not a word of what I am now about to reveal must ever murmur from your lips-or glimpse from your eyes-or pass in shadow along that capacious forehead. You must be mum as the grave.

Ambrose. But then, Mr. Gurney, sir?

North. Fear not Gurney. He is hocussed. List! hear him snore?

Don't you

Ambrose. For some time past, sir, have I heard that sound, but I thought it was the water beginning to run again into the water-pipe from the roof after the thaw.

North. No-'tis fancy. I have drugged his drink-have given him a potent posset. After life's fitful fever he sleeps well-he will extend not his short hand to tell our secret. He awakes not till midnight.

Ambrose. A strange awe comes over me, sir. Remember, sir, that I have a wife and children, and that anything very dreadful

prepare to

North. Ambrose! If yon have any tears to shed, weep them now-BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE IS THE CURSE OF MY

EXISTENCE.

Ambrose. Alas, and alack-a-day!

North. "I am acquainted with sad misery,

As the tanned galley-slave is with his oar!"

Ambrose. Then is the sun miserable, while man and nature bless his orb, as he sheds the seasons over all the variegated earth, from his rolling car in heaven.

North. Seek not, my Ambrose, to veil from my soul, in such dazzling imagery, the sense of its own doom! 'Tis the great and gracious law of nature, that old age should have rest. Like some

mighty mountain seemingly made of snow, deeper far its hush than of any cloud-range that ever breathed the spirit of its stillness far and wide over the cerulean sky, and beautified by sunset that seems to look with love on its stainless sleep, to my imagination, worldwearied, and now sore averse to all passion's strife, rises up the fair idea of repose!

Ambrose (apparently much relieved). I too, sir, sometimes delight in indulging myself in a dream of retiring from public into private life of purchasing a small

North. As Wordsworth sublimely says-" To be laid asleep in body, and become a living soul!" Quietism, fathomless as the sea, and as the sea transparent, when it is one with heaven, and ships from clouds you know not, so motionless hang they, single or in fleets, with shade and sunshine alternately revisiting their idle sails! Ambrose. I have seen such a sight between Leith pier-head and Inchkeith, a hundred times, sir; but then I could not have said that,

North. For such spiritual quietude, nature yearns "with love and longings infinite," as in the evening of life, longer fall the shadows from the mountains.

Ambrose. Sir?

North. Nay, the soul seeks not-she demands release from the bonds of this world's day-darg life; and, like waves agitated no more, she expects all her thoughts to be at least settled down into a tideless calm, even like that sweet line of watery light that strews with stars the summer shores of the Mediterranean sea.

Ambrose. I could go to sleep, and dream of the ocean.

North. "O blessed retirement ! Friend of life's decline!" Ambrose. What more beautiful place about all the suburbs, sir, than Buchanan Lodge.

North. Oh! the wisdom of old age, serene as simplicity of childhood! the light wandering in the west ere yet it fade in darkness! -as gentle and as gorgeous, too, as in the east the day-spring about to run his race in heaven!

Ambrose. Pardon me, sir, for not speaking when you stop; but I hope you will allow me to listen

North. Instead of all this, there is that INFERNAL MAGAZINE, THE CURSE OF MY EXISTENCE, idiotically called monthly, but, in truth, an annual, a perennial, a perpetual, an everlasting, an eternal CURSE!

Ambrose. You make me shudder, sir-indeed, sir, you make me shudder. O, sir, say not another such sentence; or if you must, I beseech you to say it quickly, for this state of fearful excitation is worse than being in a shower-bath with the string in one's hand.

North. With a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether-I began in sadness, but I proceed in rage. Maga holds her head too high, Mr. Ambrose; and, would you believe it, has more than once had the audacity to cut Christopher.

Ambrose. Oh! no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!

-have

North. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! I, her own dearly beloved editor-so, in her wheedling fits of hypocritical fondness, she delights to call me-her Kit-her Kit-cat-her Norry Norrybeen-grasp firm hold of the elbows of your seat, Ambrose-A REJECTED CONTRIBUTOR !!!!

Ambrose. I am sick at heart. (Sinks into a comatose state, between a swoon and a dwawm.)

North. The slut solicited me for an opening article to Part Second of this very month, and there she had it—in two sheets-The Hindu Drama; as powerful an opening article as ever did honor to

the Cock of the North; when, whew! she shoves me and my article aside, for sake of an Irishman, who, with all his blarney, can not love her as I have loved her-and (here the old man absolutely shed tears) as I will continue to love her, in spite of all her ungrateful cruelty, to the last hour of my life. (He sobs.)

Ambrose (in a state of somnolency). Whruhu-whruhu-whruhu

-whruhu!

North. I see I hear that I have your sympathy, Ambrose. May then this right hand, laden as it is with chalk-stones formed by toils in her service-the ingrate; yes, may this right hand wither like a shrivelled leaf-these lack-lustre eyes, bedimmed for her sake by many a wakeful midnight, the little vision lose that still is left within their faded orbs-if e'er again—(oh ! hear me now, ye spirits that delight in just revenge!)—if e'er again I waste ink in her cause if e'er

Ambrose (with astonishing energy). Whruhu-whruhu-whruhu -whruhu!

North. Was that a trumpet? Such air-born warnings are not to be rashly despised by the soul of man, when, troubled by passion, it trembles on the verge of some-perhaps fatal-vow-and may be about to sell itself to perdition-to the ENEMY! It may have been the voice of my GENIUS.

Ambrose. Whruhu-whruhu-whruhu-whruhu !

