move not; and so it is often with those who meditate immortal verse. I would even apologise for those who are in the busy indolence of hatching rhymes. Can you not imagine poor Vinny Bourne, just on the point of fitting with nicest joinery his compact and neat cut Latin, appearing lost, and indolent in the from his delight, to mark or to convert extreme, when called off unwilling the dullest blunders of the dullest of the Alumni of that school of scholars? And that attitude of the heedless body, which bespeaks so entirely the absent and busy mind, is too commonly called indolence. No; it was a mistake of poor Cowper's: he lost nothing by Vincent Bourne, and gained much. And he caught the usher's spirit; for how admirably he translated him—as, for instance, that happy transfusion into pleasant English of the "Corni cula." Had Vincent Bourne lived to read the scholar's "John Gilpin," he would have put it into exquisite Latin, and have overcome a difficulty which several modern Latinists have attempted not very successfully. It was in the busy idleness of a Bourne, and lighted mostly on those mere rhymer that I took up Vincent pieces which were shortest, and therefore best suited to the humour of the hour. I thank Cowper for the portrait, and cheat myself into the fancy that I have spent some pleasantly idle hours with the usher, for which I beg forgiveness of those matter-of-fact philosophers who look upon versifiers as belonging to the unproductive classes-as the drones who ought to be extinguished by brimstone. Here is a "Concetto," a somewhat extravaBourne "—as Cowper said, so I say— gant compliment. "I love Vinny the more for his not infrequent praise of art. He loved pictures. He had before written on the portrait-" In Effigiem Dominæ Catharine Hyde." "RECONCILIATRIX. "Crescentes laudes Natura inviderat Arti; Et sibi rivalem nescia ferre parem; |