"Donner and blitzen," roared Mynheer, "this is horrible."

"Ho! ho!" quoth the boatman; and "Ho! ho!" responded the rest.

The Hollander stared with might and main, and tried to discern the faces of his companions; but it was impossible, so shrowded were they to the nose and eyes in their huge shaggy mantles and tall peaked broad brimmed hats; and, then, the hazy moonlight was at their backs. How he envied them their cosy comfortable appearance!-they seemed to revel in all the warmth of summer, while he himself was comparatively an iceberg. He saw the flask just peeping out of the boatman's pouch, and reached forth his hand to grasp it, but the other struck it aside, and pushed him back into his seat with a chuckle of infinite delight, wherein he was immediately echoed by the rest. At this moment the boat rounded a bit of a peak or jut in the water, and their course changed in a manner that the moon was brought to shine upon their faces. The Hollander was now able to scrutinize their appearance, which in sooth was unearthly enough, and filled him with the most dismal forebodings.

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The boatman nearest him was thick-set, squabby personage, with a huge grisly head protruding from shoulders that arose like two great bulwarks on either side; it was covered with a tall peaked hat, under the broad brim of which two little rounded eyes were glowing like burning coal; his nose was long and sharp, and tiped with a bright blue. This malignant looking being was attired in a greenish jerkin and breeches of enormous capacity, both of which were fastened about him with laces, and studded nearly all over with brass bell buttons. His comrades, six of whom sat behind him, presented the same bizarre appearance; but what most surprised and terrified Von Donderdonc was the mysterious badge which they each wore upon the breast. It was a skull and cross-bones, the same insignia that he remembered to have heard identified the terrible flying Dutchman.

Here was a climacteric for the poor Hollander to undergo. What would now become of him was his first consideration? he would doubtless become the prey of the Demon Captain, and descend with him to oh! the thought was horror, what should he do, how escape?" Quit the boat-quit the boat," whispered some one into his ear, and he was on the point of leaping

over; but no sooner had the congealing water struck upon him, than he changed in a moment from burning heat to a more intolerable chill than he had yet endured, and he drew back on the instant, amid a peal of laughter from the boatmen. "Schedam! Schedam!" gasped Donderdonc, reaching forth his hands-" Ho, ho, "responded the boatmen, and still rowed on. This was unbearable, the Hollander's little eyes flashed fire, and his leathern visage was evidently screwed up to some desperate venture: to bear the cold longer was impossible; he felt his legs, feet, and body chilling apace; his stomach was freezing; the very tongue in his mouth was becoming a lump of ice; he felt himself dying, and saw a remedy at his elbow. This was intolerable; it would have infused courage into the soul of the veriest coward in existence, and Von Donderdonc was reported valiant.

"Sturmwelter!" roared he, springing up and grappling the throat of his neighbour with both hands, "give me the flask, or by the fiend I will not die alone."

"Hold! Der Duyvel, what are ye mad-hold off your hands, I say.'

"Mad, Hagel, I am mad-I am an iceberg-I am freezing to a mummythe flask! the flask!"

"Fool! madman! be still-how's this-how came ye here at this hour?" A long pause ensued-when the Hollander broke forth," What-howwhere am I then?" said he, staring and blinking like an owl, before a lantern that was held in his face.

"Where are ye?" quoth an old withered white-headed Vrow, staring him hard in the face, " A pise upon ye, Mynheer Donderdonc, why would ye go forth in the plight ye were in with your senses drowned in Schedam? There have ye been wallowing in snow and ice for I know not how long; and had not worthy farmer Dorbrecht stumbled over ye, ye might ha' perished; and, lo, how ye have bemauled him for his good office!"

66 Ugh-U-u-gh, give me some Schedam, I say, or see me die."

A large hogan-mogan glass was handed him, which he instantly tipped off, another and another followed, when Mynheer expressed himself somewhat comforted, and was carried back amid the crowd that had collected around him to the Tavern wherein he had passed the day; and after a while, and under the light of day, took boat and

proceeded homeward, resolving again and again within himself never more to return home by night under the influence of his favourite beverage. T.F.

hope, on the opposite side of the river. Michael went one morning to put her skill to the test, but was disappointed, by her denying positively any knowledge of the necromantic art. In his discourse with her, he laid his wand

"THE memory of Sir Michael Scott survives in many a legend," says the late Sir Walter Scott, in his Notes on the Lay of the Last Minstrel, "and in the South of Scotland any work of great labour and antiquity is ascribed either to the agency of Auld Michael, of Sir William Wallace, or of the devil."

