Trowbridge impressed me, as numbers of other places have done where men of genius have lived, with the fleeting nature of human connections. Crabbe, so long associated with Trowbridge, was gone; his sons were gone; neither of them succeeding him in the living; and all trace of him, except his monument, seemed already wiped out from the place. Another pastor occupied his dwelling and his pulpit; and the population seemed to bear no marks of a great poet having been among them; but were rich subjects for such a pen as that of Crabbe. The character of the place may be judged of by its head inn. It was a fair; and I found the court-yard of this old-fashioned inn set out with rows of benches, all filled with common people drinking. On one side of the yard was a large room, in which the fiddle went merrily, and a crowd of dancers hopped as merrily to it. At a window near that room, on the same side, a woman was delivering out pots of ale, as fast as somebody within could supply them, to the people in the yard. On the other side of the court lay, however, the main part of the inn. Here a gallery ran along which conducted to the different bedrooms, through the open air, and from this sundry spectators were surveying the scene below. All was noise; loud and eager talking; and odors not the most delectable, of beer, fish, and heaven knows what. The house was dirty, dark, and full of the same fumes. People, of all sorts, were passing up and down stairs, and in and out of the house in crowds. The travelers' room was the only place, I was informed, where there was much room or comfort. Thither I betook myself; and while my dinner was preparing, I heard the fine, strong, clear voice of a woman in an adjoining room, which I instantly recognized, by the style of singing, to be German. I walked into the said room to see who was the singer, and what was her audience. It was a strong-built, healthy-looking German girl, who was accompanying her singing on a guitar, in a little room close packed with the ordinary run of people. To these she was singing some of the finest airs of Germany, with no mean skill or voice; but in a language of which they did not understand a syllable. My appearance among them occasioned some temporary bustle; but this soon passed, and they politely offered me a chair. I stayed to hear several songs, and proposed some of the most rare and excellent that I knew, among them some Austrian airs, which, in every instance, the poor girl knew and sung with great effect. As I went out, two Frenchwomen were entering with a tambourine; and I soon heard them, accompanied by a fiddle, also performing their parts. Thus, through the whole day, the strolling musicians of the fair entered this little concert-room of the head inn of Trowbridge, and entertained the fair-going bacchanals. It was a scene which Crabbe would have made much of. JAMES HOGG, THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD.