trose, were occupied by the local rank and fashion of two hundred years ago. Since then, they have experienced the usual gradations of inhabitants, from anxious business down to reckless poverty. As the Voults is a kind of thoroughfare between two principal streets, some remnants of the former are still observable; but so late as the commencement of the present century, it was one of the busiest and most important localities in the burgh. At that time, which happens to be the period of our story, the lower flats in some of the cellars were appropriated to shops and offices, whilst the upper afforded habitations to operatives of every description, including the handloom weavers of linen cloth, which branch of industry was then new among the manufactures of Dundee. never forgotten the devastating troops of Mon- their old-fashioned office, and it was believed the editor rather liked their intricacies, as they afforded no encouragement to the visits of strangers. Whether owing to that cause or not, the office was rarely visited; but to one of the opposite neighbours at least it was an object of ceaseless interest and admiration, and that was James Wotherspoon. James was deservedly looked up to by the humble circle of his acquaintances, on account of superior attainments in the two great topics of their mental world— politics and theology: none could give a fuller account of the Sunday's sermon, or more clearly interpret a newspaper paragraph: he was acquainted with every popular work on divinity that had been published north of the Tweed for the last two centuries; could estimate the abilities and orthodoxy of every preacher between Tay and Don, and knew the political bias of all the notables of his time, from Pitt to the author of the Rights of Man.' Nor was his knowledge of those matters so surprising as it appeared to his simple companions, considering that the only hours of his waking existence which he spent off the loom were devoted to what he called "studying the divines,” on which earnest pursuit a walk of ten miles to borrow an unread volume, or hear a celebrated preacher, was in his esteem as nothing; and the only coin he could or would spare, besides the purchase of life's daily neces saries, was expended in subscribing for the Saturday Express, which he read every week, from the title to the last advertisement, at the rate of so many columns per day, to the great edification of his son and enlightenment of his neighbours, most of whom were content to receive the news of the day second-hand, and with explanatory notes by either of the pair. The men of the loom in that neighbourhood were an industrious, intelligent class, though reckoned somewhat curious, and inclined to gossip; but there was no better specimen of these united characteristics in the order to which he belonged than James Wotherspoon the widower, who, with his only son and loom, abode for more than forty years in an attic room of Scrymgeour's Land, opposite the Hostel. Both these buildings are long ago numbered among the things that have been, but they were conspicuous at the period of which we speak. The former was a tall timber house of five stories, with an outside stair and balcony, said to have been erected by a branch of the once powerful family of Serymgeour before the Reformation, but in its last days inhabited by the poorer class. of artisans; and the latter a lower but larger and more solid stone fabric, traditionally reported to have served the different purposes of a chapterhouse, a mansion of the Lindsay family, and an inn kept by a Flemish refugee, when there was no other inn in Scotland. From the last-mentioned circumstance was derived the name which it retained through many a change of service, till at length, when the first French Revolution gave the news-reading world an impetus such as it never knew before, nor ever wanted since, the proprietor of a weekly paper, in high repute among local politicians, found more than sufficient accommodation for his establishment in the Hostel. A queer old place it was, with narrow windows, wainscotted rooms, and supernumerary doors in every corner, leading to winding passages and stairs, as if modes of egress and entrance had been the only study of the builders; but some of them were permanently locked up, and some forgotten through the disuse of years. The people engaged about the Saturday Express' were thoroughly acquainted with the ways of In A closely-resembling pair they were that father and son; and the Voults, in general, graphically expressed their sense of the only visible distinction by styling the one Big, and the other Wee Jamie, as their Christian names happened to be the same. Big Jamie was forty, and Wee Jamie was fourteen; but in size alone they were dissimilar: both were thin, muscular, and somewhat withered, with grave but curious faces, on which hard work, harder thought, and spare living, appeared legibly written. church each sat with the same reverent though watchful attention; in the streets each had the same cautious but rapid walk; and in the attic, where the one plied the shuttle, and the other wound the pirns or bobbins which supplied the wool, each wrought with the same air of determined and tireless industry. In modes of expression, shakings of head, and elevation of brows, the father and son were complete imitations of each other. The boy was a model of the man even in the matters of theology and polities; and a more regular, praiseworthy, but singular pair could not be found among the proverbially well-instructed artisans of their country. But there was one yearning which troubled the quiet of the Wotherspoons' days, like the repinings of Rasselas in the Happy Valley. The Saturday Express was their oracle — it was a Whig, and so were the two Jamies; they had read it with faith and understanding, week after week, from the first number, but they had never seen the interior of the printing office. "It's the temple o' science!" old Wotherspoon would exclaim, as he cast an adoring look from the attic window on the smoking chimney of the Hostel" the temple o' science, an' I may say the high place o' knowledge, from whence its glorious light is dispersed on all the nation. No but that there's mony mair of sic fortresses built again' ignorance in Glasgow and Edinburgh, ne'er speakin' o' Lun'on an' the distant capitals o' Europe; but it fears me there's few papers filled wi' truth an' sincerity like the Saturday Express; an' to think that that mighty engine the Press is doin' its work for unborn generations at the tither side o' the Voults, an' us ne'er saw the powers o' printin' in actual operation!" "Mr. Moodie's gay ill-willie to let in strangers," responded his son to one of these outbursts. Sie folks shouldna be in places o' power an' trust; but Hirslin' Jock, the deevil, telt me, in the speerit o' confidence, for clearing up to him how his majesty George III. had gaen clean wud, that his temper's amazingly molified sin the plunderin' o' Loretto; and we might hae a chance to see the work in a' its glory, if we wud jist step in some Saturday forenoon an' comport oursels discreetly." waylaid, and catechised by the junior partner touching the possibilities of success in case such an enterprise were attempted, at some indefinite time; and his replies being satisfactory, the father and son rose from their loom at an unusually early hour on Saturday, equipped themselves as much in Sunday fashion as they considered advisable on a week-day, and proceeded to put their design into execution. The Hostel was their goal; but by way of avoiding observation, and giving their courage time to rise, they trotted the whole length of the Voults and sundry adjoining streets, till at last, making a final sweep, they entered the mystic precincts in the train of a running newsman. Keeping close behind him, the Jamies passed through a long wide gallery a couple of empty rooms, and a fight of stairs with a door at the top, which admitted them to a large dusty apartment, where the broad and now wet sheets lay in piles, beside which several men and boys were at work, some folding, others putting on the covers, a pair of clerks were writing at a table in the centre, and a red-faced gentleman, loudly exhorting to haste, was pacing up and down when they made their appearance. It was near the hour for issuing the paper, and all engaged on the Saturday Express were that day unusually hurried: the arrangements of newspaper offices were not then so perfect as at present; some delay had occurred in the transmission of intelligence; the compositors had blundered beyond correction in the leading article; and Mr. Moodie, his official duties done, but still in the temper evoked by these trials, turned his eye on the elder Wotherspoon as he stood wondering at the scene, and demanded What's your business?" 66 66 My son an' me," said Jamie, bowing reverently in the presence of literature, but still true to his resolution, "jist cam in to see the glorious mystery o' printin'." 66 "There's no time to let you see it now," interrupted the editor. The hour of publication is almost past, and we are trying to get out a "We'll try it, Jamie; we'll try it," said his father with an emphasis that indicated resolution. "Mr. Moodie can do nae waur than refuse." It may be requisite to remark that Mr. Moodie was the gentleman in command at the Hostel, whose partiality for the absence of visitors has been already noted; but after a long and minute discussion of the information imparted by Hirs-supplement." ling Jock — such being the Voult's sobriquet of a boy in the establishment—it was at length arranged between the greater and smaller Jamie that a bold attempt to see "the dispenser of knowledge," as the former styled the press, should be made on the following Saturday. It was Wednesday when they came to this high resolve, and many a determined but anxious look was cast towards the Hostel from that till the appointed day: none of their neighbors were informed of the project the Wotherspoons were too prudent for that, as they knew that failure was possible; but Jock had been "Weel, I'm sorry," responded Wotherspoon. "I hae been a subscriber an' constant reader for a year and three-quarters." 