Where, in either Walter Scott or Thomas Campbell, will you find such lines as these?

"Wet with their own best blood shall drip
The gnashing tooth and haggard lip!"

Pardon me, Madam,' said Miss Parkins; but I am of opinion you have scarcely given a fair specimen of the powers of the Noble Bard in question. The image here represented 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 portray 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 sympathize in its feelings-to make its propensities our ownto" lazily mumble the bones of the dead" with our own individual "white tusks!"-pardon 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!

Show

me, if you can, such an image in Scott?'

Very fine, certainly!' was here uttered by five novices,

CS

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 show its passport, attested by our great lawgiver, Dr Samuel Johnson.' Unquestionably,' said Mrs. Bluemits, purity of language ought to be preserved inviolate at any price; and it is more especially incumbent upon those who exercise a sway over our minds-those who are, as it were, the moulds in which our young imaginations are formed,-to be watchful guardians of our language. But I lament to say, that in fact it is not so; and that the aberrations of our vernacular tongue have proceeded solely from the licentious use made of it by those whom we are taught to reverence as the fathers of the Sock and Lyre.'

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Yet in familiar colloquy, I do not greatly object to the use of a word occasionally, even although unsanctioned by the authority of our mighty Lexicographer,' said a new speaker.

For my part,' said Miss Parkins, a genius fettered by rules, always reminds me of Gulliver in the hairy bonds of the Lilliputians; and the sentiment of the elegant and enlightened Bard of Twickenham, is also mine:

"Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend,
And rise to faults true critics dare not mend:
From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part,
And snatch a grace beyond the reach of Art."

So it is with the subject of our argument: a tamer genius than the illustrious Byron would not have dared to "crunch" the bone. But where in the whole compass of the English language will you find a word capable of conveying the same idea?'

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Pick,' modestly suggested one of the novices in a low key, hoping to gain some celebrity by this her first effort; but this dawn of intellect passed unnoticed.

The argument was now beginning to run high; parties were evidently forming of crunchers and anticrunchers, and etymology was beginning to be called for, when a thundering knock at the door caused a cessation of hostilities.

That, I flatter myself, is my friend Miss Griffon,' said Mrs Bluemits with an air of additional importance; and the name was whispered round the circle, coupled with Celebrated Authoress-Fevers of the Heart-Thoughts of the Moment,' &c. &c.

Is she a real Authoress that is coming?' asked Miss Grizzy at the Lady next her. And her delight was great at receiving an answer in the affirmative; for Grizzy thought to be in company with an Authoress, was the next thing to being an Authoress herself; and, like some other people, she had a sort of vague mysterious reverence for every one whose words had been printed in a book.

Ten thousand thousand pardons, dearest Mrs Bluemits!' exclaimed Miss Griffon, as she entered. I fear a world of intellect is lost to me by this cruel delay.' Then in an audible whisper-But I was detained by my publisher. He quite persecutes me to write. My "Fevers of the Heart" has had a prodigious run; and even my "Thoughts," which, in fact, cost me no thought, are amazingly recherché. And I actually had to force myself to you to-night through a legion of printer's devils, who were lying in wait for me with each a sheet of my "Billows of Love."

The title is most musical, most melancholy,' said Mrs Bluemits, and conveys a perfect idea of what Dryden terms "the sweeping deluge of the soul;" but I flatter myself we shall have something more than a name from Miss Griffon's genius. The Aonian Graces, 'tis well known, always follow in her train.'

They have made a great hole in it then,' said Grizzy, officiously displaying a fracture in the train of Miss Griffon's gown, and from thence taking occasion to deliver her senti

ments on the propriety of people who tore gowns always being obliged to mend them."

After suitable entreaties had been used, Miss Griffon was at last prevailed upon to favour the company with some specimens of the Billows of Love', a sonnet which called forth unanimous applause delicate imagery'-' smooth versification-classical ideas'-Petrarchian sweetness,' &c. &c. resounded from all quarters. But even intellectual joys have their termination, and carriages and servants began to be announced in rapid succession.

Fly not yet, 'tis just the hour,' said Mrs Bluemits to the first of her departing guests, as the clock struck

ten.

It is gone with its thorns and its roses,' replied her friend with a sigh and a farewell pressure of the hand. Another now advanced-Wilt thou be gone?—it is not yet near day.'

I have less will to go, than care to stay,' was the reply.

Parto ti lascio adio,' warbled Miss Parkins.

'I vanish,' said Mrs Apsley,' snatching up her tippet, ridicule, &c. and like the baseless fabric of a vision leave not a wreck behind.'

'Fare-thee-well at once-Adieu, adieu, adieu, remember me!' cried the last of the band as she slowly retreated. Mrs Bluemits waved her hand with a look of tender reproach, as she repeated—

"An adieu should in utterance die,
Or if written should faintly appear-
Should be heard in the sob of a sigh,
Or be seen in the blot of a tear.

'I'm sure, Mary,' said Grizzy, when they were in the carriage, I expected when all the ladies were repeating that you would have repeated something too. You used to have the Hermit, and all Watts' Hymns by heart when you was little. It's a thousand pities that you should have forgot them; for I declare, I was quite affronted to see you sitting -like a stick, and not saying a word when all the ladies were speaking, and turning up their eyes, and moving their heads so prettily; but I hope next time you go to Mrs Bluemits you will take care to learn something by heart before you go. I'm sure I hav'n't a very good memory, but I remember something; and I was very near going to repeat “Fare

well to Lochaber" myself, as we were coming away; and I wish to goodness I had done it; but I suppose it wouldn't do to go back now; and at any rate all the ladies are away, and I daresay the candles will be out by this time.' Mary felt it a relief to have done with this surfeit of soul, and was of opinion that learning, like religion, ought never to be forced into conversation; and that people who only read to talk of their reading might as well let it alone.Next morning she gave so ludicrous an account of her entertainment, that Lady Emily was quite charmed.

since I

'Now I begin to have hopes of you,' said she, see you can laugh at your friends as well as me.' Not at my friends, I hope,' answered Mary; only at folly.'

Call it what you will: I only wish I had been there. I should certainly have started a controversy upon the respective merits of Tom Thumb and Puss in Boots, and so have called them off Lord Byron. Their pretending to measure the genius of a Scott or a Byron, must have been something like a fly attempting to take the altitude of mount Blanc. How I detest those "idle disquisitions about the colour of a goat's beard or the blood of an oyster!"' '

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