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1819.]

THE SHANDRYDAN.

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stices. "But give yourself no uneasiness, Dr. Magnus, on that score; we are aware of the awkwardness of a lady passing the night with so many Contributors, and of the censoriousness of the world, many people in which seem determined, Doctor, to put an unfavorable construction on every thing we do or say. Besides, your excellent lady might find our Tent like the Black Bull Inn of Edinburgh, as it was twenty years ago, when Dr. Morris first visited it, 'crowded, noisy, shabby, and uncomfortable.' Now the inn at Braemar is a most capital one, where the young ladies of the family will pay every attention to Mrs. Magnus. We have already dispatched a special messenger for Dr. Morris' shandrydan, and as it is a fine moonlight night, you can trundle yourselves down to bed in a jiffey.

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The sound of the shandrydan confirmed our words, and we all attended Mrs. Magnus and her husband to the road, to see them safely mounted. Our readers have all seen Peter's shandrydan*. a smart, snug, safe, smooth, roomy, easy-going concern, that carries you over the stones as if you were on turf; and where, may we ask, will you see a more compact nimble little horse than Peter's horse Scrubwith feet as steady as clock-work, and a mouth that carries his bit with a singular union of force and tenderness?

"I fear that I cannot guide this vehicle along Highland roads," said Dr. Magnus; " and I suspect that steed is given to starting, from the manner in which he keeps rearing his head about, and pawing the ground like a mad bull. My dear, it would be flying in the face of Providence to ascend the steps of that shandrydan."

While the orator was thus expressing his trepidation, the Standardbearer handed Mrs. Magnus forward, who, with her nodding plumes, leapt lightly up beneath the giant strength of his warlike arm, and took her seat with an air of perfect composure and dignity; while Odoherty, adjusting the reins with the skill of a Lade or Buxton, and elevating his dexter hand that held them and the whip in its gnostic grasp, caught hold of the rail of the shandrydan with his left, and flung himself, as it were, to the fair side of her who had once been the mistress of his youthful heart, but for whom he now retained only the most respectful affection.

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"Mount up behind, Dr. Magnus," cried the Adjutant, somewhat impatiently; your feet will not be more than six inches from the ground, so that in case of any disaster, you can drop off like a ripe pease-cod-mount, I say, Doctor, mount."

The Doctor did so; and the Standard-bearer, giving a blast on Wastle's bugle, and cutting the thin air with his thong several yards beyond Scrub's nose, away went the shandrydan, while the mountains of the Dee echoed again to the rattling of its wheels.

*In Peter's Letters there was a good deal of quizzing respecting Dr. Morris's shandrydan, of which a sketch was given, showing it to be a one-horse gig, on two high wheels, running lightly, and capable of holding two persons.-M.

The Tent had lost its chief charm-so "the dull and dowie " Contributors prepared for repose. In the uncertain light of Luna, we saw the tall, white, ghostlike shirt of Tickler towering over the lower statures; but in a few minutes, the principal Contributors to this Magazine were, like Mr. Constable's authors, sound asleep, all but the Editor. What with the rheumatism, which always gets worse in the warmth of bed; and what with the cares of our profession, our mind was absolutely like a sea full of waves, we will not say running mountains high, far from it, but a vast multitude of active smallish rippling waves, like those that keep chasing each other to the shore, for several hours at a time, till it is high water at Leith. As we lay in this condition, in the midst of the snore of the Tent, a footstep came to our bed-side, and a soft voice whispered, "Maister, Maister! are you wauken?" We sat up and saw the face of our incomparable caddy, John M'Kay. "Here's a letter frae Lord Fife, as braid's a bannock. Black Hamish, that procht it, says there's an awfu' steer doon at the ludge." We went into the moonlight, where, by-the-by, we saw Kempferhausen very absurdly sitting on a stone, staring at the sky, as if he had just then seen it for the first time in his life, and read the Thane's letter. We then returned to bed to revolve its contents in our mind, and to make fitting arrangements for the morning. The letter was short, for his Lordship uses but few words, and these always the very best,~

MY DEAR SIR-TO-MORROW PRINCE LEOPOLD WILL VISIt the Tent -Yours truly, FIFE.