66 "Ah, indeed!" said Mr. Moodie, manifestly softening. Well, just have the goodness to return in an hour or two, and you'll see it quite comfortably. Good-morning, sir." 66 Good-morning, and mony thanks," said Jamie, stepping, as he believed, to the door of entrance, which closed behind him and his son the next moment with a bang; and they hurried down the steps, determined to wait the leisure of the press in some of the rooms below. But both thought the staircase wonderfully darker than when they ascended. "I'ts lang to get doon; an' guid guide us, there's nae room here," said the boy, as they reached the last step, and found themselves at the entrance of a narrow and dingy passage. "I doubt we're aff the gaet. They say the auld place is fu' o' holes and bores. But we'll no gang back to yon ill-grained craytor till the time's up. There's surely some door to be got?" said his father. With this comfortable hope they entered the passage. It was long and dimly lighted by small slit-like windows near the roof, which were thickly covered with cobwebs; and, as old Wotherspoon remarked, "nane of the place was owre clean." But it grew darker towards the end; and pressing forward with a kind of desperate fear, both felt, for they could not see, that their further progress was opposed by a strong and fast shut door. The father seized the handle, and attempted to turn it with all his strength; but it would not move. "Deil a bit o' us can get out," said he, planting his feet more firmly on the floor, to give greater force to his second effort; but a cry of terror and amazement burst at once from father and son as the boards beneath them suddenly gave way, and both were precipitated fathoms deep into the darkness below. Fortunately, the surface they reached was damp earth, and the boy's fall was broken by alighting on his father's breast. "Guid be praised, there's nane o' yer banes broken!" was the first exclamation of poor Wotherspoon, as his son, recovering from the first shock, scrambled up. "But whar in a' the worl' are we?" It was a most natural inquiry under the circumstances. They were in utter darkness; but by that keen perception which necessity sometimes calls forth in extraordinary situations, they soon discovered that the dull damp atmosphere which surrounded them was that of a wide and silent cavern or cellar, for whose bounds they sought in vain. Hand in hand the father and son groped and stumbled on, in hopes of meeting with either door or steps; but nothing could they reach but the damp earthen floor, with here and there a loose stone, a fragment of crumbling wood, varied with old bottles and pieces of broken pottery. All fear of Mr. Moodie and his subordinates was by this time swallowed up by greater terror. They raised their voices, and called for help with all their might; but the hollow and prolonged echoes that followed their shouts had something in them so overpoweringly fearful that they were soon terrified into silence. "Lord have mercy on us!" said his father. "In the heart o' the auld monk's voults, faither," said Jamie. "Listen, yon's the street above us;" and the pair could now hear a rumbling sound overhead, like broken and distant thunder. "Well, if it's the Lord's wull, there will be a way of escape for us: let us pray to him,” said the father. And scarcely had he uttered this pious sentiment, when a faint gleam of light appeared in the distance, but only sufficient to give a dim idea of the vast extent around them. "There must be some outlet, some chink there," cried Wotherspoon; and his son uttered a cry of joy, which became dreadful in its echoes. "Lord grant we may win till't," continued the old man, and both pressed on. Feeble as the light was-in fact the merest glimmer — it served as a sort of beacon for their sight, now in some degree accustomed to the darkness; but suddenly Jamie felt his father plunge forward, and at the same moment grapple at him with both his arms. The weight dragged him down, and the boy felt himself literally stretched on the ground, the extremities of his body resting on firm earth, and the middle portion grasped by the arms of his father over a deep circular chasm, in which the old man hung suspended. "It's a well, Jamie !" cried the old man, flinging out his feet on all sides, in search of some resting-place, no matter how small; but in vain. The mouth of the pit through which he had fallen was evidently covered with a large flag, having an orifice of something less than three feet in diameter in the middle. This the boy ascertained with his hands, which were still free; and a dripping sound far below, as of dust shaken down by their exertions, falling in deep water, proved too plainly that Wotherspoon's first idea was correct, and that he hung suspended over a deep old well. "If I let you go, Jamie, do you think you could fin' your ain way to the light, lad? Do you see it still?" The boy replied with a shout of such wild and horror-stricken entreaty for his father to hold on, that the vaults replied as if with a hundred voices. "Weel, Jamie," said the father, when the fearful sounds died away, "I canna haud lang; but the Lord might help us yet;" and both earnestly invoked that Providence on which the last hope of human nature hangs under all forms of faith