The theme is interesting, and expands itself into a variety of heads. We feel the embarrassment of wealth; its splendors dazzle and its pomp perplexes the mind.

Many of our earliest and most cherished associations are connected with the Highlands, and with Highland character and scenery. Historic recollections recall the chivalry, the patriotism, and the deep tragedies of Wallace and Bruce. Memory dwells with fondness upon the glory of their deeds. The songs recur, in which their actions are embalmed, and their martial strains dilate the " wrapt soul" with more than earthly sentiments. Over this stormy and sterile region, Sir Walter Scott has poured the exhaustless treasures of his genius; he has invested it with the robings of a teeming fancy, and encircled it with the wild witcheries of a rich imagination. He has peopled it with real and imaginary characters, of every variety, from the most perfect forms of loveliness to those of the most disgusting deformity. Where is there a more lovely creation than the Lady of the Lake, or Minna, the romantic daughter of Magnus Troil; or where a form more degrading to humanity than the Black Dwarf, or the Page, in the Lay of the Last Minstrel? Under the wand of this wonderful magician, the Highlands lose their character of tempest and storm, and rise to view in more than Aztec or Peruvian glory. Every fountain and every strath is vocal with the language of fairies, attendant upon the beck of innocence, or of genii, delighting in mischief. The distance from the other world is annihilated, and bodiless spirits commune familiar with flesh and blood. Even the ocean, that foams and beats with terrific grandeur upon the rockbound coast of Scotia, has its mysteries. Its bottomless depths and secret caverns are the homes of superstitious legends. The mermaid glides along the waters of the moonlit bay, mingles her voice with the sighing breeze, sings of subterranean wonders, or chants prophecies of future events. The monstrous leviathan, hugest of living things, is seen sporting and moving its horns amidst the wreaths of mist and the clouds of fog that brood over the northern sea. The sea-snake rises out of the depths of ocean, stretches to the skies his enormous neck, and with its broad, glistening eyes raised on high, looks out, as; it seems, for plunder or for victims.

At the time of the Rebellion, of which we have been speaking, the world was essentially ignorant of the Highlanders. Their mountainhomes, mysterious ocean, and rocky walls, isolated them from the rest of mankind. Sir Walter Scott had not yet revealed the literary treasures of these arctic regions. The Lady of the Lake and the Lord of the Isles had not yet been called into existence. While the scholars of England were bewildering their brains about the Scythians, the Goths, the Belga, and other ancient tribes, a much more interesting race, the Highlanders, were dwelling almost within sight and hearing of their quiet studies. And if these philosophers and scholars loved to trace the walks of uncultivated humanity, the Highlanders were then, as they had been for ages. Time had wrought no change in their manners or modes of existence. The son trod in the footsteps of his sire, and thought it impiety to depart from them. Here human nature reigned in all its natural wildness. Its fields were uncultivated; they exhibited all the ruggedness, the grandeur and the beauty which nature gave them. The hand of cultivation had not levelled their mountains, subdued their forests, and enriched their plains, with the harvests of industry. Here, law and order had not yet harmonized the growing elements of human existence into peaceful society. Here, says Mr. Grahame, are no cultivation of grounds, no improvement of pastures-no manufactories-no trade-in short, no in

dustry. Here the laws have never been executed, nor the authority of the magistrate ever established. Here the officer of the law never dares nor can execute his duty.

The condition of England and of the Lowlands of Scotland, at this time, exhibits a very striking contrast with that of the wild region of which I am speaking. The Lowlander and the Highlander are neighbors-they were separated only by a geographic line-the smoke of their chimneys mingled-they heard each other talk; still, they were strangers and enemies-they spoke different dialects-they had different pursuits. In England and the Lowlands of Scotland, factories had sprung up, commerce was extended, and law and order everywhere prevailed. A love for intellectual pursuits was cultivated, and the arts and sciences were on the advance. While Rob Roy, at the head of the clan Macgregor, was committing depredations upon his neighbors, levying blackmail, driving his stolen cattle from glen to glen, setting government and law at defiance, Addison was indulging the refined wit of the Spectator, and Pope was translating the Iliad of Homer and composing the Messiah. It is this contrast of refined with rude and uncultivated life, that constitutes the chief charm and profit in the study of Highland character. Revolution after revolution, moral, political and religious, had rolled like successive waves over the face of Europe, bearing away, in their destructive course, the foundations of old institutions. Interest clashed with interest and principle with principle; the kingdoms of the earth arrayed themselves against each other; society had at length begun to remodel itself, and to settle down into a quiet state. But these revolu tions and convulsions which make up the history of Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, reached not the Highlands of Scotland; they spent their force upon the walls of the Grampians. Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.

I will now proceed to a more specific view of the peculiar institutions of the Highlanders-their clanship-its influence upon their manners and character-their poetry and superstitions.

THE DIVER.

FROM THE GERMAN OF SCHILLER.

The poet Schiller, in the following ballad, has seized upon a circumstance which, if one may believe what is commonly told of the pearl divers of the East Indies, contains nothing that is extraordinary in itself. He has selected a story, told by Father Kircher, of a famous diver named Nicholas, who was in his time unrivalled, both in swimming and diving, and by that poetic license, which illumines all it touches, he has made of very ordinary incidents a most pathetic little poem. It has been translated by Bulwer, but he has taken as much license with the German metre, as Schiller did with the facts on which the ballad is founded, and which cannot be warranted by any means on the same principles. A translator should endeavor to preserve the metre as well as the spirit of the original; and although Bulwer has done the former, yet he seems not even to have wished to do the latter. An effort has been here made to preserve them both, which it is hoped has been in some degree successful.]

And the knights and squires that throng him around,
Though they heard him, yet silent remain ;
Looking downward and fearing the pool's hollow sound,
Not daring its wrath the goblet to gain;

And then for the third time outspoke the stern king-
"Is there none to leap in, the goblet to bring?"

[ Iv.

And then as before, all in silence remain,

Till a squire, though gentle yet bold,
Stepped gallantly forth from the trembling train,”,
Firmly bent upon winning the beaker of gold:

And knights and dames seem with wonder spell-bound
As his girdle and mantle he flings to the ground.

And lo! as he stepped to the marge of the rock,
And gazed in the boiling abyss below,
Charybdis again with wild tumult and shock,
The foam from her whirling eddies did throw,
And with the noise of the thunders' echoing roar,
The waves from her gloomy bosom outpour.

VI.

And it bubbles and foams, and hisses and roars,
As when fire and water are striving to blend,
And up to the heavens the flashing spray soars,
And flood upon flood throngs on without end;
And it never will cease nor from travail be free,
Like a sea that is striving to bring forth a sea.

VIL.

But now the wild whirlpool hath quiet at length,
For a dark and deepening chasm seems rent,
And it yawns while the waters are curbing their strength,
As though to the realms of hell it went;

And with a hollow dull murmur the surges roar
As down through its gurgling tunnel they pour.

VIII.

Quickly now the bold youth ere the sea gathers strong,
His soul unto God has commended,

And the eddying whirlpool has swept him along,

Ere the horror-struck multitude's cry has well ended; And the vortex, the swimmer e'en now has closed o'er Like the mouth of a giant; they see him no more.

IX.

And silence now reigns round the whirling abyss,
As the waters in tumult are hurried along,

And hollow and boding, they bubble and hiss,

While a tremulous murmur passes on 'mid the throng; "Gallant heart fare thee well," the multitude cries, Yet nought but the vortex, low booming replies.

X.

"And should'st thou fling in thy royal crown,
And say, who will forth my coronet bring?
I would not covet such dear-bought renown,
E'en though I might wear it and be king;

For no living soul can e'er hope to reveal
The fearful secrets its hollows conceal."

XI.

"Full many a bark in its vortex held fast.

Has headlong darted beneath the deep wave,

And nought but fragments of keel and mast,

Has escaped from its all-devouring grave."

But in still nearing circles, sweeps the whirlpool around.
And louder again grows the tumult of sound.

XII.

And it bubbles and foams, and hisses and roars,
Like fire and water when striving to blend;
And e'en to the heavens the flashing spray soars,
And flood upon flood hurries on without end!
And with the noise of the thunder's echoing roar,
The waves from that gloomy abyss outpour.

XIII.

But see! from its dark and billowy stream,
A neck and a shining arm laid bare;

Of spotless white, like the swan they seem:

The waves fly apart, the bold swimmer is there!

And though the vexed whirlpool its foam round him flings,
Yet high in his left hand the goblet he swings.

XIV.1

Then a long and swelling breath he draws

As he greets the joyful light of day;

While the gathered throng shout with exulting applause,
"He lives, and the gulf is despoiled of its prey!

The venturous youth hath rescued his life,
From fatal Charybilis' foaming strife."

XV.

Now he brings it and sinks at the feet of his king,
Who motions his daughter to fill to the brim,
And as the loud shouts of the multitude ring
She fills it and tenders the goblet to him.

And then downcast of eye and modest of word,
The venturous youth thus accosts his liege lord.

XVI.

"My King, live forever! Ah, 'tis joyous to breathe The sweet air in this roseate light,

But how fearful is all in the chasm beneath,

Where sea-forms are moving in gloomiest night!

O! let not the Gods, still less, men in their pride
Seek to know the dread secrets those awful depths hide!

XXVII.

"With the swiftness of lightning the pool snatched me down, Far away from the sight of the beautiful world,

While forth from its pit, where the craggy rocks frown,
The current wild heaving, its weight on me hurled :
My limbs by the eddies were held firmly bound,
And twirled like a top, I spun dizzily round.

XVIII.

"Then God, upon whom in my fearful extreme, I earnestly called, in mercy gave ear,

And showed a peak jutting out by a rocky seam,

Which I grasped, and avoided death threat'ning so near; And there, too, on a sharp point of coral, fast hung The cup my liege lord from his hand had flung.

XIX.

"Then deeply beneath me as mountains are high, Lay the purpling darkness of ocean;

Fearful things of the waters swam silently by,

Though soundless, yet darting in fierce rapid motion;
Salamanders, sea-dragons and monsters unknown,
Gropingly people those silent abysses alone.