WHAT IS GOING ON. No. II. SCENES IN EDINBURGH. SCENE I.-A high parlour of Paul Pry, Junior's Bureau,-Time near sunset :-Round crimsoncovered table, loaded with pamphlets, newspapers, new books, writing materials, &c. &c.—drawn close to the balcony window, commanding a stretch of view from Barnbougle to the Bass Rock,-the Firth, with its capes and islands-the shores of Fife.-Fore-ground, Queen's Street Gardens,— groups of ladies and children under the trees-military music heard at a distance. PRESIDENT OF THE AGGREGATE. Have done with your Dutch capers, Blarney:-come in from the balcony, and take a seat quietly with Girnel and myself, till the rest congregate. BLARNEY, cutting a caper. Cries, where's the coward that would not dare PRESIDENT. A fair prospect and a goodly :-the more delightful that all may share, and enjoy it so far. And so, John, you got rid of your lease. PLAIN JOHN CAMPBELL, or John of the Girnel. And in good time, sir, the Laird got rid of me, as you will own. PRESIDENT. Come! tell us your story, John-Partly only I know it-Got the tack off your hands, exactly when the Laird, or his agents, could not squeeze forth another pund Scots -or another drop of sweat from the shrunken muscles of an over-toiled, heart-broken man,-too common a case of late years in Scotland. JOHN OF THE GIRNEL. I mainteened the conflict to the last gasp, sir, as behooved an honest, though an unlucky man-every term falling farther and farther back-aye hoping-aye deceived. The high rent was partly my own blame,-yet a man, farmer-bred, cannot just pack up his alls, like a mechanic, and try a new place. It was high-lying, cauld, hungry land, that never should have been brought under the pleuch, and never would, but in daft times, that's the truth ont. I'm not blaming the Laird, he was, maybe, farther misled than ourselves, as the upshot will prove. If we, the tenants, were shooled out first, his day draweth nigh,-while, with Heaven's blessing on a better-directed course of industry, both those of my neighbours who crossed the great waters, and my own family have righted and are coming round in our ain hamely way. COUNSELLOR BLARNEY. Draining is the leading clause in all modern Scottish tacks; but what has become of that puppy, young Pry,— Paulus Secundus, and his house-warming. Is this to be a dry-lipped sederunt? PRESIDENT. Praise be blest!—while the laird,-well, "God help the rich folk, the poor can beg." JOHN OF THE GIRNEL. I own that when the cart, with the bits of "remnants of our household gear," as James Grahame sings, wi' the wife and bairns on it, came to the Hill-head, and the dividing of the waters,-where I stood, as it crept on, I could have cursed him, myself, and all mankind, forgetting, and indeed having at that period scanty know. ledge, of the evil system that had despoiled, and was yet to bring us low all alike,-entailing upon us worse than the primeval curse. Yet even as I hung on, looking back upon the spot where I had spent my means and my labour, and my prime of manhood, in fruitless endeavours, better thoughts came to me. One cannot look back, in a parting hour like yon, on his ain and his forebears' ancient hamestead, with a bitter spirit, any more than with a dry fu' May morning of our dowie flitting. When I overtook the cart, it had come in sight o' this rich spread o' the Lothians, and all that this night lies between us and the Lammermuirs,-even to yon far-off fertile shores. The beast, I'm thinkin', took a thought I was lingering ower lang behind, who should have been in front of the battle, -for its no easy diving to the depths of a kindly brute's thochts that's been lang about a man's hand, and he stood still. COUNSELLOR BLARNEY. Sagacious as the wise ass of Peter Bell,-and far before Balaam's, stood in reproof. JOHN OF THE GIRNEL. Ye may judge, President, that the gudewife read my thoughts even better than the naig, though little speech had passed between us on the dolefu' morning that saw us COUNSELLOR BLARNEY. With lingering steps and slow, PRESIDENT. Quiet, Barrister!-I am much interested, John. JOHN OF THE GIRNEL, Weel, she just looked earnestly in my face; and then said, in her ain quiet way, " O, gudeman, where is your Trust this morning? Why will ye repine and fret that way? Look to the fair land and the blessed sea spread before you. Though we cannot, with this young family, accompany our friends and auld neighbours on their pilgrimage; He who has cast our lot here, is He no a rich provider?" It was wicked of me, I confess, sirs, to be ready even then to ban them who had robbed the poor of their inheritance,-chartered to them by Heaven itself, -if they but knew how to read their charter aright, and make it good. The wife of Job said, "Curse God, and die!" mire, "Trust in him, and live!" PRESIDENT. My dear Girnel! most pious of Radicals! this is most moving, is it not, Blarney? The more so that it is the tale of hundreds of less fortunate families. So you turned mealmonger?-an honest vocation,—and in yours it would seem a profitable. JOHN OF THE GIRNEL. With thanks I own it; yet it was months before I could turn myself to any good. The mistress began our traffic one day with a firlot-I have carried it on to ten thousands of bows. COUNSELLOR BLARNEY. Till you made conquest of the croft at Canaan, and erected the slated But-and-ben-a steeve bit of a bothie, Girnel Ha'! JOHN OF THE GIRNEL. I never qualified for it, though. It's the shop in the Cowgate-head I rank on. I have not yet forgotten the forlorn day I first stood in it, with fifteenpence in the gudewife's pouch, the residue of L.3000, weel-won gear, and as full stocked an upland farm as lay in that country side. PRESIDENT. Disappearing, every doit, under the paternal protection of the Corn Laws. JOHN OF THE GIRNEL. Name them not to me, sir. I can conceive and allow for doubts and differences on every topic but that. He who upholds these grinding laws, places himself at once without the pale. COUNSELLOR BLARNEY. Yet your new representative, "Plain John?" JOHN OF THE GIRNEL. No more about him, if you please, sir. I was glad to see Lord Brougham though, (I have a sneaking kindness for him with all his backslidings,-'od they say he was born at the tap o' our land,) giving Sir John a side-wipe about his ultra-zeal in persecuting the press. PRESIDENT. And here, John, is a rhyming remonstrance with your Edinburgh electors, from a Fife outlying member of the Aggregate. Shall I read it? JOHN OF THE GIRNEL. Better not. Let byganes be byganes is a wise auld Scottish proverb, to be aye observed, and especially now that our day is brightening again. Give us a song, Mr. Blarney, i' the gloaming, till the lads forgether-something we can all partake. PRESIDENT. Here's a new thing, "WARSAW'S WALLS," music unknown. Perhaps the fine old air of Carlisle Yetts. But that must be poor verse which does not chaunt its own tune. COUNSELLOR BLARNEY. I'd rather it had been some Anti-Whig pasquil; but here it goes-Tee-tum-tum-tee-a-hem, but I hope supper is coming-though this puppy Pry-but no song no supper. BLARNEY sings. WARSAW'S WALLS. White was the plume in his cap of war, His hair so brown waved round his brow, (His eye was bright, his cheek was ruddy,) It waves o'er Warsaw's ramparts now, In dripping ringlets dark and bloody. When first I came by Warsaw's town, Was ne'er a place so sweetly seeming, The white plumes flaunted up and down, The white flags far and wild were streaming. When I came next by Warsaw's town, O'er it some demon seemed to hover. The old men asked, with grief weighed down, "O! maiden, seek you here your lover ?" Here on my breast's a drop of blood, And two from his cheek my hair doth borrow; And O, my tears, whate'er their flood, Can ne'er wash out these stains of sorrow! PRESIDENT. Very well chaunted. The heroic Poles! Were it not that sword-play is their only art, and warfare their only industry, I would be almost as sorry to see the countrymen of John Sobieski and Kosciusko in such straitened case, in strange lands, as if they were those of Wallace and Bruce, or receiving any aid, save from their own hands and wits. Aide-toi, John. Is not that a man's motto? JOHN OF THE GIRNEL. So far as I comprehend it, sir; though I wish it were rendered into pithy English, for the benefit of the unlearned. COUNSELLOR BLARNEY. Why, "Providence helps them that help themselves," as Poor Richard says; or, as we have it in Scotland, "Take help at your elbows." Those strapping Polish Patriots, whose full-blown or budding whiskers our young ladies find so resistless in war,-could you contemplate settling them down as douce, industrious linen or stuff weavers, like so many expatriated Huguenots ? PRESIDENT. I won't hear a word in disparagement of any one Polish man. Our gold can but ill atone, to a few of their number, for our lack of power,-for, to give us our due, will is not wanting,-to aid the cause of all. I must read you a dozen verses, I think terse enough. I rejoice in seeing the memory of Poland kept so warmly alive in the public heart. While it lives, patriotism, the love of freedom, cannot expire. (Reads.) THE POLE. Forsaken Poland, o'er thy prostrate plain, S But who now holds the sceptre, and the glaive? COUNSELLOR BLARNEY. Come, come, let us politicize a little now, President. Are we Tories fairly dished think ye? JOHN OF THE GIRNEL. What think ye of Geordie Murray now, sir,—that ye took on his ain word like an honest man, though we jaloused he was not to ride the fords of Earn on? PRESIDENT. I am grieved and made ashamed by the conduct of Sir George Murray.- Political feeling apart, it is a shock and mortification to human nature, to witness such reckless tergiversation in a man of whom better things were expected. On what point of that man's public character can one henceforth with confidence rest? His sudden wheel says even less for his judgment than his principles. Could he not have remembered what his chief once said about the value of public character in these times? A com modity of good names were worth a prince's ransom to COUNSELLOR BLARNEY. But I shall not Fallen!-a mighty fuss about a man blarneying over a set of gapuses round a hustings.-Candidates' promises and pie-crust :-The bye-word is somewhat musty. JOHN OF THE GIRNEL. It is, to my thinking, one of the most hopeful signs of these times, that truth and sincerity are rising into proper consideration. What with leeing in the Kirk, leeing in the State, leeing in the Excise, leeing in the Parliament, leeing in the Courts of Law, leeing on the hustings, ay, through thick and thin; leeing in the College, or rather false swearing, little extenuated by its senselessness,—our youth and our men of ripe years baith, were under a hopeful system of moral discipline. Away with all evasions, subterfuges, palterings with conscience, and Jesuitical juggling! Away with all the Philpotts' salvoes, which prove pitfals and snares to young minds! Show no mercy to convicted fautors, like this same George Murray; erring coolly and impudently, and with their eyes open. It is not enough that their knavery is folly and selfmurder. They must bide the shame. COUNSELLOR BLARNEY. your tightly-pledged juste-milieu Whigs:-our boys would have scorned such a shilly-shally time-serving course. PRESIDENT. Durst not have ventured it; no, even the boldest of the kennel, durst not, in those days, have dared to disobey the whistle of the whipper-in; or smack about the yelping mongrel's ears came the lash of the master of the pack, cutting to the quick;-lack of carrion and bullock's liver was not punishment enough. COUNSELLOR BLARNEY. Rare fun going on in the House o' nights now, though. -Famous turn-up that between O'Connell and Littleton : Dan's the fellow to bother them handsomely. PRESIDENT. O'Connell acted on that occasion, as on every other, with promptitude, intrepidity, and honour entire;-even the Tories give him laud. Mr. Littleton had, by no fault of his own, perhaps, though he shrunk from the consequences,-placed O'Connell in a state which made frank speech imperative. Was he, like the imbecile heroine of a trumpery romance, to allow mystery and suspicion to gather round him, and so sink, the high-flown, self-sacrificed victim of his own idiot notions of generosity? O'Connell took the manly part which became him, as the guardian of his own honour, and the Protector of Ireland:-I use the word in no disloyal sense. The moderation of his subsequent conduct enhances his merit. He has his reward in seeing the cause of his country advancing. I adore, in late events, the retributive justice of an over-ruling Providence, which has humbled the proud and obstinate Whig leader, by the self-same instrument which, with posterity, will form the lasting stigma of his administration,-his harsh, narrow, But, my good friend, Sir George made an ample expla- wretched, abortive Irish policy. nation. Now, sir, ye are more severe on Sir George and his clan, than any of us. But I aver that his explanation only deepens his disgrace. He pleads former instances of his liberality; while it ought to cover him with shame, that, with all his convictions in favour of the Dissenters' claims, on this specific measure too, he went in face of his voluntary pledges. Think of him too the other night, -he would have inquired into the state of Ireland, before voting for the Irish Coercion Bill; but as there was no time, hang the man first, and try him afterwards. He is surely demented. COUNSELLOR BLARNEY. Fairly jockeyed the worthy Doune and Dunning lads, and the men of Auld Auchterarder. But halt, my friend. What mighty difference, pray, between Sir George voting against opening the Universities, and you, petitioning Voluntary Church people of Edinburgh, supporting "Plain John?" You are against the Alliance of Church and State, and you choose a representative who tells you he will uphold it to the last gasp,-you are— JOHN OF THE GIRNEL. -Never mind what we are, Mr. Blarney. Two blacks never made a white yet :-I never in my life relished that line of argument. At best it is words wasted. And let's ha'e dune with George Murray. I ha'e little doubt he will walk more circumspectly in future, and, like the boy in the story-book, get nae credit for telling truth, owing to his ill name. Or he can at least do like some of the rest, if he daurna vote right he can stay awa'. COUNSELLOR BLARNEY. Ha ha! that is the manful new line taken up by JOHN OF THE GIRNEL. Every fresh disclosure regarding poor Ireland reflects new disgrace upon Lord Grey. Sorry am I to say it. First, the Marquis of Anglesey's remonstrance, and then the Marquis of Wellesley's strong disinclination ;-and Littleton, and Abercrombie, Althorp, Grant, and Ellice, the men who best knew Ireland, all opposed to his unconstitutional measure.-But peace go with him,though, to say truth, we are very consolable for the loss, down about our quarter yonder. Nature meant Lord Grey for a Tory,-sma' doubt o' that. His vapouring about his " Order,"-where is it in France ?-sticks in many stomachs :-and in mine, his never-to-be-forgotten speech, about the people being entitled only to good Government, which the highest-flying Tory would allow in words, -while we arrogate some sma' right to pronounce upon what sort of Government may be best for us. I hope he will yet be able to forgive himself for having been so far accessary to the Reform Bill, and so COUNSELLOR BLARNEY. And so good-bye to Gaffer! It is all capital sport, though-Melbourne, now! what better are you, for that gentle Lord being stuck in the van of the Whigs, while his appropriate place is about the tail of the moderate Tories ? PRESIDENT. My bowels are stirred for that gone faction. Amidst all the chopping and changes, not a look cast where they sit lonely by the wayside! "Ware the Tories!" is the rallying cry of the most headlong Whig-despising Radical. I don't know that Sir Robert this time actually sat out the long, hot July day, under the burden of sword and bagwig, ready to start for Windsor, at his Sovereign's slightest gracious intimation; but I can well believe that he might even now have been over-persuaded to try his hand with such potent auxiliaries as Thimblerig, and Him of the Bright Sword. The personal chagrin of poor Lord Grey was pretty evident ;-but it is the Tories are this time the party in doleful dumps. The Whigs have made a prodigious rally. Some of them are pretty fellows, too. JOHN OF THE GIRNEL. Ay, in troth-the right seems gaun the right gait once more, slowly, but sickerly:-weel-the end will show, they shall not have it to cast up that our Radical yirming, and yirping, and discontent, neutralize and dishearten them. We were aye ready to cheer them on the onward path, and never mair ready to set shouther to the wheel than now again, that there's a new and fair start. As for Melbourse, we shall see. No one seemed