And out thai blew with brag and mekle bost,
That lady and hir lynnage suld be lost.

The contest, however, is but short; King Hart and his host are soon put to the route.

Woundit he wais, and quhair that he na wait
And mony of his folk has tane the flicht.
He said, "I yield me now to your estait,
Fayr Quene! sen to resist I have no micht."

Through the influence of Compassion, who now appears as intercessor for the captive king and his followers, they are graciously restored to liberty; but, captivated by the charms they had beheld in the Castle of Pleasure, they are ingrates enough to attack it in their turn.-War, however, soon gives place to Marriage; King Hart unites his fortunes with Queen Pleasure, and in her company he spends the rest of the days of his youth. No sooner, however, has King Hart passed the meridian of life, than Age arrives at the palace gate, and insists upon being admitted. The gate is, with great reluctance, slowly opened; Age turns Youth away, and the king is, with a sorrowful heart, obliged to bid an everlasting farewell to the gay companion with whom he had spent so many happy hours. Scarcely has Age taken her station in the castle, than Conscience scales the walls, and begins to upbraid the king for the manner in which he had mispent so many precious years of his life. The answer which the king makes to Conscience is worth quoting; it has been more than once dipped into by modern authors.

XXIV.

Ye did greit miss, fayr Conscience, be your leif
Gif that ye war of kyn and blude to me,
That sleuthfullie suld let your tyme our sleip,
And come thus lait. How suld ye ask your fe?
The steid is stoun, steik the dure, let se

Quhat may avale, God wait the stall to turne?
And gif that ye be ane counsellor sle

Quhy suld

ye sleuthfullie your tyme forsurne?

XXV.

Off all my harme, and drerie indigence,
Gif thair be ocht amys, me think perdé
That year cause verray of my offence;
And suld sustaine the bitter pairt for me.
Mak answer now-Quhat can ye say? Let se!
Yourself excuse and mak you foule or clene.
RESSOUN, cum heir; ye sall our juge now be
And in this caus gif sentens us betwene.*

REASON gives the verdict against him;

-impenitent Remorse,

the

That juggling fiend that never spoke before,
And cries" I warn'd you," when the deed is o'er.

Byron's Corsair.

The reader will see in these lines a happy concentration of the same general ideas; but it, would be unfair to the noble author, to infer any thing more.

A. S.

poor king is driven out of all his shifts; and becomes, in every sense of the word, Conscience-stricken. Queen Pleasure, offended with the change produced in the manners and feelings of her royal spouse, and with the austere character of his new associates, suddenly abandons him. In this deserted situation, Reason and Wisdom strongly urge the king to return to his own palace, and to spend the remainder of his days according to their salutary maxims. The king follows their advice, but has not been long in his own castle, when, in an unlooked-for hour, Deformity inflicts on him a mortal wound, of which, after making his testament, in which there is a due distribution of all his frailties and foibles, he expires.

The romance of King Hart was first published in 1787, from an original manuscript, by Mr. Pinkerton, to whom the fame of the poet is more indebted on this account, than to the notes he has annexed, which are more remarkable for their ingeniousness, than for any light which they throw upon the beauties of the poem.

F. M'N.

ALLAN RAMSAY.

THE restorer of Scottish poetry, Allan Ramsay, was born on the 15th October, 1686, at Leadhills, in the parish of Crawfordmuir in Lanarkshire;

Where min'ral springs Glengoner* fill,
Which joins sweet flowing Clyde,
Between auld Crawford Lindsay's towers,
And where Deneetne rapid pours

His stream thro' Glotta's tide.

He was descended by the father's sidet from the Ramsays of Dalhousie, a genealogy of which he speaks, in one of his pieces, with conscious pride. Dalhousie of an auld descent

My chief, my stoupe, and ornament.

The name of a small river, which takes its rise from the Leadhills, and enters Clyde between the castle of Crawford and the mouth of Deneetne, another of the branches of Clyde.

A. S.

"It is said, that the ruins of the cottage where Ramsay was born are still pointed out to the inquisitive traveller." Beauties of Scotland, vol. 3.

He was great grandson of Capt. John Ramsay, a son of Ramsay of Cockpen, who was brother of Ramsay of Dalhousie.

A. S.

His father, John Ramsay, was superintendent of Lord Hopetoun's mines at Leadhills, and his mother, Alice Bower, was the daughter of a gentleman of Derbyshire, who had been invited to Leadhills, to assist, by his skill, in the introduction of some improvements in the art of mining.

Allan, while yet an infant, lost his father, who died at the early age of twenty-five. His mother, soon after, married a Mr. Crichton, an inconsiderable landholder of Lanarkshire, by whom she had several children. For fourteen years, Allan remained in the house of his step-father; and, at the parish school of Crawfordmoor, he received all the education which it was to be his lot in life ever to obtain. The instruction of even a parish school in Scotland, however, extends far; and there is reason to believe, that Ramsay had commenced the study of the classics before he left it. In the preface to his works, he says, "I understand Horace but faintly in the original." The events of his life make it improbable that he could have acquired this knowledge during his maturer years; and the faintness with which he says he understands the Roman poet, corresponds well with that degree of information which a boy, who had only advanced the first steps in the study of the language, might be afterwards supposed to preserve.*

The view taken by this writer is at variance with other biographies of the poet, in which the scantiness of his education is invariably lamented; but it is a view which every one who knows any thing of Scottish education, and how common it is for even parish