These quench'd a moment her ambition's thirst-In love and war), how odd are the connections
So Arab deserts drink in summer's rain :
In vain!--As fall the dews on quenchless sands,
Blood only serves to wash Ambition's hands.

Though somewhat large, exuberant, and trucu-Expedient of full bumpers; for the eye, lent, [a figure In love, drinks all life's fountains (save tears) dry.

(The last, if they have soul, are quite as good,
Or better, as the best examples say:
Napoleon's, Mary's (Queen of Scotland), should
Lend to that colour a transcendent ray;
And Pallas also sanctions the same hue,

Juan much flatter'd by her love, or lust-
I cannot stop to alter words once written ;
And the two are so mix'd with human dust,
That he who names one, both perchance may
hit on:

Too wise to look through optics black or blue)-But in such matters Russia's mighty Empress

Those movements, those improvements in our
bodies,

Which make all bodies anxious to get out
Of their own sand-pits, to mix with a goddess,
For such all women are at first, no doubt.
How beautiful that moment! and how odd is
That fever which precedes the languid rout
Of our sensations! What a curious way
The whole thing is, of clothing souls in clay!
LXXVI.

The noblest kind of love is love Platonical,

To end or to begin with; the next grand
Is that which may be christen'd love canonical
Because the clergy take the thing in hand;
The third sort, to be noted in our chronicle,
As flourishing in every Christian land,
Is, when chaste matrons to their other ties
Add what may be call'd marriage in disguise.

LXXVII.

Well, we won't analyse-our story must

Tell for itself: the sovereign was smitten,

Behaved no better than a common sempstress.

LXXVIII.

The whole court melted into one wide whisper,
And all lips were applied unto all ears
The elder ladies' wrinkles curl'd much crisper,
As they beheld; the youngest cast some leers
On one another, and each lovely lisper
Smiled as she talk'd the matter o'er; but tears
Of rivalship rose in each clouded eye
Of all the standing army that stood by.

LXXIX.

All the ambassadors of all the powers,

Inquired who was this very new young man,
Who promised to be great in some few hours?
Which is full soon (though life is but a span).
Already they beheld the silver showers

Upon his cabinet, besides the presents
Of roubles rain, as fast as specie can.
Of several ribands, and some thousand peasants.*

LXXX.

Catharine was generous-all such ladies are;
Love, that great opener of the heart, and all
The ways that leads there, be they near or far,
Love-(though she had a cursed taste for war,
Above, below, by turnpikes great or small-

And was not the best wife, unless we call
That one should die, than two drag on the
Such Clytemnestra, though perhaps 'tis better
fetter)-

LXXXI.

Love had made Catharine make each lover's for-
Unlike our own half-chaste Elizabeth, [tune,
Whose avarice all disbursements did importune,
If history, the grand liar, ever saith

The truth; and though grief her old age might
shorten,

Because she put a favourite to death,
Her vile, ambiguous method of flirtation,
And stinginess, disgrace her sex and station.

LXXXII.

But when the levée rose, and all was bustle
In the dissolving circle, all the nations'
Ambassadors began as 'twere to hustle [tions.
Round the young man with their congratula-
Also the softer silks were heard to rustle

Of gentle dames, among whose recreations
It is to speculate on handsome faces,
Especially when such lead to high places.

LXXXIII.

Juan, who found himself, he knew not how,
A general object of attention, made

A Russian estate was always valued by the number of slaves upon it.

XIV.

Of life reach'd ten o'clock: and while a glow,
Hectic and brief as summer's day nigh done,
O'erspreads the cheek which seems too pure for The lawyer and the critic but behold
clay,
[they! The baser sides of literature and life,
Thousands blaze, love, hope, die-how happy

IX.

But Juan was not meant to die so soon.
We left him in the focus of such glory
As may be won by favour of the moon
Or ladies' fancies-rather transitory,
Perhaps; but who would scorn the month of
June,

Because December, with his breath so hoary,
Must come? Much rather should he court the

ray,

To hoard up warmth against a wintry day.

X.

Besides, he had some qualities which fix
Middle-aged ladies even more than young:
The former know what's what; while new-
fledged chicks

Know little more of love than what is sung

And nought remains unseen, but much untold,
By those who scour those double vales of strife.
While common men grow ignorantly old,
The lawyer's brief is like the surgeon's knife,
Dissecting the whole inside of a question,
And with it all the process of digestion.

XV.

A legal broom's a moral chimney-sweeper,
And that's the reason he himself's so dirty:
The endless soot bestows a tint far deeper
Than can be hid by altering his shirt: he
Retains the sable stains of the dark creeper,
At least some twenty-nine do out of thirty,
In all their habits-not so you, I own:
As Cæsar wore his robe, you wear your gown.

XVI.

And all our little feuds, at least all mine,
Dear Jeffrey, once my most redoubted foe

In rhymes, or dreamt (for fancy will play tricks) (As far as rhyme and criticism combine

In visions of those skies from whence Love
sprung.

Some reckon women by their suns or years:
I rather think the moon should date the dears.

This were the worst desertion :-renegadoes,
Even shuffling Southey, that incarnate lie,
Would scarcely join again the 'reformadoes,'*
Whom he forsook to fill the laureate's sty;
And honest men, from Iceland to Barbadoes,
Whether in Caledon or Italy,

To make such puppets of us things below), Are over: Here's a health to 'Auld Lang Syne !' I do not know you, and may never know Your face-but you have acted, on the whole, Most nobly; and I own it from my soul.

XVII.

And when I use the phrase of Auld Lang Syne,'
'Tis not address'd to you--the more's the pity
For me, for I would rather take my wine [city.
With you, than aught (save Scott) in your proud
But somehow-it may seem a schoolboy's whine,
And yet I seek not to be grand or witty,
But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred
A whole one, and my heart flies to my head-

XVIII.

As 'Auld Lang Syne' brings Scotland, one and
all,
[and clear streams,
Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills,
The Dee, the Don, Balgounie's brig's black
wall, t

All my boy-feelings, all my gentler dreams
Of what I then dreamt, clothed in their own pall,
Like Banquo's offspring-floating past me

seems

My childhood in this childishness of mine:
I care not-'tis a glimpse of Auld Lang Syne.'

Query: suit -Printer's Devil.

The Brig of Don, near the Auld Toun' of Aberdeen, with its one arch and its black deep salmon stream below, is in my memory as yesterday. I still remember, though perhaps I may misquote, the awful proverb which made me pause to [seize cross it, and yet lean over it with a childish delight, being an Should not veer round with every breath, nor only son, at least by the mother's side. The saying, as recol To pain, the moment when you cease to please.lected by me, was this, but I have never heard or seen it since I was nine years of age: