and there's the Campbells of Blackbrae, married into our family; and there's the Campbells of Windlestrae Glen, are not very distant by my mother's side."

Mary felt as if perforated by bullets in all directions, as she encountered the eyes of the company, turned alternately upon her aunt and her; but they were on opposite sides of the room; therefore to interpose betwixt Grizzy and her assailants was impossible.

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Possibly," suggested Mrs. Dalton, "Miss Douglas prefers the loftier strains of the mighty Minstrel of the Mountains, to the more polished periods of the Poet of the Transatlantic Plain,"

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"Or perhaps," said Miss Crick, "Miss Douglas prefers nature in its simplest, homeliest form; pray Ma'am," turning full upon the now bewildered Grizzy, are you an admirer of Crabbe's Tales ?" "Crabs' tails!" repeated Grizzy in astonishment, "I don't think ever I tasted them-Indeed I don't think our Crabs have tails;

but I'm very fond of crab's claws when there's any thing in them." Fortunately, the confusion of tongues was at this moment so great, that Grizzy's lapsus passed unnoticed by all but Mary, whose ears tingled at every word she uttered.

"Without either a possibility or a perhaps," said Mrs. Apsley, "the probability is, Miss Douglas prefers the author of The Giaour to all the rest of her poetical countrymen. Where, in either Walter Scott or Thomas Campbell, will you find such lines as these?

'Wet with their own best blood, shall drip

Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip!'"'

"Pardon me, Madam," said Miss Parkin; "but I am of opinion you have scarcely given a fair specimen of the powers of the Noble Bard in question. The image here presented is a familiar one; the gnashing tooth,' and 'haggard lip,' we have all witnessed, perhaps some of us may even have experienced. There is consequently little merit in presenting it to the mind's

eye: It is easy, comparatively speaking, to pourtray the feelings and passions of our own kind. We have only, as Dryden expresses it, to descend into ourselves, to find the secret imperfections of our mind. It is therefore in his portraiture of the canine race, that the illustrious author has so far excelled all his contemporaries: in fact, he has given quite a dramatic cast to his dogs :" and she repeated with an air of triumph

"And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall, Hold o'er the dead their carnival;

Gorging and growling o'er carcase and limb,

They were too busy to bark at him!

From a Tartar's skull they had stripped the flesh,

As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh ;

And their white tusks crunched o'er the whiter skull,

As it slipped through their jaws when their edge grew dull;
As they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead,

When they scarce could rise from the spot where they fed."

"Now, to enter into the conceptions of a dog-to embody one's self, as it were, in the person of a brute-to sympathise in its feelings-to make its propensities our own -to lazily mumble the bones of the dead,' with our own individual white tusks! Par

don me, Madam, but with all due deference to the genius of a Scott, it is a thing he has not dared to attempt. Only the finest mind in the universe was capable of taking so bold a flight. Scott's dogs, Madam, are tame, domestic animals-mere human dogs, if I may say so. Byron's dogs-But let them speak for themselves!

The scalps were in the wild dog's maw,

The hair was tangled round his jaw.'

Shew me, if you can, such an image in Scott ?"

Very fine, certainly !" was here uttered by five novices, who were only there as probationers, consequently not privileged to go beyond a response.

"Is it the dancing dogs they are speaking about?" asked Grizzy. But looks of silent contempt were the only replies she received.

"I trust I shall not be esteemed presumptuous," said Miss Entick," or supposed capable of entertaining views of detracting from the merits of the Noble Author at

present under discussion, if I humbly, but firmly, enter my caveat against the word 'crunch,' as constituting an innovation in our language, the purity of which cannot be too strictly preserved, or pointedly enforced. I am aware that by some I may be deemed unnecessarily fastidious; and possibly Christina, Queen of Sweden, might have applied to me the celebrated observation, said to have been elicited from her by the famed work of the laborious French Lexicographer, viz. that he was the most troublesome person in the world, for he required of every word to produce its passport, and to declare whence it came, and whither it was going. I confess, I too, for the sake of my country, would wish that every word we utter might be compelled to shew its passport, attested by our great lawgiver, Dr. Samuel Johnson."

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Unquestionably," said Mrs. Bluemits, purity of language ought to be preserved inviolate at any price; and it is more espe