Some of the most current of these tra

ditions are so happily described that we cannot refrain from quoting the passage. "Michael was chosen," it is said, "to go upon an embassy to obtain from the King of France satisfaction for certain piracies committed by his subjects upon those of Scotland. Instead of preparing a new equipage and splendid retinue, the ambassador retreated to his study, and evoked a fiend, in the shape of a huge black horse, mounted upon his back, and forced him to fly through the air towards France. As they crossed the sea, the devil insidiously asked his rider what it was that the old woman of Scotland muttered at bed-time. A less-experienced wizard might have answered, that it was the Pater Noster, which would have licensed the devil to precipitate him from his back. But Michael sternly replied, What is that to thee? Mount, Diabolus, and fly.' When he arrived at Paris, he tied his horse to the gate of the palace, entered, and boldly delivered his message. An ambassador with so little pomp and circumstance of diplomacy was not received with much respect, and the king was about to return a contemptuous refusal to his demand, when Michael besought him to suspend his resolution till he had seen his horse stamp three times. The first stamp shook every steeple in Paris, and caused all the bells to ring; the second threw down three towers of the palace; and the infernal steed had lifted up his foot to give the third stamp, when the king rather chose to dismiss Michael with the most ample concessions, than to stand the probable consequences.-Another time, it is said, when residing at the tower of Oakwood upon the Ettrick, about three miles above Selkirk, he heard of the fame of a scorceress, called the Witch of False

hag observing, suddenly snatched it up and struck him with it. Feeling the force of the charm, he rushed out of the house; but as it had conferred on him the external appearance of a hare, his servant, who waited without, halloo'd upon the discomfitted wizard his own hounds, and pursued him so close, that in order to obtain a moment's breathing to reverse the charm, Michael, after a very fatiguing course, was fain to take refuge in his own jaw-hole, Anglice, common sewer. In order to revenge himself of the Witch of Falsehope. Michael, one morning in the ensuing harvest, went to the hill above the house with his dogs, and sent down his servant to ask for a bit of bread from the good wife for his greyhounds, with instructions what to do if he met with a denial. Accordingly, when the witch had refused the boon with contumely, the servant, as his master had directed, laid above the door a paper which he had given him, containing, amongst many cabalistical words, the wellknown rhyme

"Maister Michael Scott's man Sought meat and gat nane." Immediately the good old woman, instead of pursuing her domestic occupation, which was baking bread for the reapers, began to dance round the fire, repeating the rhyme, and continued this exercise, till her husband sent the reapers to the house, one after another, to see what had delayed their provision, but the charm caught each as they en. tered, and, losing all idea of returning, they joined in the dance and the chorus. At length the old man himself went to the house; but as his wife's frolic with Mr. Michael, whom he had seen on the hill, made him a little cautious, he contented himself, with looking in at the window, and saw the reapers at their involuntary exercise, dragging his wife, now completely exhausted, sometimes round, and sometimes through the fire, which was, as usual, in the midst of the house. Instead of entering, he saddled a horse, and rode up the hill, to humble himself before Michael, and beg a cessation of the spell, which the good-natured warlock immediately granted, directing him to

enter the house backwards, and with his left hand take the spell from above the door, which accordingly ended the supernatural dance. *** Michael Scott," continues the same author, 66 once upon a time was much embarrassed by a spirit, for whom he was under the necessity of finding constant employment. He commanded him to build a cauld, or dam-head, across the Tweed at Kelso; it was accomplished in one night, and still does honour to the infernal architect. Michael next ordered that Eildonhill, which then a uniform cone, should be divided into three. Another night was sufficient to part its summit into the three picturesque peaks which it now bears. At length the enchanter conquered this indefatigable demon, by employing him in the hopeless and endless task of making ropes out of sea-sand."

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It is time, however, to return from these traditions, with which the common people of Scotland have uniformly connected his name, to the true character of Michael Scott. He lived in favour and friendship with two of the most warlike and powerful sovereigns in Europe. In a dark and ignorant age he was remarkable for his learning, and in times when to travel in search of knowledge to distant countries was a work of extreme danger, owing to the unlicensed manners of the feudal governments, he had largely embarked in the perilous adventure, and anxiously sought for knowledge in France, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He travelled, indeed, protected by the superstitious dread with which the vulgar regarded him, for he was universally reputed a magician; and many a fierce baron who would have cared little to have robbed the defenceless son of science as he passed his castle, may have trembled beneath his steel coat, when the wizard declared his far-famed name, and threatened to make him feel its power. It is pleasing to see superstition, which in later ages have been the bane of knowledge, becoming, in those earlier and darker periods, the protectress of infant science; and we shall not wonder at the universality of the belief which then prevailed, that all superior knowledge was connected with preternatural powers, when we consider that it was the interest of the men of science to encourage a belief so conductive to their personal security.

