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him out of the town, of lands-houses-fisheries-mills—and yearly money-payments out of its Customs; which gifts were confirmed by the charter of Malcolm IV., David's grandson, the original of which, it is said, is in existence in the archives of the Duke of Roxburgh at Fleurs.

The church made way for one more splendid, and of larger size, erected at the charge of Anthony Beck, bishop of Durham, in the reign of Edward I., dedicated to the Holy Trinity. Its situation in the town was on the ground now covered by the Cumberland bastion.

With all the preceding religious and monastic edifices, we repeat again, was this good town of Berwick-upon-Tweed embellished in that wise and good-for so has he been in history characterized -prince's reign, Alexander II., who died A. D. 1249.

At the aforesaid period of time, after a long succession of years of disastrous events, not unfrequently attended with direful inflictions on its unoffending inhabitants, the cheering rays of tranquillity, prosperity and, of course, happiness began to dawn upon Berwick. Is it asked, whence arose this promised change, and what were its signs? need there a more rational and explicit answer? Alexander III. was seated on the throne of Scotland: he was only eight years of age when he ascended it, but his mind was precocious, and as his years increased, it became an eminently enlightened one, so that, when he attained to his majority, he had become esteemed for all the virtues and qualities necessary to reign and reflect lustre on the diadem that encircled his brow,

He found the bordering districts of his kingdom in perfect peace,his father, not more than three months previous to his death, having given his assent to a meeting of Commissioners, among whom he had nominated a Robert Bernham, Mayor of Berwick, on the marshes, to ascertain the bounds and laws thereof, which settled every dispute between the contending parties that might have had a tendency to endanger that blessing.

When therefore the young Alexander had provided for the due administration of the laws in the northern parts of his kingdom, he hastened to Berwick, and on entering it found the inhabitants revelling, if we may be allowed thus to express ourselves, in the enjoyment of tranquillity; he found it renovated by the provident care of his late father from its ashes, and that too in a degree of splendour, it had never before attained; he found its streets densely planted with habitations, and pouring therefrom a population beyond all precedent in the most prosperous of its earlier days. For these advantages, and we may add blessings, Alexander's breast became imbued with a reverence for his father's memory that never quitted him; and as an early proof of the sincerity of his feelings, he thought he could not do better than endeavour to add further consequence, in the eyes of the English nation, to a town that had been so much the object of his care; and delayed not to improve the trade, and widely to extend the commerce of Berwick. He called into it a colony of Flemings, for whom he caused to be built a large and splendid hall, denominated the Red hall, for their residence, and thus made Berwick-upon-Tweed, at this period, the greatest staple for wool of any other town, not ex

cepting London, in our island; for the wool sacks were not yet in the House of Lords at Westminster for the Judges to lounge or muse on, as they might be most inclined. It was not until about the middle of Edward I.'s reign that these elegant Ottomans were first introduced into the chief assembly of the nation. The purpose of this was, according to some antiquaries' opinions, to perpetuate the æra when wool first became the great staple and support of the kingdom; and further, to put the sovereign and his peers, when they met together, in constant mind thereof, for not only had the Lords, but also Edward himself been charged with being too negligent of the encouragement of the woollen manufactures of the kingdom.

But to resume our history. We must here notice that the Red hall had doubtless been situated on the space now occupied by the street known at the present day under the name of the Wool-market; and, in all probability, with the first circumstance originated the appellation of the present street, particularly as the Red hall, at the period of its erection, was the only mart in the town of Berwick for the article of wool.

And now as a proof that every other branch of trade and commerce must have been in the same flourishing state in this port as was the commerce in wool, it need only be observed, that the chronicle of Lanercost, a chronicle of reputation for truth, records its customs to have been nearly equal in amount to one-half of that of all the other ports, save London, in England; and hence Berwick gained the distinguishing title of a "Second Alexandria;" nor did the town experience a decline in its consequence afterwards in any way. Alexander left it, when he died, in the same prosperous and palmy state, to which he had at any period of his paternal reign, raised it.

His death was a melancholy one: it happened by a fall from his horse at Kinghorn in 1283, when returning home after his second marriage. To say how great was his loss to Berwick, more need not be said, than that it was irremediable; and how greatly the whole kingdom of Scotland had valued his wise, equitable and paternal rule, and how deeply it lamented his death, let the following lines, revived into notice by Sir Walter Scott in his Border minstrelsy, and said to be the most ancient Scottish song known, tell ;—

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THE SENTIMENTS

Of a warm-hearted patriot Scotchman of the middle of the 18th century.

[The following lines have fallen accidentally into our hands. They were written a few years ago by a gentleman of Scotland, and have never, so far as we know, been transmitted to the public through the Press. In the absence of more definite information respecting the Author, let the intrinsic merits of the piece be its recommendation. Our own impression is, that the composition will be generally acceptable, nor can fail to awaken recollections and revive feelings, more than agreeable, in the breasts of some.-ED.-]

THOUGH rugged and rough be the land of my birth,
To the eye of my heart 'tis the Eden of earth;
Far, far have I sought, but no land could I see
Half so fair as the land of my fathers to me.

And what though the days of her greatness be o'er,
Though her nobles be few, and her kings are no more,—
Not a hope from her thraldom that time may deliver,—
Though the sun of her glory has left her for ever,—

Though dark be the shadows that compass her round,
Even yet 'mid those glooms may a radiance be found,
As the blush through the clouds of the evening is seen
To tell what the blaze of the noon-tide had been.-

With a proud swelling heart I will dwell on her story,-
I will tell to my children the tale of her glory,—
How nations contended her friendship to know,
How tyrants were trembling to find her their foe!

