*

THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT.
THE cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face,
They round the ingle form a circle wide;
The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace,
The big Ha'-Bible, ance his father's pride:
His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside,

His lyart* haffets wearin' thin and bare;
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,
He walest a portion with judicious care;
And “Let us worship God,” he says, wi' solemn air.

They chant their artless notes in simple guise;
They tune their hearts—by far the noblest aim :
Perhaps Dundee's wild warbling measures rise,
Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy o' the name,
Or noble Elgin, beets§ the heavenward flame,—
The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays:
Compared with these, Italian trills are tame;
The tickled ears no heartfelt raptures raise;
Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise.

The priest-like father reads the sacred page,
How Abraham was the friend of God on high;
Or, Moses bade eternal warfare wage
With Amalek's ungracious progeny;
Or how the royal bard did groaning lie
Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire;
Or Job's pathetic plaint and wailing cry;
Or rapt Isaiah's wild seraphic fire;

Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.

Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme,-
How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed;

gray.

† chooses.

Dundee, Martyrs, Elgin, names of psalm-tunes.

§ helps.

How He who bore in heaven the second name
Had not on earth whereon to lay his head;
How His first followers and servants sped,
The precepts sage they wrote to many a land;
How he, who lone in Patmos banished,

Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand,

And heard great Bab'lon's doom pronounced by Heaven's command.

Then kneeling down to heaven's eternal King,
The saint, the father, and the husband prays:
Hope "springs exulting on triumphant wing,"
That thus they all shall meet in future days;
There ever bask in uncreated rays,

No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear,
Together hymning their Creator's praise,
In such society, yet still more dear,

While circling time moves round in an eternal sphere.

Compared with this, how poor Religion's pride,
In all the pomp of method and of art,
When men display to congregations wide,
Devotion's every grace, except the heart!
The Power, incensed, the pageant will desert,
The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole;
But haply, in some cottage far apart,

May hear, well-pleased, the language of the soul,
And in His book of life the inmates poor enroll.

Then homeward all take off their sev'ral way;

The youngling cottagers retire to rest:
The parent pair their secret homage pay,
And proffer up to Heaven the warm request,
That He who stills the raven's clam'rous nest
And decks the lily fair in flowery pride,

Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best,
For them and for their little ones provide;

But chiefly in their hearts with grace divine preside.

From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs, That makes her loved at home, revered abroad: Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,"An honest man 's the noblest work of God;" And certes, in fair virtue's heavenly road, The cottage leaves the palace far behind. What is a lordling's pomp?—a cumbrous load, Disguising oft the wretch of human-kind, Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refined!

O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent!
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil

Be blessed with health, and peace, and sweet content!
And, oh! may Heaven their simple lives prevent
From luxury's contagion, weak and vile!

Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,

A virtuous populace may rise the while,

And stand, a wall of fire, around their much-loved isle.

O Thou! who poured the patriotic tide

That streamed through Wallace's undaunted heart,
Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride,
Or nobly die-the second glorious part,
(The patriot's God peculiarly Thou art,
His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward!)—
Oh! never, never, Scotia's realm desert,
But still the patriot and the patriot bard

In bright succession raise-her ornament and guard!

BURNS.

THE COTTAGER.

YON cottager, who weaves at her own door-
Pillow and bobbins all her little store-
Content though mean, and cheerful if not gay,
Shuffling her threads about the live-long day,
Just earns a scanty pittance, and at night
Lies down secure, her heart and pocket light:
She, for her humble sphere by nature fit,
Has little understanding, and no wit,

Receives no praise; but, though her lot be such,
(Toilsome and indigent), she renders much;
Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true-
A truth the brilliant Frenchman* never knew;
And in that charter reads, with sparkling eyes,
Her title to a treasure in the skies.
O happy peasant!-O unhappy bard!
His the mere tinsel,-hers the rich reward;
He, praised, perhaps, for ages yet to come,-
She, never heard of half a mile from home;
He, lost in errors, his vain heart prefers,-
She, safe in the simplicity of hers.

* Voltaire.

COWPER.

PART IV.

THE AGE WE LIVE IN.

MODERN INVENTIONS AND THEIR RESULTS.

THE age in which we live teems with the marvellous inventions of man. The early fruits of these inventions warrant us in anticipating from them, as they advance to maturity, the greatest and most beneficial changes upon society, art, and commerce, throughout the world. We see Watt's Steam Engine, with its gigantic arm, guiding the manufactures of millions along the great highways of the land, and resistlessly conveying the commerce of nations along the greater highway of the deep. We everywhere see our countryman's noble invention regulating the ten thousand looms of our manufactories, ploughing the deep strata of our firm-set soils, reaping the golden grain of our widespread fields, or gathering far beneath our feet the not less precious treasures of our coal, and lime, and iron mines; and as we gaze on the strange and varied scene, we are constrained to ask, Where is the seer's eye that can yet discover, or the prophet's tongue that can tell, what is to be the amount of the changes that the world is destined to witness, as the result of the invention of the Steam Engine?

Or we see the Electric Element, that for six thousand years seemed to go forth only at Heaven's bidding, and to flash before the human eye as the most awful of God's material agencies, at last arrested in its dread path, and employed to pass on its way as man's most ready and rapid messenger-communicating his thoughts with a tongue of fire, in a moment of time, in the