North. Well-it matters not, if a man's soul be saved-by what instrument-whether by a snore or a clap of thunder.

Ambrose (waking, and turning a sleep-drenched pair of poppey'd eyes on NORTH). Whawawharaw braw-brr-ach!

North. A bit of Miss Kissirving's unknown tongue.* I said waste ink in Maga's service. Now I shelter myself under the double sense of that word. I may write-Madam—an occasional article for your miscellany-but, mind what I now say-the first rejected article shall be the last-and I will go over in a body to the Edinburgh Review.

Ambrose (starting up). Beg pardon for not answering the bell sooner, sir; but I have this instant returned with Leezy Lightfoot, who is preparing such a board of oysters, sir, as has not been witnessed in modern Athens since the erection of the pillars of the Parthenon.

North. "Sleep hath her separate world as wide as dreams."

Ambrose (apparently disabused of his dwawming dream). I fear that I have sinned beyond hope of forgiveness.

North. I never dreampt an oyster. Seems it, in sleep, more spiritual in the shell?

*At this time, there were various exhibitions of "the unknown tongues" in the Rev. Edward Irving's Chapel, in London.-M.

1832.]

PRINTERS' DEVILS.

11

Ambrose. Prodigious Pandores all! Meet for the mouths of giants.

North. Most melancholy must it be to the entranced spirit as it relapses into waking, to see the magnificent spiritual oyster of a dream dwindling down into the mean material conch, half opening its lips on the way up from Prestonpans!

Ambrose. My dream was twofold, sir. But I shudder to tell its other vision. Methought I heard you vow never more to waste ink

North. Hush. What an inconsistent and contradictory creature is man! To have my addresses to Maga rejected once in a twelvemonth, sends wrath boiling, like a lava-flood, through my whole frame, from head to heel-and yet-thinking of the contributions she levies-exacts from me-almost in the same breath have I called her the curse of my existence!

Ambrose. She is your lawful wedded wife, sir, and you must stick to her, tooth and nail-I quote your own words, sir―to the last.

North. O these printer's devils! Like urchins on an ice-slide, keeping the pie warm, from cock-crow till owl-hoot do they continue in unintermitting succession to pour from the far-off office down upon Moray Place or Buchanan Lodge, one imp almost on the very shoulders of another-without a minute devil-free-crying "Copy! Copy!" in every variety of intonation possible in gruff or shrill; and should I chance to drop asleep over an article, worn down by protracted sufferings to mere skin and bone as you see, till the wick of my candle-one to the pound-hangs drooping down by the side of the melting mutton-the two sunk stories are swarming with them—all a-hum! Many, doubtless, die during the year; but from such immense numbers they are never missed, any more than the midges you massacre on a sultry summer eve of being eaten alive. Then the face and figure of one devil are so like another's-though people who have time to pay particular attention to their personal appearance-which I have not-say they are different as sheep-that tipsy Thammuz is to me all one with Bowzy Beelzebub; so that, bewildered by that infinite series of small satans,

"At the close of the day when the hamlet is still,
And mortals the sweets of forgetfulness prove,
When nought but the torrent is heard on the hill,
And nought but the nightingale's voice in the grove;"

I am haunted by the mysterious thought of "one-in-many," and the still more mysterious thought of "many-in-one," each individual devil having the might of a million, and the million having the intensity of each individual devil,—a state of mind, I assure you, Mr.

Ambrose, which it is not easy for a rational man like you to imagine, difficult to describe, and impossible to envy.

Ambrose. Reverend sir

North (eyeing the door with a raised expression). Look—look— look-there they come-through the key-hole!

Ambrose (in superstitious fear). In spite of the key! Nay-you are frighting me sir. (Trying to smile.) North. One day in the seven-even they-and I too-are at peace.

Ambrose. And one night in every month

North. The Noctes Ambrosianæ !- "and thus the year spins

round."

Ambrose. Self-tormenting genius loves often to darken its lot by the shadow of a thunder-cloud of its own wilful gathering; but then how it exults in the illumination of the lightning!

North. Why you electrify me, Ambrose !

Ambrose. Any power of expression I have, sir—and of course any power of feeling or of thought-I owe to THE MAGAZINE. Till Maga mounted the throne, Ambrose may be said to have vegetated; -since that era-he has flourished-green all the year round-aǹd brightest of all in winter-like the laurel.

North. Ambrose! I envy the equable current-the calm flowof your existence. Then 'tis much for happiness to be an universal favorite.

Ambrose. On that principle, sir, as on every other, I venture again to say, that you must be the happiest of men.

North. The world—the poor ignorant deluded world—thinks me happy! Happy, forsooth, because I live "in the blaze of my fame!" Pitch-black all the while to me is meridian day as the noon of night. And hideously haunted by phantoms!

Ambrose. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Oh, dear! That I should live to hear this, my beloved benefactor!

North. Hideously haunted-because lovely beyond all endurance are the pale, silent, beckoning phantoms! Trackless do they come and go in soul-subduing succession, each with its face of sunshine soon overcast with clouds, and then dissolving in strange showers of tears! They are the friends of my boyhood-of my youth-of my manhood—and sheeted and shrouded all, as if rising from faroff and long-forgotten graves! Gliding away, they disappear; and leave behind them but the troubled memory of the names they once bore among the living-names overgrown by white moss on the sunken grave-stones-haply in churchyards that are now burialplaces no more- -the very kirk evanished, whose small bell tinkled the joyous school-boy to worship on sunny Sabbaths sleeping stilly over the green gowany braes!