to want Lord Brougham :he has as much political power already, as he has shown inclination to make a good use of;-besides our folks have a strong objection to any Premier sitting in the House of Mischief. It's an evil locality. Keep him in the Commons, and he may sometimes be shamed or badgered, if better may not be, into liberal measures; but perched up yonder awa', among the spiders and mouse-wabs, the thrones and dominations, he gangs gleed, and forgets himself, and gets fortified and hardened in bad courses. No, no-keep the foreman in the workshop-let the Premier be where the people's business is to be done. This alone would have been a capital objection with us Radicals to Lord Brougham, as the head of the adminis. tration, barring every other. And the rest are neither few nor far to seek. PRESIDENT. The Premier must be at hand, John, to administer soothing syrup and sugar-plums to the coroneted babies. Althorp, I confess, would have been the man for my money, of all that were named. He possesses Girnel's qualification too, being in the Commons. I would advise, leaving the nodding inhabitants of Olympus " alone in their glory," as much as possible-and keeping the workingmen where the eye of the master is more constantly fixed upon them. Althorp must be flattered with the manner he has been upheld by the House, and the country :-no one seemed to think it possible that Earl Grey could be entreated to remain, there was a tacit understanding upon that head. The strongest vinegar is that made from sweet wine, John. I give Lord Althorp laud for being so manfully moved. I remember nothing in so bad taste in all my recollections of tinkleriun debates, as Mr. Stanley's Thimblerig allusions. There is a respect due to old ties, howsoever severed, which no man can throw aside with impunity. I give the Tories joy-if they shall catch him of the hereditary Whig, "whose spleen is so large that it has left no room for heart in his puny body." But here comes Lingo. Welcome, most learned Erasmus! DR. LINGO. Now, President, you are at that everlasting politics, I'll PRESIDENT. False love and treacherous war:-but there are worse consequences. A public man, so grossly assailed as Lord Brougham has been of late, is in danger of confounding deserved blame, and the mild censure of the warning press, with this vile, bestial scurrility, and of plunging further in error from contempt of his censors. To compare Henry Brougham with that brutal miscreant Jefferies is entirely overshooting the mark. The venomous slaver thus spit against the wind must be carried back to the face of the foul-breathed ejector-let it blister him, and welcome. The Editor and the Publisher of the Quarterly Review ought to be ashamed of giving place to those effusions of pitiful spite:-'tis themselves they degrade, and not Lord Brougham. They should drop their parallel-drawer. There is neither honour nor profit to be reaped from such connexions. -Never mind libel law, John. I mean now to rehearse my best song for the roaring boys below,-Guy Vaulkes. More Scan. Mag. ? PRESIDENT. COUNSELLOR BLARNEY. Only a joke. Any body can take a joke, you know. (Sings.) GUY VAULKES. TUNE," Will. Steadfast." Guy Vaulkes he was a patriot true, Until he got a summons. His grey-browed colleague hove in sight, I'll stick, it is my country's call !" When he was ordered off-his sack, And thought it time to go; DR. LINGO. When is Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter to be out, President? Will we get it before the long fore-nights of winter? PRESIDENT. Cannot tell. Let him take time and do it well-for I warrant me it will be thoroughly sifted. Meanwhile I have Hogg's here The Private and Domestic Life. DR. LINGO. The Shepherd's Private Life of Sir Walter! That will be curious, too. Is it authentic though? There are so many catchpennies going. PRESIDENT. I could make oath to it if needful, merely from internal evidence-a choice bit of biography, in sooth, with a free use of poetical garnishings. How it got abroad I cannot guess. JOHN OF THE GIRNEL. And good gear goes in wee bundles. It's but a small tome. PRESIDENT. Including too Hogg's own life-an abridgment of his autobiography—————— COUNSELLOR BLARNEY. -That