Let him read of that story, and where is the Scot
Whose heart will not swell when he thinks of her lot?
Swell with pride for her power, in the times that are o'er,
And with grief, that the days of her might are no more?

Unmanned be his heart, and be speechless his tongue,
Who forgets how she fought, who forgets how she sung!
Ere her blood, through black treason, was swelling her rills,
Ere the voice of the stranger was heard on her hills!

How base his ambition, how poor is his pride,
Who would lay the high name of a Scotchman aside!
Would whisper his country with shame and with fear,
Lest the Southrons should hear it, and taunt as they hear!

Go tell them, thou fool! that the time erst hath been,
When the Southrons had blenched, if a Scot had been seen,-
When to keep and to castle in terror they fled,
As the loud Border echo resounded his tread.

VOL. I.

2 D

Must thy name, O my Country! no longer be heard—
The boast of the hero, the theme of the bard?
Alas! how the days of thy greatness are gone,
For the name of proud England is echoed alone!

What a pang to my heart, how my soul is on flame!
When I hear that vain rival in arrogance claim,
As the meed of her own, what thy children had won,-
Their deeds pass for deeds, which her children had done!

Accurst be the man that would sweep from the earth
The land of my fathers! the land of my birth!
No more 'mid the nations her place to be seen!
Not her name left to tell where her glory hath been!

I sooner would see thee, my dear native land!

As bare as the rocks that encircle thy strand,

Than the wealth of a world that thy children should boast,
And thy heart-thrilling name in thy rival's be lost!

O Scotia! my Country, thou land of my birth!
Thou home of my fathers! thou Eden of earth!
Through the world have I looked, but no land could I see
Half so fair as thy heaths and thy mountains to me.

SCENE IN IRELAND IN 1798.

BY ALEXANDER CAMPBELL.

As the following Sketch may not be fully intelligible to the reader without his having some previous acquaintance with its dramatis persona, and with the circumstances in which they appear, we beg to say that Father Kenney was a stern and bigotted churchman. Father Mulligan the very opposite; generous and kind-hearted. Seymour Conway and Terence Sullivan were both the sons of gentlemen of easy fortune; the latter a frank, thoughtless, but noble-minded Irishman of the true Milesian breed. Serjeant Shannon, an old Artilleryman on half-pay. All of them were connected with the rebellion of 1798, and it is in the very midst of that unhappy period that our Scene is laid. The meeting described was a secret meeting of rebel leaders-Mrs. Mallony's cottage having been selected for that purpose for its retired and secluded situation, and was indeed considered as a sort of head quarters, whilst the rebel forces were mustering in that part of the country.

On the approach of Seymour and his party, the centinel who was on guard in front of Mrs. Mallony's cottage tapped gently at the door-a proceeding which he followed up by whispering two or three words through the key-hole. The effect of this secret communica tion was instantaneous. Several bolts and bars were withdrawn, the door flew open, and Mrs. Mallony sallied forth to receive her guests.

The kind-hearted hostess of the "Half-moon and Wheelbarrow," the sign of Mrs. Mallony's hostelrie, was a widow tolerably well to do in the world, cleanly and trig in her person, and largely gifted with the loveliness of disposition and frankness of manner peculiar to her country-women, and which they have the happy art of associating with the utmost purity of sentiment and the strictest propriety of demeanour.

Mrs. Mallony had, for a year or two previous to the occasion of which we are speaking, been looking about her for some suitable personage to supply the place of her dear departed husband, Lauchlane Mallony, and her eye had at length rested with something like an expression of decided predilection on the manly form of Serjeant Shannon, a preference which the gallant Serjeant, himself a widower and a man of much experience in the world, had quickly perceived, and by very frequent visits and many little kind services and assiduities had converted into a regular matrimonial process which promised sooner or later to terminate satisfactorily for both parties. Such, then, was the footing on which Mrs. Mallony and Serjeant Shannon stood with regard to each other at this particular juncture of our story.

"It's yourself that's late stirring, Serjeant?"-for the Serjeant was one of the party alluded to-said Mrs. Mallony curtseying generally to the whole party, though addressing herself to the former only.

"An that's true for you, Mrs. Mallony,-halt! dress!" exclaimed the Serjeant, his notions of military punctilio intruding on the considerations of mere courtesy, and addressing the latter words to his escort, whom he wished to draw up in military order in front of the cottage. "Can't you keep in line, O'Reilly, and not be after standing out there like a mile stone? Back! Dennis, back! Och, the devil confound you! not so far back as that neither ::-do ye think now I wanted ye to go to Dublin backwards? you couldn't stop half way, couldn't you? no, by St. Patrick, no more could ye than the pendulum of a time-piece any where but the middle. I say, Tim Rooney, what's the use of blowing your nose on parade-can't you let it alone or ask leave to go to the rear?" Having at length succeeded, though with no small difficulty, in getting every man into his place, Serjeant Shannon stepped to one end of the line in order to cast his eye alongst the whole. "There ye are now," he exclaimed in a tone of desperation, mortified at the grievous irregularity which this experiment exhibited to him, notwithstanding all the trouble he had been at, "as crooked, by heavens! as a flash of lightning and only a poor dozen of ye, in place of being as straight as a foot rule or fifty yards of iron railing as ye ought to be." This defect also, however, the perseverance of Serjeant Shannon at length overcame; by thrusting one back, dragging another forward, and squeezing a third to the front, he succeeded in forming his men into a tolerably straight line. This done, he retired a pace or two and contemplated his awkward squad with a look, after all, of something like satisfaction, if not pride-a feeling which in this particular case could have been excited only where the most rooted habits of military controul previously existed, and where the pleasure of commanding was unexpectedly resumed after a long interval of desuetude; for such another "garde du corps" as that which was on this occasion drawn up before Mrs. Mallony's

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