has drawn him away—and there were more of our professors who were nothing loathe to keep him company,-but that's under a rose leaf. But be of good cheer, already there are candidates for the honour of teaching young ladies the Linnæan System. A very promising young gentleman, whose name you know, and opinions in bread baking my aunt highly approves of, (and you and me have shown a similarity of taste when eating toast prepared on his plan,) is turning his powerful mind into the study of botany, with a view to the chair. He has intellectual stamina for any thing. Another exceedingly juvenile candidate, I know nothing off. Your mother and my aunt was heartily welcome to the copy of the new edition of Meg Dodds. I entirely agree with her, you may say, in regarding it as indispensable to a good kitchen, as a well tinned stewpan, or a good kail-pot. I should like of all things to dine with its real authoress: the good cheer at dinner, and the originality and humour after it, of which her volume gives assurance, would be at once a culinary and intellectual treat. -Your little friend, the arbiter of fashion, is off to its seat and centre. Yes, is in Paris, and already writes me, and requests that I tell you that bonnets are made, if possible, still larger, and that the prevailing colour is a curious shade of yellow, called after the other stranger in that metropolis, I mean the camel-leopardalis,-Giraffe-coloured: Walter Scott patterns are all the rage in Germany. On his return, I shall, I trust, dearest, be found not to have been neglectful "in the commission line."-Thine, faithfully, C. H. P. S.-By favour, I am able to send, along with your 20th "Ant," a copy of a very extraordinary little work which appears here on Saturday. Its title is a startling one-" The Confessions of an Unexecuted Femicide,"-but if you are not frightened by that from its perusal, you will find, especially at the beginning, for it pitches on too high a key to be sustained easily, some very powerful language, clothing fearful and towering thoughts. It is, however, an odd enough present to a lady, but you are so blue, that you would not forgive a neglect that would shelter itself under some quibble of excessive nicety. C. H. TO CORRESPONDENTS. A clever Epigram, ending with "And o'er the 'Sofa' spreads the wing of Eagle and of Heron," is only too complimentary. www Printed by James Curll, 55, Bell-Street, and sold by all Booksellers. PRICE THREEPENCE. THE ANT. No. XXII.-SATURDAY, 18th AUGUST, 1827. Original. BLIND ANGUS. To have "heard the chimes at midnight," was the social boast of one of Shakspeare's happy heroes, when recalling to the memory of his boon companions the hours of conviviality which they had spent together. We, too, have listened to "Tweedside," "Nancy's to the greenwood gane," ""The banks of Ayr," and "Roslin Castle," as their notes pealed forth in the solitude of " night's deep noon," as we have paced homewards that weary way which often lies betwixt the scene of festivity and the place of repose; and we have blessed the maker of the bells, and muttered something deservedly laudatory of our old musical preceptor, Mr. Weir, who supervises their " chimes," as we felt the instep that was wearied with dancing do its office in a freer style, while our pace kept time to the measure of these midnight notes, solemn although they were. But our homeward progress from festal merriment has been lightened by other sounds and sights of captivating interest. The One-Legged Bookbinder has, by the light of his look, and the music of his stump, equally charmed our ear and our eye in these hours of else uncheered solitude; "Blessings be on him and perpetual peace," as Wordsworth says. But we must not forget another ministrant to our pleasure, when we almost fancy that we have seen its last twinkle die away in the socket. Never did we turn our homeward step past the statue of the saviour of our constitution-if it was not later than twelve o'clockbut we have heard, coming along the silent streets, near or remote, the lonely music of blind Angus's whistle! Minstrel of midnight! melancholy man! what brooding inspiration seats itself upon thy darkened vision, bidding thee, with stealthy, but yet undeviating pace, wander along the streets, which, but for that, would echo only the half-hour grunt of the watchman, or the fitful voice of evil doers? In summer or winter-moonshine or mirk-calm or storm-heat or cold-still, constant as night itself, is whistling Angus to be found perambulating the streets, and whiffling out, so lowly, yet so distinctly, the wild and straggling notes of a music which he com poses as he paces along, yet which has, even in its irregularity, so much of character as to speak of pibrochs, laments, or love-lays, from the hills of which his spirit seems still a denizen. Let me picture him forth. Just at the foot of NelsonStreet, and immediately beneath the light from the Police lamp, you may perceive-for it is half-past eleven-the point of a stick projecting slowly, as if, like the Irishman's fowling-piece, it were made to turn round corners. It is Angus's; and in a minute and a half you will see himself follow up the discovery its tip has just been making; namely, that the path is "all before him where to choose." Hear the indescribable churm