of which there was the famous review in Blackwood long ago? PRESIDENT. The same sufferer, with additions, however, down to this date. Worthy Shepherd! he seems a common good! Every one fancies he has a privilege to have a nibble if not a rug at him. But the production in hand, so far as it is his, is racy and excellent, -the best thing that has appeared about Scott yet,-whom Hogg saw close at hand, within his region of mist, and shorn of his haloes, but still through the warm sympathies of genius and friendship. COUNSELLOR BLARNEY. Much new stuff in it? PRESIDENT. Not much new to you, I daresay. The most unpleasant shewing, to me at least, is, that Sir Walter, who saw the weakness of the man, and really loved him,—and, like Sir Peter Teazle, with his friends, never grudged him his good advice, should have been so shy or averse to lend him any literary aid or countenance. The Shepherd does not seem certain, even yet, but that Sir Walter was sometimes jealous of his poetical talents. DR. LINGO. Ridiculous! Walter Scott jealous of James Hogg! PRESIDENT. Oh, the Shepherd does not affirm the suspicion, but as a past thing. But the flattering shadow haunts him. Mr. Scott at one time wished to fix him as Lord Porchester's chief shepherd, with a good house, a good horse, a pendicle rent free, and twenty pounds a-year. The Shepherd would have thought himself passing rich, but mark the condition: the Muse was " to be put under lock and key.” Sir Walter knew the world, and meant well, but the Shepherd "spurned the terms." COUNSELLOR BLARNEY. Right! Hogg's fame is worth many twenties, and the pendicle was got at Altrive ;-many twenties, had he not been such an unthrift of his reputation. All Sir Walter's lessons went to teach him to cherish self-respect. I believe Pastor Fido's was no witch of a muse in those days of her early lisping, either. This was long before the "Queen's Wake." PRESIDENT. Long before. Sir Walter was ever his sagacious and true friend. But it is the most difficult of all tasks, this being a friend-particularly to a poet—that is, admitting the unlucky muse should bear the blame of all the indiscretions laid to her door. DR. LINGO. But what is this about leein' Johnnie, and true John Die ? COUNSELLOR BLARNEY. Two John Ballantynes, rolled into one, or playing turn about, according to Sir Walter,-and perhaps two James PRESIDENT. -Enough of that. With your dislike of leein' in the Kirkhe State, the Court, and the Parliament, what say you to a little agreeable distortion in a biography, my dear Girnel? small degree of exaggeration,-a little heightening of colour for effect's sake, like a player who, to appear not a corpse on the stage, uses red paint ? JOHN OF THE GIRNEL. Hate it all, and eschew it as I would the Father of it-TRUTH is the true foundation of all sound morals, -Truth is COUNSELLOR BLARNEY. -Have you never got the better of that winter at Edinburgh College, forty years back, Girnel, while ye were intended to wag your pow in a pu'pit? Be done with it, man. -Truth is like every thing else,-very good in its own place. But in a Memoir,-why you might look for it in an epitaph as well. PRESIDENT. Truth, naked-unvarnished-is the charm of every Memoir worth reading, however. So put Hogg's little book in your pocket. You will find much to delight you in it. Some things that Mr. Lockhart will need to clear up, moreover, for the Shepherd's effusions are blazed over all the world; and will rise in praise or condemnation of their subjects, centuries hence. That anecdote of the history of literature in the Annual Register, I for one can't swallow Sir Walter Scott was not the man to have exalted himself at any author's expense in that shabby way, much less at Hogg's But here is something betA Monody on Sir Walter Scott, composed by her, he, with playful affection, called Sister Joanna. Bridle your tongue, Blarney, and stop your ears, if you please. I am not apt to cast my pearls But I shall not give you much. This strikes me as an apt and fine passage. (Reads from the manuscript.) "Thou art, in Time's long course, a landmark high, A beacon, blazing to the nether sky, To which, as far and near it shoots its rays, To God's forgiving mercy, and his love, |