and fortune. "I see whar the light comes fra: it's in at a chink aboon a great stone pillar just beside us," cried Jamie, interrupting a petition ; “ an' here's a hole in it you could run a stick up just at my very fingers. Losh! but it's like the speaker's pipe in the wall o' Ramsay's Land.” Squeal up it Jamie — squeal up it!" vociferated his father; and with an exhortation to keep a guid grip, the boy writhed himself round so as to reach the orifice, and bawled with all his | strength, "Help! help! my faither's droonin'!" "What's that?" cried the editor's clerk, who still remained in the business room with a couple of pressmen, winding up the last of the week's work, and rather anxious to get finished, as again and again from under his desk came a shrill whistling cry of "Help! help! my faither's droonin!" "It maun be the deil," said the oldest of the men, making a stride towards the door. The clerk sprung to his feet and seized the desk, which was fortunately movable; the other man lent his assistance; but the voice still sounded on, and the clerk saw the paper, which happened to be loose on the wall, vibrate with the sound. He tore it off in an instant, and discovered plainly the small circular opening of a speaking-tube in the lath and plaster, from which the cry proceeded. "That weaver and his son have n't come back yet," said the clerk, as an indefinite idea of the unused doors and the places to which they might lead crossed him. "No yet?" said the elder pressman, letting go the handle of the door. "Do ye ken, sir," he continued, pointing to one situated almost behind it, "whar that leads? As I'm a leevin' man they went out of it; but Mr. Moodie was sae awfu', I ne'er mintit to speak." "Then God help them, they have got into the old cellar, or maybe the vaults!" said the clerk; "and how will we find them? Run and tell Mr. Moodie, or the police. Hollo! where are you," he shouted down the tube. Never did a sound, of all the news they had heard in the course of their mortal exi tence impart such joy to the hearts of the two Jamies as that brief inquiry. The father uttered a pious thanksgiving, and the son replied, "Hingin' owre a well, and near the droonin', in the heart o' the auld monks' voults!" esteem in which the Wotherspoons were held, was evinced by the eagerness of their neighbours for their assistance. But the most efficient help was that of the pressman already mentioned, who pointed out the door by which the pair had made their exit. The staircase and passage beyond were speedily explored, and the light of some dozen lamps and torches cast on a wide trap-door, which still yawned above a broken and long disused ladder. More certain means of descent were soon procured, and a considerable party went down into what was supposed to be an old wine cellar, divided from the great vaults by old partition walls, which in many places had fallen away, leaving what seemed a boundless extent of "darkness visible." The lights reached Jamie's eye first, and the shouts of him and his father guided the searchers to where the former lay literally across the mouth of an ancient draw-well, supposed to be as old as the Hostel itself, and more than a hundred feet in depth; whilst the latter, with his arms tightly clasped round his son, hung suspended within a few feet of the water, which was afterwards found to occupy more than half its depth, having accumulated there, it was supposed, for centuries. By means of ropes and willing hands, the pair were extricated from their perilous situation, and Jamie the younger pointed out the speaking-tube in the pillar, which had been the means of their deliverance. Why its opening was situated so near the ground, or what communications it was originally intended to convey, were mysteries which employed the speculations and surmises of the whole Voults for some time; but the constructors had left no record, and the most ingenious conjectures were hazarded regarding the convenient proximity of the well to the wine barrels in the days of the good Fleming, from whose occupation the Hostel received its name: yet a complete solu tion was never obtained. By special command of the proprietor, that unlucky door in the printing-office was finally nailed up; and after the tale of the Wotherspoons' mischances became public, Mr. Moodie, to his entire satisfaction, was relieved of the "Hold on, then, as long as you can," respond-visits of the curious. It was some days before ed the clerk," for there's help coming." Jamie uttered an earnest exhortation to all sorts of hurry, but none replied; the clerk had gone after his two assistants to alarm the neighbourhood. In a short time the more public parts of the Hostel were filled with the surrounding population, some with lights, some with ladders, and others with various weapons to break through walls and doors. The news had spread like wildfire "that Big and Wee Jamie were smotherin' in the Voults;" and the general James Wotherspoon and his son recovered from the exhaustion and injury consequent on that Saturday's adventure, but neither ever again returned to "the temple of science." It was even remarked in afterlife that both entertained