I am Mac Liag, and my home is on the Lake: Thither often, to that palace whose beauty is fled, Came Brian to ask me, and I went for his sake. Oh, my grief! that I should live, and Brian be dead! Dead, oh, Kincora! M. [1] _Coolg n-or_, of the swords _of gold_, i. e. of the _gold-hilted_ swords. COLUMN FOR THE YOUNG. Biography of a mouse. “Biography of a mouse!” cries the reader; “well, what shall we have next?--what can the writer mean by offering such nonsense for our perusal?” There is no creature, reader, however insignificant and unimportant in the great scale of creation it may appear to us, short-sighted mortals that we are, which is forgotten in the care of our own common Creator; not a sparrow falls to the ground unknown and unpermitted by Him; and whether or not you may derive interest from the biography even of a mouse, you will be able to form a better judgment, after, than before, having read my paper. The mouse belongs to the class _Mammalia_, or the animals which rear their young by suckling them; to the order _Rodentia_, or animals whose teeth are adapted for _gnawing_; to the genus _Mus_, or Rat kind, and the family of _Mus musculus_, or domestic mouse. The mouse is a singularly beautiful little animal, as no one who examines it attentively, and without prejudice, can fail to discover. Its little body is plump and sleek; its neck short; its head tapering and graceful; and its eyes large, prominent, and sparkling. Its manners are lively and interesting, its agility surprising, and its habits extremely cleanly. There are several varieties of this little creature, amongst which the best known is the common brown mouse of our granaries and store-rooms; the Albino, or white mouse, with red eyes; and the black and white mouse, which is more rare and very delicate. I mention these as _varieties_, for I think we may safely regard them as such, from the fact of their propagating unchanged, preserving their difference of hue to the fiftieth generation, and never accidentally occurring amongst the offspring of differently coloured parents. It is of the white mouse that I am now about to treat, and it is an account of a tame individual of that extremely pretty variety that is designed to form the subject of my present paper.