The highland hills I've wander'd wide, A young farmer then gave us "The Lothian Lassie;" and as my recollection is pretty good, I shall put Canadian Scots girls in the way to mind it as well as me, by repeating the first stanza: would I could sing it as I have heard it sung: Last May a braw wooer cam'd down the lang glen, And sair wi' his love he did deave me ; I said there was naething I hated like men, The deuce gae wi' 'm to believe me, believe me, The deuce gae wi' 'm to believe me." What a chaste pleasure-what a gladdening influence over the most stoical mind, any of the following songs yield, when well sung to their own tunes, by a half dozen young ladies in the parlour, or by a chorus of bonnie lassies in the kitchen, as the former pursue their sewing and knitting, and the latter birr their wheels, and stir the sowens in an evening, in the opulent farmer's dwelling; or when heard in the most humble cottage of a Scottish peasant. Well might the farmer's dog, Luath, say, "And I for e'en down joy hae barkit wi' them." Let these classes come to Upper Canada to-morrow, and they will tire of its dulness. Nature's face is fair enough; but after the traveller leaves the last faint sounds of the Canadian boatsman's song, as it dies on the still waters of the St. Lawrence, music will be done with. I had forgotten however, I must now quote the songs alluded to; and I well can from memory : 1. Gloomy winter's now awa'. 2. Roy's wife of Aldivalloch. 3. Beneath the pretty hawthorn that blooms in the vale. 4. And she showed him the way for to Woo. 5. I gaed a waefu' gate yestreen. 6. John Anderson, my Joe, John, when we were first acquent. 7. Thy cheek is o' the rose's hue, My only joe and dearie, O. 8. Coming o'er the craigs o' Kyle. 9. O, lassie, art thou sleeping yet;-and the answer. 10. There's nae luck about the house, There's little pleasure in the house, When our gudeman 's awa'. 11. The sun had gone down o'er the lofty Ben Lomond. 12. My uncle's dead-I've lands enew. 13. For lack of gold she's left me, O. 14. O' a the airths the wind can blaw. 15. When honey-dyed bells o'er the heather was spreading. 16. Loudon's bonny woods and braes. 18. Upon a simmer's afternoon. Awee afore the sun gaed down. 19. There's cauld kail in Aberdeen, the new way. 20. Mirk and rainy was the night. Like sna' when its thaw, Jean. 23. Its Logie o' Buchan, o' Logie the laird. 24. With the garb of old Gaul, and the fire of old Rome. 25. Come under my plaide. 26. O' Bessie Bell and Mary Gray. And awa' in the morning early: I must have done-I have named so many songs to put my readers in mind of “ Auld lang syne ;” and I could add as many more, of truly Scottish origin, that I should like the "Advocate," but I must stop-the to see in Canada, as would fill up heard a few of these well sung in CaI have politicians would complain. nada-the last, a lintie in Queenston braes sings now and then. Would there were ten thousand such in Upper Canada! The English version of the following line, is not near so pretty as the Scots original, which goes thus: 'I once was a bachelor, both early and young, And I courted a fair maid with a flattering tongue : I courted her, I wooed her, I honoured her then, And I promised to marry her, but never told her when. O, I never told her when," &c. "Duncan Gray came here to woo," when sung in chorus, would be almost enough to cause the venerable age of eighty-eight to shake a foot all over Scotland. A merry party, of which I was one, once tried " Duncan," on the Table Rock at Niagara Falls; and when we came to that line, where the poor neglected lover "Spak o' loupin ower a linn,' I thought we should have all died with laughing, the scene was so in unison with the stanza. Moore's two lovers, who "'thout pistol or dagger, a Made a desperate dash down the Falls of Niagara," is good; but it is nothing to "Duncan Gray," sung by half a dozen tenor voices on the Table Rock. I mean, when I have leisure, to continue these reminiscences of Scottish song, and as I at this time must have taxed the patience, and tried the politeness of my numerous Irish and English readers, I will, in some future number, leave Ramsay, Burns, Tannahill, and Ferguson-for Chaucer and Shakspeare, Goldsmith and Moore. Tannahill has some pieces, scarce excelled by any of our Scottish poets-he has also a virtue which endears him to me beyond even Robert Burns. He does not often laud in song the drinking of ardent liquors. If, as a printer, I were to publish an American edition of Burns, I think I would leave his songs in praise of Highland whisky out. They have done much harm in his native land; and to spread them here, would be like firing a match. END OF MAY This month may close with a delightful sonnet, from one of the best books put forth in recent years for daily use and amusement. SUMMER! Now have young April and the blue eyed May Away and, like a disappointment, die? Literary Pocket Book. NATURALISTS' CALENDAR. Mean Temperature... 