"From Ross's hills to Solway sea," was supposed to have had its fulfilment in the death of the lamented monarch, which occurred, only a few months after the appearance of the skeleton masquer, by a fall from his horse, over a precipice, while hunting between Burntisland and Kinghorn, at a place still called "the King's Wood-end." Wordsworth appears to have had the subject in his eye, in two of the stanzas of his lyric, entitled _Presentiments_,--the last of which runs as follows:-- "Ye daunt the proud array of war, Pervade the lonely ocean far As sail hath been unfurled, For dancers in the festive hall What ghostly partners hath your call Fetched from the shadowy world." --_Poetical Works_, 1845, p. 176. The same incident has been made the subject of some very spirited verses, in a little volume--_Ballads and Lays from Scottish History_--published in 1844; and which, I fear, has not attracted the attention to which its intrinsic merits assuredly entitle it. ACROSS THE ATLANTIC.[20] Another book from the active pen of our American acquaintance, the able seaman. The question having been raised whether Mr Herman Melville has really served before the mast, and has actually, like the heroine of a well-known pathetic ballad, disfigured his lily-white fingers with the nasty pitch and tar, he does his best to dissipate all such doubts by the title-page of his new work, on which, in large capitals, is proclaimed that _Redburn_ is "_The Sailor-boy Confessions and Reminiscences of the son of a gentleman in the merchant service_;" and, collaterally, by a dedication to his younger brother, "_now a sailor on a voyage to China_." An unmerited importance has perhaps been given to the inquiry whether Mr Melville's voyages were made on quarterdeck or on forecastle, and are genuine adventures or mere Robinsonades. The book, not the writer, concerns the critic; and even as there assuredly are circumstances that might induce a youth of gentle birth and breeding to don flannel shirt, and put fist in tar-bucket as a merchant seaman, so the probably unpleasant nature of those circumstances precludes too inquisitive investigation into them. We accept Mr Melville, therefore, for what he professes to be, and we accept his books, also, with pleasure and gratitude when good, just as we neglect and reject them when they are the contrary. _Redburn_, we are bound to admit, is entitled to a more favourable verdict than the author's last previous work. We do not like it so well as _Typee_ and _Omoo_; and, although quite aware that this is a class of fiction to which one cannot often return without finding it pall, by reason of a certain inevitable sameness, we yet are quite sure we should not have liked it so well as those two books, even though priority of publication had brought it to a palate unsated with that particular sort of literary diet. Nevertheless, after a decided and deplorable retrogression, Mr