""Twas but yestreen, nae farther gaen,

mawin,

Wi' less, I'm sure, I've hundreds slain; But deil-ma-care,

It just play'd dirl on the bane,

But did nae mair.

"Hornbook was by, wi' ready art, And had sae fortify'd the part,

* An epidemical fever was then raging in that. country.

†This gentleman, Dr. Hornbook, is professionally, a brother of the Sovereign Order of the Ferula; but, by intuition and inspiration, is at once an Apothecary, Surgeon, and Physician.

Buchan's Domestic Medicine.

shrill,

Or deep-ton'd, plovers, gray, wild-whistling o'er the hill;

Shall he, nurst in the peasant's lowly shed,
To hardy Independence bravely bred,
By early Poverty to hardship steel'd,
And train'd to arms in stern Misfortune's field,
Shall he be guilty of their hireling crimes,
The servile mercenary Swiss of rhymes?
Or labour hard the panegyric close,
With all the venal soul of dedicating Prose?
No! though his artless strains he rudely sings,
And throws his hand uncouthly o'er the
strings,

He glows with all the spirit of the Bard,
Fame, honest fame, his great, his dear reward.
Still, if some Patron's gen'rous care he trace,
Skill'd in the secret, to bestow with grace;
When B********* befriends his humble

name,

And hands the rustic stranger up to fame, With heart-felt throes his grateful bosom swells,

The godlike bliss, to give, alone excels.

"Twas when the stacks get on their winterhap,

And thack and rape secure the toil won-crap;
Potatoe-bings are snugged up frae skaith
Of coming Winter's biting, frosty breath;
The bees, rejoicing o'er their summer toils,
Unnumber'd buds an' flowers' delicious spoils,
Seal'd up with frugal care in massive waxen
piles,

Are doom'd by man, that tyrant o'er the weak, The death o' devils smoor'd wi' brimstone reek:

The thundering guns are heard on every side,
The wounded coveys, recling, scatter wide;
The feather'd field-mates, bound by Nature's
tie,

Sires, mothers, children, in one carnage lie:
(What warm, poetic heart, but inly bleeds,
And execrates man's savage, ruthless deeds!)
Nae mair the flower in field or meadow

To witness what I after shall narrate;
Or whether, rapt in meditation high,
He wander'd out he knew not where nor
why :)

The drowsy Dungeon-clock* had number'd two,
And Wallace Tower had sworn the fact was

(That Bards are second-sighted is nae joke, And ken the lingo of the spiritual fo`k; Fays, Spunkies, Kelpies, a', they can explain them,)

And ev'n the very deils they brawly ken them.)

Auld Brig appear'd of ancient Pictish race,
The vera wrinkles Gothic in his face :

He seem'd as he wi' Time had warstl'd lang,
Yet teughly doure, he bade an unco bang.
New Brig was buskit in a braw new coat,
That he, at Lon'on, frae ane Adams, got;
In's hand five taper staves as smooth's a
bead,

Wi' virls and whirlygigums at the head.
The Goth was stalking round with anxious

search,