NOTES. "The Alpine Horn." Reichard, a German writer, affirms that when the sun sets, the shepherd who dwells on the highest part of the Alps, calls through his horn, "Praise God the Lord!" and the other shepherds, hearing the sound, hasten out of their huts and repeat it. This continues for some time, and the name of the Lord is thus re-echoed from mountain to valley. When the sound ceases, all kneel down on the mountain, and their prayers ascend together to the throne of grace. The shepherd from the summit of the mountain then proclaims "Good night!" which is instantly repeated by the rest. They then retire to their homes. "But come not near the hollyhock." The flower of the hollyhock contains a species of poison, which is fatal to bees, and round its nectaries and petals several of these insects are frequently found lying insensible. Loch Awe. A lake in Argyleshire. My earliest years were spent in its neighbourhood; but I have not been there since I was a mere boy. "Ah! there my young footsteps in infancy wandered, My cap was the bonnet, my cloak was the plaid; On chieftains long perished my memory pondered, As daily I strode through the pine-covered glade." Byron. According to the Guide Books, Loch Awe and its vicinity, more perhaps than any other district in the Highlands, abound with memorials of former ages. The lake is thirty miles in extent, and of the average breadth of one, although in some places it does not exceed half a mile. It is surrounded by mountains finely wooded, and like many of the Scottish lakes, its surface is studded over with small islands, beautifully tufted with trees, and some of them large enough to admit of being pastured. Upon the island of Innis-Hail are the remains of a convent; and on a rocky promontory at the eastern extremity of the lake stand the magnificent ruins of Kilchurn Castle. This structure, which still exhibits the vestiges of a castellated square tower, was built in 1440, by Sir John Campbell, (second son of Argyle,) Knight of Rhodes, and ancestor of the Breadalbane family, and in later times it became, from the extensive view it commanded of the lake, the favourite residence of the chiefs of the family. In 1745 The Wolf. Wolves were once the scourge of England, and are still numerous in many parts of France. The Poem is founded on an incident which occurred some years ago in Picardy—the details of which were similar, with the exception that the peasant shot his mother instead of his sweetheart, in mistake Mount Horeb. Mount Sinai stands about 120 miles south from Jerusalem, and nearly 260 eastward from Grand Cairo in Egypt. The mountain is of no great extent, but extremely high, and has two tops; the western of which is called Horeb, and the eastern, which is about a third higher, Sinai. There are several springs and fruit-trees on Horeb, but nothing except rainwater Dryburgh Abbey. The ruins of Dryburgh Abbey are surpassingly interesting, from their antiquity, history, picturesque appearance, and more than all, from the Great Minstrel being buried there. The grave of Sir Walter Scott is in St. Mary's Aisle of the Abbey Church of Dryburgh, which is in the form of a cross, and the Poet lies in the left transept of the Cross, part of Sonnets on Danby's Picture. Mr Danby could scarcely have chosen a better subject for the display of his great powers than that of the Deluge. In this highly effective and beautiful work of art, an Angel of light is introduced, weeping over the lifeless bodies of a giant and a female, who, floating above the swelling waters on a hastily constructed raft, were crushed to death by a fallen tree. This part of the scene is evidently illustrative of that passage in Scripture which refers to the "Sons of God," who "saw that the daughters of men were fair, and they took them wives of all whom they chose." The "Sons of God," according to the best commentators, were a race of men favoured by God, but who generally incurred his displeasure, and perished with mankind in general. "Calmly the martyr Guthrie met his fate." Mr James Guthrie, minister of Stirling, was executed at Edinburgh, on the 1st of June 1661, for his adherence to the Covenant. In his dying speech, he solemnly declared,—"I take God to record upon my soul, I would not exchange this scaffold with the palace or the mitre of the greatest prelate in Britain." The Eagle's Nest. The incident here versified is founded on fact, although I have taken the liberty slightly to alter the details,—to change the scene, as it were, of the heroine's birth-place,—and to give her a name of my own choosing. The case is thus narrated by Dr Rush of Philadelphia, in his "Lectures on the Utility of a Knowledge of the Mind to a Physician," lect. xi.:— "During the time I passed at a country school, at Cecil county, in Maryland," says that eminent medical philosopher, "I often went, on a holiday, with my schoolmates, to see an eagle's nest, upon the summit of a dead tree in the neighbourhood of the school, during the time of the incubation of that bird. The daughter of the farmer in whose field the tree stood, and with whom I became acquainted, married, and settled in this place about forty years ago. In our occasional interviews, we now and then spoke of the innocent pursuits and rural pleasures of our youth, and, among other things, of the eagle's nest in her father's field. A few years ago I was called to visit this woman, when she was in the lowest stage of a typhus fever. Upon entering her room, I caught her eye, and, with a cheerful tone of voice, said only—'The eagle's nest!' She seized my hand, without being able to speak, and discovered strong emotions of pleasure in her countenance, probably from a sudden association of all her early domestic connexions and enjoyments with the words I "Our history records, 'with sorrow and with shame.'" Marshal Ney was shot in violation of a solemn capitulation—the Convention of Paris;—by the twelfth article of which an amnesty was granted to all persons in the capital, whatever might be their opinions, their offices, or their conduct. Marshal Davoust, who had concluded the Convention, explained it in favour of Ney,—and so will impartial history. The Duke of Wellington, however, on being appealed to by the unfortunate Ney, during the trial returned the cold and lawyer-like answer,—"That the Convention was merely a military convention, and did not, and could not, promise pardon for political offences, on the part of the French government." And so Ney, the most heroic of all the marshals of the French Revolution, was most foully murdered in the garden of the Luxembourg, to satisfy a point of mere military etiquette! Like the Dacian captive of old,— "Butchered to make a Roman holiday." That the Duke of Wellington did not at once strongly remonstrate against the illegality of the act was unfortunate for his own fame. It required but the saving of Ney's life to have made him the greatest man of his time. That the act "He was a sage old man who said." A sophist, wishing to perplex Thales, who was one of the seven wise men of Greece, asked him many difficult questions; to all of which the sage replied without the least hesitation. To one of those questions,—which was the following,—"What is the best of all things?" Thales gave this response: "Virtue; because without it there is nothing good." Such is the conviction of mere unassisted and stumbling reason, the voice of nature, and the unequivocal and direct assertion of a heathen philosopher.—Preface to Piety and Intellect Relatively Estimated, by Dr Henry Edwards.—An excellent work. |