of heaven and yearth to help him to find out his run-awa' daughter, that had decampit wi' some neerdoweil loon of a half-pay captain, that keppit her in his arms frae her bedroom-window, up twa pair o' stairs. Every father and head of a family maun hae felt for a man in his situation, thus to be rubbit of his dear bairn, and an only daughter too, as he tellt us owre and owre again, as the saut saut tears ran gushing down his withered face, and he aye blew his nose on his clean calendered pocket napkin. But, ye ken, the thing was absurd to suppose that we should ken onything about the matter, having never seen either him or his daughter between the een afore, and no kenning them by headmark so, though we sympathized with him, as folks ought to do wi' a fellow-creature in affliction, we thought it best to haud our tongues, to see what might cast up better than he expected. So out he gaed stumping at the ither side, determined, he said, to find them out, though he should follow them to the world's end, Johnny Groat's House, or something to that effect.

Hardly was his back turned, and amaist before ye could cry Jack Robison, in comes the birkie and the very young leddy the auld gentleman described, arm and arm thegither, smoodging and lauching life daft. Dog on it it was a shameless piece of business. As true as death, before all the croud of folk, he pat his arm round her waist, and caad her his sweetheart, and love, and dearie, and darling, and everything that is sweet. If they had been courting in a close the gither on a Friday night, they couldna hae said mair to ane anither, or gaen greater lengths. I thought sich shame to be an ee-witness to sic ongoings, that I was obliged at last to haud up my hat afore my face, and look down; though, for a' that, the young lad, to be sich a blackguard as his conduct showed, was weil enough faured, and had a guid coat to his back, wi' double gilt buttons, and fashionable lapells, to say little o' a very weil-made pair of buckskins, a little the waur o' the wear to be sure, but which, if they had been weil cleaned, would hae lookit amaist as gude as new. How they had come we never could learn, as we neither saw chaise nor gig; but from his having spurs on his boots, it is mair

than likely that they had lightit at the back-door of the barn frae a horse, she riding on a pad behint him maybe, with her hand round his waist.

The faither lookit to be a rich auld bool, baith from his manner of speaking, and the rewards he seemed to offer for the apprehension of his daughter; but, to be sure, when so many of us were present that had an equal right to the spulzie, it wadna be a great deal a thousand pounds when divided, still it was worth the looking after; so we just bidit a wee.

Things were brought to a bearing, howsomever, sooner than either themsells, I daur say, or onybody else present, seemed to hae the least glimpse of; for, just in the middle of their fine goings-on, the sound of a coming fit was heard, and the lassie taking guilt to her, cried out, "Hide me, hide me, for the sake of gudeness, for yonder comes my old father!"

In he

Nae sooner said than done. stappit her into a closet; and after shutting the door on her, he sat down upon a chair, pretending to be asleep in a moment. The auld faither came bouncing in, and seeing the fellow as sound as a tap, he ran forrit and gaed him sich a shake, as if he wad hae shooken him a' sundry, which sune made him open his een as fast as he had steekit them. After blackguarding the chield at no allowance, cursing him up hill and down dale, and caaing him every name but a gentleman, he haddit his staff ower his crown, and gripping him by the cuff o' the neck, askit him what he had made o' his daughter. Never since I was born did I ever see sich brazen-faced impudence! The rascal had the brass to say at ance, that he hadna seen word or wittens of his daughter for a month, though mair than a hundred folk sitting in his company had seen him dauting her with his arm round her jimpy waist, not five minutes before. As a man, as a father, as an elder of our kirk, my corruption was raised, for I aye hated leeing, as a puir cowardly sin, and an inbreak on the ten commandments; and I fand my neebour, Mr Glen, fidgetting on the seat as weel as me; so I thocht, that whaever spoke first, wad hae the best right to be entitled to the reward; whereupon, just as he was in the act of rising up, I took the word out of his mouth, saying, "Dinna believe him, auld gentleman

-dinna believe him, friend; he's telling a parcel of lees. Never saw her for a month! It's no worth arguing, or caaing witnesses; just open that press door, and ye'll see whether I'm speaking truth or no."