The Last Day of the Tent.

HAVING been thus kindly prepared by the letter of our friend the Thane, we ordered a reveillé to be blown about six o'clock in the morning, and hinted to the more active members of our assembly, that it would be proper for them to start in order to replenish our larder with a quantity of game sufficient for the entertainment of these most honored guests. Nor did our suggestion require to be enforced by many words: Morris, Wastle, Tickler, Odoherty, Ballantyne, Hogg, &c., &c., had all started from their couches long before we (fatigued as we had been with our manifold exertions) thought proper to be awake-and when at last we aroused ourselves, the interior of the tabernacle was quite deserted around us. Wrapping ourselves in a blanket, we were stepping forth with the view of bathing (as had been our wont) in the sweet waters of the Dee-but on emerging from the Tent, a very unexpected phenomenon met our

eyes.

Within a few yards of our Pavilion, a very remarkable, and certainly a very reverend-looking old gentleman, bearing no resemblance whatever either in outline or habiliments to any of the present members of our fraternity, was seated in a large chair, with a long clay pipe of the genuine Dutch fashion in his mouth. He was arrayed in a full suit of dignified black, with the black silk apron, now worn by few except the Bishops and Deans of the English church, suspended in ample folds from his capacious middle. On his head was a large shovel hat, garnished with a black rose in front, and so low and loosely did this hat sit upon the cranium, that it was evident there was no wig below.

On the right of this surprising personage the Ettrick Shepherd sat squat on the earth-his nether parts protected from the cold soil, yet wet with the morning dew, only by the intervention of his gray maud. He also had a pipe in his mouth-not a long white pipe like the dignitary-but a short little stump of some two inches in length, and all over japanned as darkly and as brightly as if it had been dipt in a pot of Day and Martin's imperial blacking.

Slow, solemn, and voluminous were the puffs that issued from the lengthier tube-quick, vehement and lusty were those of the Shepherd-never did a piece of hogg's flesh seem to be in a fairer way

of being cured, in the true Suabian method, than his nose, were the process to be continued much longer. Opposite to these stood Seward and Buller, each with his gun in his hand-the whole group had the appearance of being earnestly occupied in some conversation, and for a moment we almost scrupled to interrupt them.

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Seward was the first who observed us, and he immediately beckoned us to join the party. Here," cried he, "comes the illustrious Editor of the first and last of Magazines; and here, "pointing to the stranger, is the most illustrious of all the visitors that have yet intruded upon the encampment of Braemar-here, Mr. Editor, is the great Dr. Parr!" But for the want of his wig, we could have been in no need of this information; but it was really with some difficulty that, after the fact was announced to us, we could bring our eyes to recognize in the features before us those of the FACILE PRINCEPS OF ENGLISH SCHOLARS; and yet it was wonderful, surely, that it should have been so, for many a pipe had we smoked together in the days of old at Charles Burney's. But nothing, the fact is certain, produces so great a change on a man's aspect as the addition or subtraction of a periwig. Who could recognize in the cropped and whiskered Lord of Session as he jostles his way down the High-street, or in the spencered and gaitered Lord of Session as he ambles on a shelty along Leith Sands, the same being, whose physiognomy had but a few minutes before appeared to him amidst all the imposing amplifications of curl and frizz, lowering in more than marble abstraction over the whole living farrago of the side-bar? A pretty woman also becomes very dissimilis sibi when any whiff of the wind, or the dance, or the chandelier, snatches from her the luxurious masterpiece of Urquhart or Gianetti, and exposes to the gaze of her admirers nothing but a pair of red ears projecting from a little tight cap of yellow flannel, or a bare cranium, with here and there a few short ragged hairs, red or gray, in form and disposition resembling the scanty covering of some discarded tooth-brush. These are both sad metamorphoses in their way. But neither of them so complete as those of the Bellendenian Parr.* The change had scarcely been more