57.97. The shepherds, now, from every walk and steep, To catch them, one by one, their wool to shear: The "Mirror of the Months," the pleasantest of "the year-books," except "The Months" of Mr. Leigh Hunt, tells us that with June,-"Summer is come come, but not to stay; at least, not at the commencement of this month: and how should it, unless we expect that the seasons will be kind enough to conform to the devices of man, and suffer themselves to be called by what name and at what period he pleases? He must die and leave them a legacy (instead of they him) before there will be any show of justice in this. Till then the beginning of June will continue to be the latter end of May, by rights; as it was according to the old style. And, among a thousand changes, in what one has the old style been improved upon by the new? Assuredly not in that of substituting the utile for the dulce, in any eyes but those of almanacmakers. Let all lovers of spring, therefore, be fully persuaded that, for the first fortnight in June, they are living in May. We are to bear in mind that all shall thus be gaining instead of losing, by the impertinence of any breath, but that of heaven, attempting to force spring into summer, even in name alone." It seems fitting thus to introduce the following passages, and invite the reader to proceed with the author, and take a bird's eye view of the season. Spring may now be considered as employed in completing her toilet, and, for the first weeks of this month, putting on those last finishing touches which an accomplished beauty never trusts to any hand but her own. In the woods and groves also, she is still clothing some of her noblest and proudest attendants with their new annual attire. The oak until now has been nearly bare; and, of whatever age, has been looking old all the winter and spring, on account of its crumpled branches and wrinkled rind. Now, of whatever age, it looks young, in virtue of its new green, lighter than all the rest of the grove. Now, also, the stately walnut (standing singly or in pairs in the fore-court of ancient manor-houses, or in the home corner of the pretty parklike paddock at the back of some modern Italian villa, whose white dome it saw rise beneath it the other day, and mistakes for a mushroom,) puts forth its smooth leaves slowly, as "sage grave men" do their thoughts; and which over-caution reconciles one to the beating it receives in the autumn, as the best means of at once compassing its present fruit, and making it bear more; as its said prototypes in animated nature are obliged to have their brains cudgelled, before any good can be got from them. These appearances appertain exclusively to the spring. Let us now (however reluctantly) take a final leave of that lovely and love-making season, and at once step forward into the glowing presence of summer-contenting ourselves, however, to touch the hem of her rich garments, and not attempting to look into her heart, till she lays that open to us herself next month: for whatever schoolboys calendar-makers may say to the contrary, Midsummer never happens in England till July. To saunter, at mid June, beneath the shade of some old forest, situated in the neighbourhood of a great town, so that paths are worn through it, and you can make your way with ease in any direction, gives one the idea of being transferred, by some strange magic, from the surface of the earth to the bottom of the sea! (I say it gives one this idea; for I cannot answer for more, in matters of so arbitrary a nature as the association of ideas.) Over head, and round about, you hear the sighing, the whispering, or the roaring (as the wind pleases) of a thousand billows; and looking upwards, you see the light of heaven transmitted faintly, as if through a mass of green waters. Hither and thither, as you move along, strange forms flit swiftly about you, which may, for any thing you can see or hear to the contrary, be exclusive natives of the new world in which your fancy chooses to find itself: they may be fishes, if that pleases; for they are as mute as such, and glide through the liquid element as swiftly. Now and then, indeed, one of larger growth, and less lubricated movements, lumbers up from beside your path, and cluttering noisily away to a little distance, may chance to scare for a moment Your palate your submarine reverie. too may perhaps here step in, and try to persuade you that the cause of interruption was not a fish but a pheasant. But in fact, if your fancy is one of those which are disposed to "listen to reason," it will not be able to lead you into spots of the above kind without your gun in your hand,-one report of which will put all fancies to flight in a moment, as well as every thing else that has wings. To re turn, therefore, to our walk,-what do all these strange objects look like, that stand silently about us in the dim twilight, some spiring straight up, and tapering as they ascend, till they lose themselves in the green waters above-some shattered and splintered, leaning against each other for support, or lying heavily on the floor on which we walk-some half buried in that floor, as if they had lain dead there for ages, and become incorporate with it? what do all these seem, but wrecks and fragments of some mighty vessel, that has sunk down here from above, and lain weltering and wasting away, till these are all that is left of it! Even the floor itself on which we stand, and the vegetation it puts forth, are unlike those of any other portion of the earth's surface, and may well recall, by their strange appearance in the half light, the fancies that have come upon us when we have read or dreamt of those gifted beings, who, like Ladurlad in Kehama, could walk on the floor of the sea, without waiting, as the visiters at watering-places are obliged to do, for the tide to go out. Stepping forth into the open fields, what a bright pageant of summer beauty is spread out before us!-Everywhere about our feet flocks of wild-flowers "Do paint the meadow with delight.” We must not stay to pluck and particularize them; for most of them have already had their greeting-let us pass along beside this flourishing hedge-row. The first novelty of the season that greets us here is perhaps the sweetest, the freshest, and fairest of all, and the only one that could supply an adequate substitute for the hawthorn bloom which it has superseded. Need the eglantine be named? the "sweet-leaved eglantine;" the "rainscented eglantine;" eglantine-to which the sun himself pays homage, by "counting his dewy rosary" on it every morning; eglantine which Chaucer, and even Shakspeare--but hold-whatsoever the poets themselves may insinuate to the contrary, to read poetry in the presence of nature is a kind of impiety: it is like reading the commentators on Shakspeare, and skipping the text; for you cannot attend to both: to say nothing of nature's book being a vade mecum that can make "every man his own poet" for the time being; and there is, after all, no poetry like that which we create for ourselves. Begging pardon of the eglantine for having permitted any thing-even her own likeness in the poet's looking-glassto turn our attention from her real self,look with what infinite grace she scatters her sweet coronals here and there among her bending branches; or hangs them, half-concealed, among the heavy blos soms of the woodbine that lifts itself so boldly above her, after having first clung to her for support; or permits them to peep out here and there close to the ground, and almost hidden by the rank weeds below; or holds out a whole archway of them, swaying backward and forward in the breeze, as if praying of the passer's hand to pluck them. Let who will praise the hawthorn-now it is no more! The wild rose is the queen of forest flowers, if it be only because she is as unlike a queen as the absence of every thing courtly can make her. The woodbine deserves to be held next in favour during this month; though more on account of its intellectual than its personal beauty. All the air is faint with its rich sweetness; and the delicate breath of its lovely rival is lost in the luscious odours which it exhales. These are the only scented wild flowers that we shall now meet with in any profusion; for though the violet may still be found by looking for, its breath has lost much of its spring power. But, if we are content with mere beauty, this month is perhaps more profuse of it than any other, even in that department of nature which we are now examining-namely, the fields and woods. The woods and groves, and the single forest trees that rise here and there from out the bounding hedge-rows, are now in full foliage; all, however, presenting a somewhat sombre, because monotonous, hue, wanting all the tender newness of the spring, and all the rich variety of the autumn. And this is the more observable, because the numerous plots of cultivated land, divided from each other by the hedge-rows, and looking, at this distance, like beds in a garden divided by box, are nearly all still invested with the same green mantle; for the wheat, the oats, the barley, and even the early rye, though now in full flower, have not yet become tinged with their harvest hues. They are all alike green; and the only change that can be seen in their appearance is that caused by the different lights into which each is thrown, as the wind |