The auld man stared, and lookit dumb-foundered; and the young man, instead of rinning forrit wi' his double nieves to strike me, the only thing I was feared for, began a lauching, as if I had dune him a gude turn. But never since I had a being, did I ever witness sich an uproar and noise as immediately took place. The haill house was sae glad that the scoundrel had been exposed, that they set up siccan a roar o' lauchter, and thumpit away at siccan a rate at the boards wi' their feet, that at lang and last, wi' pushing, and fidgetting, and hadding their sides, down fell the place they ca' the gallery, a' the folk in't being hurl'd tapsy-turvy, head foremost amang the saw-dust on the floor below; their guffawing sune being turned to howling, ilka ane crying louder than anither at the tap note of their voices, "Murder! murder! haud aff me; murder! my ribs are in; murder! I'm killed-I'm speechless! and ither lamentations to that effect; so that a rush to the door took place, in which everything was overturned-the door-keeper being wheeled away like wildfire the furms strampit to pieces-the lights knockit out-and the twa blind fiddlers dung head foremost ower the stage, the bass fiddle cracking like thunder at every bruise. Siccan tearing, and swearing, and tumbling, and squeeling, was never witnessed in the memory of man, sin the building of Babel; legs being likely to be broken, sides staved in, een knocked out, and lives lost; there be ing only ae door, and that a sma' ane;

so that, when we had been carried aff our feet that length, my wind was fairly gane, and a sick dwam cam ower me, lights of a' manner of colours, red, blue, green, and orange, dancing before me, that entirely deprived me o' common sense, till, on opening my een in the dark, I fand mysell leaning wi' my braid side against the wa' on the opposite side of the close. It was some time before I mindit what had happened; so, dreading scaith, I fand first the ae arm, and then the ither, to see, if they were broken-syne my head-and syne baith o' my legs; but a', as weel as I could discover, was skin-hale and scart-free. On perceiving which, my joy was without bounds, having a great notion that I had been killed on the spot. So I reached round my hand, very thankfully, to tak out my pocketnapkin, to gie my brow a wipe, when lo and behold the tail of my Sunday's coat was fairly aff an' away, dockit by the haunch buttons.

Sae muckle for plays and play-actors-the first and last, I trust in grace, that I shall ever see. But indeed I could expect nae better, after the warning that Maister Wiggie had mair than ance gien us frae the pupit on the subject; sae, instead of getting my grand reward for finding the auld man's daughter, the haill covey o' them, nae better than a set of swindlers, took leg-bail, and made that very night a moonlight flitting; and Johnny Hammer, honest man, that had wrought frae sunrise to sunset, for twa days, fitting up their place by contract, instead of being weel paid for his trouble, as he deserved, got naething left him but a ruckle of his ain guid deals, a' dung to shivers.

MR EDITOR,

ON the whole you have treated Sheridan handsomely enough, made a fair distinction between his bright days and his black ones, between the time when wit came of itself, and the time when he was obliged to send for it. But let me say one word for what the world thinks the least defensible point about him. His payability.. He is, of course, written down as little

better than a very pleasant swindler, whose purpose was to pay no man a shilling, whom he could put off with a joke, and whose life was a long trick worthy of the best of his own Jews.

Now, you may rely upon my knowledge of the fact, that there was no man more paying than Sheridan, when he had a shilling in his possession ; that he actually was always paying, and in many instances, through mere

agony at being dunned, has paid the same debt over and over. The more impudent demand was, as might be expected, the first paid; and impudence was so notoriously effective with this very sensitive man, that it habitually swept away his means of discharging the true creditor.

It is allowed, that he was unfit for all business that required punctuality, accuracy, or economy; in short, that he was what so many men are, a bad man of business, and this even went so far, that he is said to have never kept a receipt nor a key! Yet, to what did the debts of this proverb of wastefulness and dishonesty amount at last? Why, to the inordinate sum of five thousand pounds! There are five thousand very honest and well-charactered gentlemen in the realm, who would think themselves the luckiest fellows alive to find their debts cleared down to five thousand pounds.*

As to his personal liberality, which you seem to doubt, the question is not easily answered. The most liberal are seldom those whose bounty is the most easily traced. It even becomes a maxim, that the most public givers are the least liberal. But so far as I can ascertain, Sheridan was charitable, and frequently destitute as he was of money from his struggling theatre, he did his best to relieve those who came in his way. Theatrical life is miserably fertile in such applications, and we should have heard heavier complaints of the hardness of his heart, if he had rejected the tenth part of his applicants.