In our endeavours to estimate the talents of a sage of the thirteenth cen

tury, we must beware of looking at hi attainments through the medium of our own times. He must be compared with men of his own age: his powers must be determined by the state of science in the countries where he lived, and wrote, and became celebrated. Appealing to such a criterion, the Scottish Wizard is entitled to no ordinary rank amongst those who were then esteemed the philosophers and scholars of Europe. He was certainly the first who gave Aristotle in a Latin translation to the learned world of the West. He was eminent as a mathematician and an astronomer-learned in the languages of modern Europe-deeply skilled in Arabic, and in the sciences of the East; he had risen to high celebrity as a physicianand his knowledge of courts and kings had recommended him to be employed in a diplomatic capacity by his own government. Nor has he been cheated of his fame. If we look to older authors, he lives in the pages of Roger Bacon, of Picus Mirandula, of Cornelius Agrippa. If we ask for his historical immortality, he is commemorated by Lesly and Buchanan,-if for his poetic honours, has not Dante snatched him from oblivion, and the last of the minstrels embalmed him in the imperishable substance of his first and most romantic poem ?-nay, if he seeks for more popular and wider honour, even here he may not complain, whilst his miracles and incantations are yet recorded beside the cottage fire by many a grey-headed crone, and his fearful name still banishes the roses from the cheeks of the little audience that surround her.

Fortunate, too, he was in this circumstance, that after his various travels and long residence abroad, he returned to enjoy in his native country the reputation which he acquired; that he lived to a great age, and died full of years and of honour, before he had witnessed the dark and complicated calamities which were so soon to overwhelm the kingdom. His books, we are informed by Dempster, after his death, were carefully concealed from public view: and he adds, that the common people of Scotland, even in his time, believed that these forbidden volumes, containing the spells of the magician, were protected by the invisible demons who had once been the servants of their illustrious and potent master.

From the Lives of Scotch Worthies.

THE CITIZEN.-A LA Sterne.

For the Olio.

I took a fat Citizen, and having first shut him up in his little sitting-room, I proceeded to take his picture. I beheld his body gorged with long gratification and confinement to the house, and I felt what kind of sickness of the stomach it is that arises from having eaten too much. On looking nearer 1 beheld him bloated and feverish; in sixty years the country breeze had not once fanned his blood, and he had seen the sun and moon but indistinctly in all that time. He was seated or rather buried in a large arm chair, which stood in the very front of a roasting fire, and which might have served either for a chair or a bed. A bundle of promissory notes lay on the table, scrawled all over, the fruits of the many dark and dismal days and nights he had spent there. He had one of these small slips of paper in his hand, and with a pen he was etching his own signature, and the day of the month, to add it to the heap. As I stood at the window, and darkened the little light he had, he lifted up an eye swimming in fat towards the door, bent his head forward earnestly to listen, and then went on with his work of delight. I heard the rubbing of his hands, when he had with difficulty turned his body round to place the note on the bundle; he gave a sigh of joy: I saw the ecstasy that entered into his soul. I burst into a laugh; I could not contain myself at the picture which my fancy had drawn!

SWIFT was in the habit of going to Lady Berkeley, his patron's consort. She was a great admirer of "Boyle's Pious Meditations," and used often to request the Dean to read aloud some portion from them. Such occupation, however, was little congenial with the Dean's humour, and soon he resolved to revenge himself upon Boyle for the irksome task thus imposed upon him. In short, he wrote a parody upon him, which he got printed, and entitled, "Meditations upon a Broomstick. This he sewed into the copy of Boyle from which her ladyship was accustomed to read. It was exactly the same paper, type, and so ingeniously inserted, that no one was likely to conjecture the deceit. So, the next time, he

opened the book at "Meditations upon a Broomstick," which, with a very grave countenance he read aloud. Her ladyship, after a few lines had been read, suspected the Dean to be playing some of his facetious tricks, said, No jesting, if you please, Mr. Dean, upon so grave a subject."

"Jesting!" replied Swift, "I vow, my lady, I read it as I find it-Here it is"-continued he, handing her the book-" Meditations upon a Broomstick."—"So it is," said Lady B—, what a singular subject! But let us see; Boyle is so full of ideas, that I am persuaded he will make it extremely edifying, though it looks so odd."

With great gravity Swift proceeded to read a very original comparison between a broomstick and a man, and contrasting the destiny of mankind with that of a Broomstick: "This stick," he continued in a solemn tone, this stick "which you see thrown thus ignominiously in a corner, was once flourishing in the woods," &c. &c.

"Oh, excellent Boyle!" exclaimed her Ladyship, " how admirably he has drawn the moral from so trifling a subject. But whatever he touches he turns to gold."

