Notes On Literature, Science, And Art.

inspired ploughboy , Ave have the noble odes to his memory by Isabella Craig Knox , James Macfarlau , James Montgomery , and Dr . Spencer T . Hall , —the latter Avritten for a meeting of Scotsmen in Sheffield , on the anniversary of the bard ' s birth , thirty-seven years ago , and concluding as follows : — " Yes ! gather'd here or scatter'd there

, Britannia ' s sons , the wide world o ' er , Will hail him each returning year With offerings worthier than before : Yet , though more tuneful each acclaim , And richer in poetic flowers , No lay names Eums ' s dear-loved name With more devotedness than ours . "

I would recommend Mr . Andrews to give a Burns number every January , and advise him to quote in his next my friend Eta Mawr's beautiful poem on the poet ; also to give a Shakspers number every April ; for if the people of Hull are not far ahead of those of any other town I know in England , the majority of them have all yet to learn about the gifted ancl the good of their race . Mr . Andrews' idea is a good one , and only needs fully carrying out . As a Hull publication , he might also appropriately have an Andrew

Marvell number , a William Wilberforee number , a Col . Thompson number , and so on ; for though the learned Dr . Grosart has clearly shoivu that the incorruptible- Marvell was not born at Hull , as previous biographers had mistakenly stated , yet his whole life ivas devoted to that borough , and though he is as much ours as theirs as a poet , yet as a parliamentary representative Andrew Marvell was emphatically the member for Hull , and all parties now honour his patriotism .

In the January Notes , I quoted Sterne ' s genial description of the dance after supper , as practised by the peasantry at " the beginning of the ascent of Mount Taurina , " so finely described in his Sentimental Journey , —a passage which I enjoyed in boyhood , and still lo've in my declining years . But he ivho , according to the inscription on his tombstone , " did not live to be a member " of our " society , " need not have crossed the English Channel to find such a scene as he has so finely described ; his own native Ireland could have furnished it , long before he was born in the barracks of Clonmel ; and at least thirty years after his stolen corpse had been dissected by Professor Collignon , at his own university of Cambridge . George Holmes—the clever

grandsire of our well-known Brother , Emra Holmes , —a man who , I believe , was the rightful heir to an Irish peerage , with good broad acres to support the title , but who became an artist instead of a legislator—in his charming Sketches of some of the Southern Counties of Ireland , published in 1797 , on his visit to Holy Cross Abbey , ( ivhich , he says was , founded b y Donald , king of Limerick , and contained a shrine iu which the monks pretended to have deposited a piece of the Cross on ivhich Christ was

crucified—to whom it was dedicated in 11 Gd ) , after giving a description of the place , worth reproducing in a Masonic Magazine , pleasantly remarks : — ' After dinner , lured by the calmness of the evening , ive strolled along the banks of the river , highly delighted with the scenery . Here we met a truly rustic group ; the young men and women of the village were enjoying themselves by a dance ; a fidler and piper enivdousl y lent their strains , which were not ill bestowed upon their hearers , for they showed

, by their rude jokes and merry glee , hoiv open the mind is to the effects of music , even of the coarsest kind . Each young man , as he took his partner , gave a halfpenny to the piper , and then set to ivith all their heart and soul . Content and harmless tturth are , I am sure , acceptable offerings to our Creator , and in a much higher degree than all the gloomy self-denial of the cloistered monk : one voluntary sigh of humble thankfulness , springing from a grateful and cheerful heart , finds easier access to the throne of mercy than' all the raging sorrows and health-consuming abstinences of monastic discipline . Leaving them to their pastime , we rambled on still farther , till warned by the quick approach of evening , we returned . "