But his public life is more tangible. You altogether doubt his capability of any political nobleness. The man who has seen what public life is made of, may well be inclined to doubt the existence of any one generous, manly, or independent feeling in that school. When every man is struggling for himself, selfishness becomes, from a principle of policy, a principle of nature. It must have been a powerful, original repulsion to bowing the neck, that makes any man stand straight under the heavy harness of party.

But can we forget the MUTINY AT THE NORE? The nation in anxiety and terror, the Ministry appalled and wavering in the sight of the most for

66

midable catastrophe that had ever threatened England. The Whigs exulting in the prospect of the fall of Ministers, even though they fell with the national ruin. Fox, like another leading spirit of evil, lifting his crest, and triumphing in the success of his temptation! Then came forward Sheridan; in the face of his party, in defiance of his party, in the full exposure to sneers and cries of dereliction and tergiversation, he declared, that in such a time the old bonds and principles of parliamentary opposition should not lie on the mind of any honourable man; he stood forth among the faithless, faithful only found; avowed that, notwithstanding his continued and full recognition of all his old friendships and pledges, he could for the time see no difference between the sides of the House, no party but the country; and offered his services to any man who would save it. These were not things done in a corner. They are public documents, to be found in the records of the time, and at that period they were acknowledged by the unanimous gratitude of the empire. They make no figure in the pages of his biographer. But they have an honour that will be as permanent in the hearts of his countrymen.

The independence, spirit, and disdain of all hypocritical party clamour in the very crisis of the country, undoubtedly gave the turn to the time. I will not say, that the empire must have perished without him; nor even that the Ministry might not have felt themselves strong enough in public confidence, to have taken every measure that subsequently extinguished the mutiny. But I limit myself to the plainest and simplest facts, that there was infinite public consternation_at the sight of this novel hazard; that the Ministry were perplexed by the fear that the evil was not confined to the fleet, but might be but the first explosion of a series of revolutionary convulsions; that they looked to unanimity in the House, to strengthen the executive; and that in the House they found scorn, exultation, and resistance on the part of the Whigs ; till Sheridan, in what I will persist in believing the nobleness of his nature, and the spirit of native fearlessness and

patriotism, walked forth from their ranks, to offer himself to the public service, and shamed his colleagues into following him.

His wit is more easily disputed. Yet, in an age when every man was emulous of conversational brilliancy, what man equalled him? How infinitely meagre are the relics of the Selwyns, Walpoles, Hares, Tookes, and Townshends, to the heap of negligent and unassorted splendours that Sheridan has left behind him! His published bon-mots are the least of this careless treasure, which lies scattered among the memories of his perishing companions. His day, too, was remarkable for theatrical rivalry, by a higher class than have since attempted to sustain the falling honours of the stage. Burgoyne, Andrews, Topham, Cumberland, and others of fortune, fashion, and scholarship,-yet which of them came within bow-shot of this humbly born, unfashionably bred, and indigent man, even in his youth?

His plays are as vivid this moment

as they were the hour they came sparkling from his pen.. Can this be said of any of his contemporaries ?— competitors he had none.

His great political crime was, that he flung the Whigs out of the saddle, into which they have never been able to clamber since. There are many, however, who will not look upon this as an inexpiable sin. He threw into contempt à little cabal of aristocratic insolence, that in their moderation would not have left the King the appointment of a turnspit in his own kitchen. With the nation before their eyes, they instituted a degraded traffic for pension and place in the Household; they were detected, scorned, driven out, and this was done by Sheridan! This was his crime. But a crime like this ought to be inscribed on his grave, and the panegyric will outlast the fleeting and prejudiced opinions of any man who attempts to strike his pen through the memory of Brinsley Sheridan.

LANDLUBBERS like us have no business to write Naval Sketches; but perhaps it may be in our power to review Naval Sketches tolerably well, nay, better than any seaman in the fleet. The British critic-tar would astound and perplex the reader by his profusion of nautical terminology, and set him completely adrift. We, in our comparative ignorance of Neptune's mother-tongue, must make use of our own land-lingo, more or less generally understood ashore. Besides, seaman's wit, except in original composition, is apt to take aback the sails of a landsman's imagination. Authors, in general, review their own books very ably; witness our periodical literature. Yet we could bet a trifle, that the clever Captain now before us could no more keep his book in the mind's eye, without making lee-way, than we could wear his ship in a gale, without carrying

C. R.

away every stick. In all probability, the few nautical terms we have now ventured on are all misplaced and misapplied; yet how expressive! Let a coxswain criticise, and he will curse us down to the lowest depths of the breadroom; but "all the ladies now on land" will admire our genius, and own that no subject comes amiss to the Editor of Ebony.

There, now, is the writer of our Man-of-War's-Man -as able-bodied and able-minded a seaman as ever furled a top-gallant-sail; yet could he write a critical article about his own Memoirs? Not he indeed. He would forthwith begin "spinning a long yarn," and then clap such a load of canvass on Maga, that he would run her down, head-foremost, in deep water, till the St Andrew's cross, at the main, would disappear like a flying fish in the foam. But set him on

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board the Tottumfog, and he keeps her "large" before the gale of popular favour.

Smollett described sea-life gloriously, for Smollett was a seaman. He was up to the whole thing, and Bowling, Crawley, Pipes, and Trunnion, are tars from pig-tail to pumps. You forget when you go on board with the surgeon, that there is any land. You feel as if you had been afloat all your days, and you have only to put out your tongue to catch the lingo. His very boxing bouts on board ship are entirely different from those on shore; as you will see, by comparing Random's set to with Crawley (not young Rump-Steak of the London ring,) with Strap's turn-up in town. Smollett, no doubt, was up to the rigging in all its cordage; but it is with the crew rather than the vessel that he deals; and the delusion is complete. You forgive the press-gang that hauled you away from the hop, and swing yourself asleep in your hammock, forgetful of wife and children. But Smollett wrote in a bitter spirit, and even in the intense truth of his picture, you desiderate that simple heroism that you unwillingly believe can ever be absent from a British man-of-war. The whole is a satire yet even in a satire we cannot but love the sons of the ocean.

Cooper, the American novelist, a man of unquestionable genius, and himself a naval officer, (whether like our author an officer of rank, we know not,) has given us some spirited, even splendid, pictures of naval life. His individual characters are all somewhat exaggerated, which is a great pity, for they are well conceived and contrasted; but his descriptions of all sorts of manœuvres, in all sorts of weather, and at all hours of day and night, are at once truly nautical, and truly poetical. We never were more interested in our lives than in his account of the escape (after a running fight) of the American frigate and sloop from one of his Majesty's squadrons. The bear ing down of a ninety-four-gun ship, though a stormy and clouded night, is magnificent. Cooper exults, as he ought to do, in the glory of the American Stars; yet he is not unjust to the character of our navy, and there is nothing about him of the braggadocio. He has doubtless been both in battle and in wreck, and is a man that would despise a cork-jacket. We hope he has

not a wooden leg-but if he has, may he dot and go on for half a century. He seems a man worthy of having sailed with Decatur.

But, Allan Cunninghame, Allan Cunninghame, why must you have the ambition to meddle with the history, real or fictitious, of Paul Jones? You may have occasionally braved the dangers of the Solway Frith; in smack or smuggler, sailed from Dumfries to Skimburness, or even served for a day on board a herring-man, in the navy of the Isle of Man. But what will become of you when you have to fight on paper the duel of the Serapis and the Bon-homme Richard? Why, you write at the best like a Horse-marine. In that beautiful song of yours, "A wet sheet and a flowing sea,"-you absolutely know no more than a tailor the meaning of the word "sheet." You think it a sail, and so do all land-lubber bards; but it is no such thing, as you may learn from the skipper of any dirt-gabbert; and,-nay, Allan, how could you, with your eyes open, maintain, that when a ship sails from an English port, "and the billow follows free," that she can "leave England on the lee?" The thing is impossible. To have done that, in any sense, your ship should have been on a wind. Besides, to leave England on the lee," would be no easy job in any wind that ever blew; for, while part of England was to leeward, part, we presume, would be to windward; and, finally, "on the lee" is not a nautical expression at all; nor, if it were changed into one, would it speak what you intend to say,-that the shore seemed to drop astern. Now, Allan Cunninghame, if you cannot write three lines of verse about a boat, without perpetrating all manner of blunders, what is to become of you when America shows "the little bit of striped bunting," and the meteor-flag of England braves the battle and the breeze?

Allan Cunninghame knows our admiration of his genius, and our affection for himself; but the above diatribe dribbled from our pen, as we thought of the most absurd contempt with which, in his "Scottish Songs," he chooses to treat Dibdin. Dibdin knew nothing, forsooth, of ships, or sailors' souls, or sailors' slang! Thank you for that, Allan-we owe you one. Why the devil, then, are his thousand and one songs the delight of the whole