being unfortunately no master of climax, language failed him in the concluding scene, where there were rocks, and breakers, and midnight darkness, and a huge ship wallowing in foam, like a wounded boar in the toils of the hunters. “Oh!” exclaimed the sailor herdsman, “I can think o’ nae likening to that puir ship, and the awfu’ crags and awfu’ jaws, except the nowt i’ the byre, when they break their fastenings i’ the mirk night, and rout and gore, and rout and gore, till the roof-tree shakes wi’ the brattle.” The people of the present age may not think much of the comparison; but it was deemed a piece of very tolerable humour in Cromarty in the good year 1715. Greenhill’s remark, when informed of the disaster, had more of philosophy in it. “Aweel,” said he, taking a deliberate pinch of snuff, and then handing the box to his informant, “I have lang warstled wi’ the warld, and fain would I have got on the tap o’t; but I may be just as weel as I am. Diel haet can harm me now, if the laird o’ Cadboll, honest man, doesna put me to the law for dinting the Swallow against his march-stanes.” One other passage relating to the Greenhill branch of the family of the Urquharts, ere I take leave of it for the time. It has produced, in a lady of Aberdeenshire, one of the most pleasing poetesses of our age and country--not, however, one of the most celebrated. Her exquisite little pieces, combining with singular felicity the simplicity and pathos of the old ballad with the refinement and elegance of our classical poets, have been flung as carelessly into the world as the rich plumes of the birds of the tropics on the plains and forests of the south. But they have not lain altogether unnoticed. The nameless little foundlings have been picked out from among the crowd, and introduced into the best company on the score of merit alone.--The genealogist was of a different spirit from his relative; he would have inscribed his name on the face of the sun could he have but climbed to it;--but may not there be something to regret in even the more amiable extreme? The prophecies of that sibyl who committed her writings to the loose leaves of the forest, were lost to the world on the first slight breeze. I present the reader with a pleasing little poem of this descendant of the Urquharts, in which, though perhaps not one of the most finished of her pieces, he will find something better than mere finish. It may not be quite new to him, having found its way into Macdiarmid’s Scrap-Book, and several other collections of merit; but he may peruse it with fresh interest, as the production of a relative of Sir Thomas, who seems to have inherited all his genius, undebased by any mixture of his eccentricity. [Sidenote: POEM.] ON HEARING A LIVELY PIECE OF MUSIC, “THE WATERLOO WALTZ.”