an unaccountable horror of printing-offices in general; and when such matters were mentioned, the father was wont to observe, with a long and deep inspiration, "The press! ou ay, it's a mighty engine o' knowledge; but we had a mercifu' escape." - Chambers' Edinburgh Journal. THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH. The Life and Adventures of Oliver Gold Compelled to peruse numerous biographies compiled rather than written, it has often been the subject of cur hope that some writer with original powers, a lively fancy, and above all a dramatic genius, might be induced to cultivate this branch of literature. We read the Lives, as they are termed, of men, and retain only remembrances of battles and treaties, negotiations or intrigues; if literary men, of the success of their publications, their bargains with booksellers, and their introduction to patrons. Indeed, it has been a stereotyped phrase from Rowe downwards, that there is nothing to tell of literary men beyond their place of birth, list of publications, and time of death. Matters, probably for this reason, made the subject of most tedious discussions, and swelled into an absurd importance. This treatment of literary genius is of a piece with the conduct awarded to them on all occasions. To the regular student and common sense men of the world, they are a kind of "lusus naturæ," and how they produce their works is as great a mystery as their individual existence. Indeed, we have heard it said, and that by some who had a right to rank amongst them, that this mystery was desirable, and that to know their works is sufficient. To some extent this may be true. If we are only to have a few isolated actions, or a few doubtful and unimportant facts palmed off by glozing phraseology, and a loose chronology, as that involved and intricate mass of emotion and thought life of a man; then, let us take the utterances in an author's works as his existence, and leave the fleshy frivolities to return to the dust from which they sprang. But more than this may be done; and more than this the heart as well as the intellect desires; and we have works in our own, and more especially in the French and German, which contain fair portraits of men. The impertinence of Boswell has preserved to us one man with a "taxidermistical" fidelity unequalled; and which, by the aid of other helps, probably brings us as near to a truthful judgment as one human being can have of another. To give, however, a whole length portrait of a life, with all the minuteness of a Mieris, and the strength and breadth of a Titian, is a task almost unattempted. To do for biography what | has been aimed at (and, we think, successfully.) for history, by Thierry, and Michelet, and Lamartine, and in our country by Carlyle to raise up a view of past transactions, and infuse into the dry bones of chartularies and the catalogue of defunct proceedings a true vitality: to animate with the powers of the poet and the dramatist the mere lifeless facts collected by what is termed history; to adhere, with a glowing fancy and inspired imagination, to the cold circumscription of the rigid fossils that remain to tell of the past and to extract truth from ashes, and pictures from relics, is a triumph of genius only hoped for in modern times. To do this for biography has been felt to be more particularly desirable. Such an exposition of individual humanity would be more interesting, perhaps more serviceable, than of concrete humanity. Every writer of judgment, every mind of taste, and every lover of truth, has continually present to him the inexorable nature of time How little escapes: how fastly into his abyss-like wallet all things are thrown: how everything withers and receives the taint that is left by his noxious steps. It seems, when contemplated closely, an impossible effort to wring anything in a perfect state from his ruthless grasp; but the immortal mind struggles with him, and in spite, preserves something. Art alone wages successful war with him: and Art-potent in literature as in marble—will still preserve some lineaments of the departed great. How dimly, with how much distortion, with what imperfection, mere events are stated, daily experience shows us; and the comparison of any description, with any reality, will tell us how little we can rely on the such narrative. Art alone, then, can give a resurrection to the departed, and reproduce the extended idea that once was a man. It is not the collecting but the distillation of the facts that gives them force. It is not the mere recombination of them into a coherent appearance that renders them valuable, but the reuniting the fragments into a whole, which shall be in accordance with the few notes that remain of the intricate score that was once a harmony. The patient investigation, the large acquirements, the intimate knowledge of the surrounding facts, the capacity to appreciate every allusion, the fancy to illustrate, the imagination to combine such materials, and perhaps, more than all, the skill to express to the general comprehension, in clear language, the compound image thus raised, are qualities not likely to frequently meet in |