and chirrup of his everlasting whistle; and now, behold the man! Be neath the true Skye or Moidart bonnet of the aboriginal shape-(blue, and without a cheque in it-the modern innovation of some Stirling tartan weaver,)—and having that slope outwards and upwards from the brow, till it forms, with its abrupt descent to the slit and ribbon at the nape of the neck, an angular head covering, which curiously sets off the small and sharp features of the native Celt-you will see a set of features that indicate uncommon placidity, with no little shrewdness. The eyeballs are deep sunk and lustreless; but is there one can tell how they became so? For my part, I never had the heart to fathom the mystery which, in my apprehension, has ever clung around this Homer of the nineteenth century. You will remark that Angus is substantially and comfortably attired in the blue plaiding which, more than holiday tartan, is the material of Highland costume, let the Celtic Society do what they will. Yet Angus is a mendicant;-I cannot bring myself to say beggar, for though he will intermit his whistle if you place a penny in his palm, there lives not the man who ever was asked for alms by this Æolian wanderer. He feels that the appeal of his plaintive breath is all that is required, and is conscious that if he has received from the midnight passengers sums that have enabled him to hoard up a little reserve to meet asthma or other calamities, he has furnished them with an equivalent in recalling to the Highlander the music and the associations dependent upon it-of his native glens and mountains; to the civic Lowlander, the recollection of nights when he before has heard him in his lonely rounds, which, with light hearts and heads, loaded stomachs, and fascinating companions, can never return; and to the Student of Character, and the Hermit of Society, a picture unique if not bold, curious if not unparalleled. There is something in the simplicity of Angus's character and demeanour which protects him from insult. Those who give him nothing at least pass him by with commisseration. The harum-scarum bon vivant, whether he be as debonair as was Peter M'Naughton, that Toby Tosspot of our first bibbing recollections, or as riotous as whatever wit he may think lurks in breaking the lan tern or cracking the crown of a watchman, never suspects that it would be a good joke to capsize old Angus. Even the drunken cotton-spinner or bedaised carter, the lushy butcher and rolled up baker, seem to regard him as decidedly not a belligerent, but entitled to all the privileges of a neutral, and having a right to pilot his way through the streets, however they may deem their breadth insufficient for others besides themselves, and think that they alone should "keep the cantle o' the causey"-when half-seas over." Eh!-ho! aye,-de-deevil tak' me, Geordy, if there's no Angus, wh-whi-whifflin' awa' as weel as if his breath wou'd ne'er gang dune! Ha'e ye sic a thing as a penny left to gi'e the body? 'Od mmaun-(dIn the gutter!)-I min' o' him whiffling the night ye were married, an' that's no yestreen. Here, Angus; gi'e us Todlin' but and todlin' b-be-ben.'' One may often listen to an oration like this addressed to Angus long before he can hear it himself; but as for the concluding request, he can only give one of his quiet smiles in reply to it, for regular tune or repetition of precisely what he had before whistled, is out of the question with Angus. It is from inspiration, not from memory, that he blows, and in this he is honourably distinguished from the herd of ballad-singers and street fiddlers. An historical investigation into his musings would be a contribution to the science of mind; a series of his reminiscences, a collection of street anecdotes and convivial sketches of unrivalled interest. Has he not whistled when Prince's-Street was the centre of good eating and drinking, and perambulated when Jemmy Hamilton of Garthamlock limped his laughing way through streets made vocal by his tipsy cheers? Ah! could he tell the fortunes and the fate of the hundreds who have listened to his breathing lays-what a picture of mutation he could furnish! The wild youngster whom he nightly passed at the Tontine Close, sleeps in an early grave-what matters it whether in the island of St. Thomas or the crypt of St. David! The lonely orphan girl who brought her beauties to the Trongate mart, and has wept amid her heartless glee when she saw even the mendicant wend to a home that waited him-for she had none has festered into dust, corrupted even to a loathsomeness the very worm rejects! That jolly old toper who never exceeds his two tumblers at the Post Office Club, but never misses them, has met Angus every night of this the nineteenth century; and I too have now become so accustomed to his notes, whether I hear them through the calm of a summer night or the fitful breathings of a December storm, whether pacing homewards or seated in my cell, that when they shall echo no more, I cannot choose but deem there has passed away a wanderer and brother anchorite to THE HERMIT OF THE WEST. ΤΟ Long years have sped since on thy face I dared to bend my gaze, And I thought a noon of cloudless bliss would follow life's drear morn. ; Ah! when permitted on those charms-then but in infant bloom- JASPER. |