The dean preserving his gravity, made signs of assent, as if he quite agreed with her ladyship, and then took his leave. In the evening her ladyship had a party and one of the first topics started was Boyle's excellent " Meditations upon a Broomstick," -some of the company began to laugh." You may laugh," exclaimed her ladyship, "but I am astonished you should not have heard of it; it is quite worthy the pen of the great moralist." Others, however ventured to question its existence, when her ladyship, in triumph, pointed out the part, which they saw sure enough. "Have I convinced you, gentlemen; I see you are quite confounded: but to tell you the truth so was I at first. Indeed I should have still been ignorant of the fact, but for Mr. Dean Swift, who was so good as to point it out to me, only to day.""What," cried one of the party, was it Swift? this is one of his tricks, let us have another copy of Boyle." They went, and looked, and looked, but no "Meditation upon a Broomstick" was to be found: it was plain that the whole had been interpolated. The lady concealed her chagrin; but henceforth she never imposed upon the author of "Gulliver" the reading of these edifying lectures.

W. A. R.

DUCHESS OF MONTMORENCY.

The Duke of Luxembourgh, told the following story of his mother to Charles II. at Paris. Erskine, Master of the Charter-house, overheard him tell the King. Erskine related it to a clergyman, who repeated it to the writer.

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"She was a mean woman, and bred in a cabaret; yet was she handsome, portly, and court-like. She met with a stranger in the field, who perceiving her ambition, began to tell her fortune -that she should be greatly advanced, and inferior to very few in the kingdom; and this he would assure her for many years (I think he said fifty), if she would give her soul to him. She did it with solemnity. Not long after, the great Montmorency, whose fame all France-nay, all Europe, has heard of, came that way, is struck by her features and humour, and in a short time marries her, or makes her his mistress, and not long after dies, leaving her a great widow. The French historian says of him that at last he married her meanly. Long after this (it may be fifty years), there comes a man in the habit of a paysan, rapping hard and long at her gate she lived in great splendour. The porter asks him what he would have? He replied, To speak with your Lady.' The porter reproves him for his sauciness, and claps the door on him. By and by, at the second gate (for there were three in all, and so many walls, before one came to the mansionhouse) the paysan knocks again. How came you here?' says the porter. That's nothing to you!' he replies; 'I would speak with your Lady.''Send up your message,' said the porter, and claps to the door again. Ere long, a greater knocking than ever is heard at the third gate. This alarmed them all within, and the lady looking out of the window inquires what the matter was? The porter goes up to her and tells her the whole story-that a plain paysan, without a band, &c. would needs speak to her herself. Down she goes to him immediately, which made them all stare - shows great respect to him. By and by, she goes down on her knees; but he having given her a blow that killed her, vanishes away. It was supposed that she knelt to him to beg her life and farther time, for they heard at a distance some suppliant and mournful words. · Luxembourgh always wrote himself Luxembourgh and Montmorency."

Though we cannot unfold the mystery, the how or the why the mother of this Duke of Luxembourgh was got rid of, we suspect the means. This Duke was accused of holding a communion with evil spirits; it was not difficult at that time to persuade a hero, ignorant and superstitious, that he was a conjuror. A contract with Satan, signed by the Duke, was actually laid before his judges when he was imprisoned for being connected with an association of poisoners, and for having attempted the life of his lady. Modern writers have alleged that these calumnies were the cruel inventions of a faction. Be this as it may, there seems little doubt that the Duke told this mysterious story to Charles II.; nor is it less obvious that the Duke knew something more than he told, or that he believed that his mother had been fetched away by the paysan, of whose quality we can have no doubt. He gave no other reason than that her lease of life of years" had elapsed, and the whole now reverted to the black lessor. The Duke of Luxembourgh, on the whole, appears to have been resigned, and seems to have told the maternal history with great filial affection."-New Mon.

Varieties.

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LORD BYRON'S OPINION OF THE LATE SIR WALTER SCOTT.-" Lord Byron," says the Countess of Blessington"spoke in terms of the warmest commendation of Sir Walter Scott, not only as an author but as a man, and dwelt with apparent delight on his novels, declaring that he had read and re-read them over and over again, and always with increased pleasure. He said that he quite equalled, nay in his opinion, surpassed Cervantes."

CARDINAL WOLSEY AND SIR THOMAS MORE.-Once the potent Cardinal, irritated at the free language of the Commons, to awe the house, came down in person, amid the blazonry of all the insignia of his multiform state. To check his arrogance it was debated whether the minister should be only admitted with a few lords. More suggested, that as Wolsey had lately taxed the lightness of their tongues-" it would not be amiss to receive him in all his pomp, with his (silver) pillars, emblems of his ecclesiastical power, as a pillar of the church, his maces, his pole-axes, his crosses, his hat, and his great seal too, to the intent that if he find the like fault with us hereafter, we may the