now,

* Dr. Samuel Parr, who died in 1825, was one of the last of the truly learned men of the Johnsonian era. He was not the very last, because there is now [1854] as President of Magdalen College, Oxford-he was elected in 1791-Dr. M. J. Routh, "a scholar and a ripe one," who is nearly a century old, and whose intellect burns as brightly in the lamp of life with a flame as clear and steady as ever it did in youth. Parr, whose highest church dignity was a prebend's stall in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, always considered himself badly used in not having been made a bishop, during the short time (1806-7), that the whig leaders, his personal friends, were in power. No doubt the ultra-liberality of his politics was one barrier. His own assertion was, "Had my friends continued in power one fortnight longer, Dr. Hungerford was to have been translated to Hereford, and I was to have had Gloucester. My family arrangements were made." With all his scholarship, which was large, he did not accomplish any individual literary work of any great merit. He wasted his talents and learning on pamphlets, with the exception of his character of the late Charles James Fox, in two volumes, which fell far short of public expectation, and his Latin preface (in which he sketched the characters of Burke, Lord North, and Fox) to a new edition of the third book of Bellendenus. This has been considered the most successful modern imitation of the style of

1819.]

SCRIBBLE'S EPISTLE.

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appalling, though Circe herself had been there to change the Man into a Hogg.

“All hail !” said we, "and right welcome! This is indeed a most unexpected honor-what can have been the means of bringing Dr. Parr to the valley of the Dee?" "Mr. Editor," returned the Doctor, bowing aperxwraτws (for no English word can do justice to the placid courtesy of that classical reverence)—" You do injustice to your own fame when you meet your visitors with such an interrogation as this. Why did I come to the valley of the Dee?

Ω κλεινοτάτην αἰθέριον οίκισας πόλιν,

Οὐκ οἷς θ' όσην τιμὴν παρ' ἀνθρώποις φέρει,
Όσες τ' εραςὰς τῆσδ' της χώρας ἔχεις.

Why should you think it so wonderful that one man should have some curiosity in regard to things for which all men have so great admiration? Of a surety, you are the most modest of Editors. And then consider, man,” added he, in a light tone, and turning the bowl of his pipe towards the Ettrick Shepherd, "you have many loadstones. Here am I that would not have grudged an inch of my journey although its sole recompense had been this Sicilian vision." The allusion was, no doubt, in chief, at least, to him whom Dr. Morris has called "the Bucolie Jamie”—but surely that vision must have been rendered a thousandfold more interesting to the illustrious Grecian, by finding with what affectionate admiration it was already regarded by the youthful but still kindred spirits of Seward of Christ Church, and Buller of Brazennose. Seldom, we speak for ourselves, have we been more unaffectedly delighted than by the contemplation of this hearty homage paid by these pure and classical spirits of the South to the wild and romantic genius of the Nomadic North. But Hogg was made to unite all men. In him Cam and Isis are found to

worship the inspiration of the haunted Yarrow.

We were very happy at this moment; and accepting Seward's offer of a segar, sat down to enjoy more at leisure the society of this interesting group. But sad was the surprise, and sudden the shock, when looking round, we beheld, stiff and gory upon the sod beside us, Hector-even the faithful Hector-the peerless colley of the Shepherd!"Ah! Editor," sobbed the Bard, "weel may your look be owercast, when ye see that waefu' sight-waes me! that Hector should have deed; and waesomest of a', that he should have deed by mine ain hand." Truly 'tis a most unfortunate accident that has occurred," said Seward; our friend here was up with the earliest, and had got so far as those black firs yonder, on his way to the

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Cicero. He has been called "the Brummagen Johnson," for his imitation of the Doctor's manner and conversation. He talked a great deal, with a curious lisp, and was pedantic, dictatorial, and egotistical. He wore what was called a buzzwig, because Bentley and Johnson had been so covered, and he was, in his time, the most inveterate smoker in England.-M.

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