really wish to leave this place ", violence with which it was aimed, -“Really wish to leave it? O sir!" lost her equilibrium, and measured

" Well then, I have but little her length on the floor. With soine doubt that I can procure you an asy difficulty, by expostulations, threats, lum in a house where the family are and the promises of reward, I sucamiable, and where I am sure you ceeded in restoring peace between will be treated with kindness, and, the two; and after Dermot's head if you deserve it, meet with every | had been bound up (by the bye, he encouragement and reward.”—“Oh! made very light of the matter, saying bless you, bless you! lose no time in a “ bit of brown paper wud soon conveying me from this horrid den cure it,"') I at once introduced the of vice and riot. Hark!” she said, subject of “ Lizzy's" leaving them. as the noise from the apartment I Dermot was very loth to hear any had left grew louder, " they are now thing of such a proposition; but at the usual work: such is generally || Norah eagerly embraced it; and as the end of all their revels !". || “the gray mare was the better horse,"

Presently a loud crash made us | it was soon arranged that this interstart; and, in another instant, Der- esting girl (whose father, Alexander mot rushed into the apartment bleed- Sanderson, a Scotch soldier, who ing dreadfully from the head. He fell in an engagement a few years was followed by a tall and athletic previous, leaving his daughter to Hibernian, with a huge staff in his | Dermot, as he had related,) should hand, which he brandished with fu- accompany me. Poor girl, I could ry; and at his heels came Norah, not let her walk through the streets, seemingly breathless with rage, and and therefore sent Dermot for a eager to save her husband. The coach; and having given Norah such pursuer aimed a blow at poor Der- a sum as quite reconciled her to my mot, which would probably have fi- || intrusion, as soon as the vehicle arnished the term of his mortal exist- || rived, I placed the hapless girl in it, ence, had I not caught the stick, and ordered the coachman to drive and, by the suddenness of the jerk, to Mr. Ripley's. Here, to bring this wrenched it out of the ruffian's hand. long, and I am afraid, rather tedious “ Och! and kill him then, darling- tale to a conclusion, I succeeded in the big blackguard !" cried Norah; securing her an asylum in a domesfollowing up her words with a well- tic situation, and left the grateful meant blow, which, however, from girl quite happy. her being a bad judge of distances,

A RAMBLER. fell short, and poor Norah, from the

. THE LITERARY COTERIE.

No. VI. The appointed night for our ment, and wafted to us sweet permonthly meeting arrived, and found fumes from a beautiful flower-parterre us seated at the worthy vicar's, en-that ornamented the front of the joying the delightful breeze which house. The Tales of the Crusadagitated the drapery of the apart. l ers lay on the table, and the vicar, with a smile, observed

| es of which they are members, that "Well, Reginald, are you inclined they cease to be individuals, and to break a lance to-night in defence | stand before us as representatives of of the author of Waverley, who has the different bodies into which sociebeen found guilty of numberless sins ty was divided, whether clerical, miand misdemeanours, committed in litary, or civil? his capacity of novelist, and on whom Mr. Montague. Or why is it, that summary execution is to be done?" out of the host of imitators whom

Reginald. In such a case, who his success has provoked to emulawould not be eager to be the fore- tion, not one has yet come up to the most in the fray? And you cannot excellence of the original? doubt but I, whose admiration of the Apathy. What! do you mean to genius which dictated the Waver- say, that no modern novel is equal to ley novels not all the spleen of all the Monastery, The Abbot, St. Ro. the critics in Cockayne will ever be nan's Well, Redgauntlet, or able to damp, shall be ready to do Reginald. Stop, stop, my most the duty ofa good knight, and to main candid disputant! I do not mean to tain the combat against all comers. contend, that the genius of the au

Captain Primrose. Foregad, a gal- thor of Waverley never flags, or that lant defiance, Reginald! and I, for there are not novels of the modern one, shall decline taking up the gaunt- schoolequal, or even superior, to those let which you have thrown down, you have named. But shew me the for two reasons: first, a dread of man in the three kingdoms whose your superior prowess in the art of genius is competent to the producing wordy warfare; and, secondly, be- a Waverley, an Antiquary, a Rob cause I am as warm an admirer of Roy, a Heart of Mid Lothian, Ivanthe works in question as you can be. hoe, The Fortunes of Nigel, and last,

Apathy. Psha! what are they but but not least, The Talisman. Do gross plagiarisms from old black-let- this, and I will vail my bonnet to the ter records and musty chronicles? equal of the mighty magician of the The materials with which these fur- | north, whose genius, like that of our nish him have been woven by Sir own immortal Shakspeare, will be Walter, if indeed he be the “ Great confined to no time or place, but Unknown," with tales certainly of will bloom and flourish wherever some little interest, but the faults of literature is cultivated, and when which are even more conspicuous | those who loved and those who enthan their beauties.

11 vied him are sleeping alike in the Dr. Primrose. But how is it, friend | cold and silent grave. Apathy, that, with every advantage Miss Rosina Primrose. You have which Sir Walter possessed, no one read The Crusaders, Reginald? before him ever produced such won- Reginald. Aye, before they were derfully interesting pictures of " men forty-eight hours old, I was seated and manners;" so interesting, be-at my desk, and had begun to place cause they are so natural; and, what- | my ivory knife between the leaves. ever age his characters may belong Rosina. And what is your opinion to, so completely embodying every of the tales? essential feature of the different class. | Reginald. That The Betrothed is

l'ol. VI. No. XXXII.

a very respectable, though not super-| the land, as well as the lake, might be eminently clever, production, but that termed dead, as producing nothing hav.

The Talisman is equal to any thing || ing resemblance to vegetation; and even the author ever wrote: it is a splendid the very air was entirely devoid-of its ortale of chivalry, told in his best style,

dinary winged inhabitants, deterred proand the interest never flags from the il bably by the odour of bitumen and sulfirst page to the last.

phur which the burning sun exhaled from Mr. Mathews. Don't you think

the waters of the lake in steaming clouds, much of that interest arises from the

frequently assuming the appearance of felicitous manner in which the tale

water-spouts. Masses of the slimy and

sulphureous substance, called naphtha, opens, which makes us at once anx

which floated idly on the sluggish and ious for the fortunes of the brave

sullen waves, supplied these rolling clouds Knight of the Leopard, and awakens

with new vapours, and seemed to give all our sympathies as Christians by lawful testimony to the truth of the Mothe localities of the scene in which saic history. Sir Kenneth is first presented to our view?

The Vicar. It occurs to me, that Reginald. Undoubtedly. And

that is a very correct and vivid dethat proves the great tact of the au

scription of the site where once proud thor. And this part of his subject

Sodom and Gomorrah reared their is handled delightfully, and in a mas- |

impious heads in proud defiance to terly style. The picture of this brave

the will of heaven. Let us see what knight in the wilderness flits before

old Baumgarten says of it*. our eyes as we read; and we almost | The vicar reached a book from think the scene is realized, so vivid one of the shelves, and turning over is the impression the book leaves on its pages, read as follows: our imagination. How beautiful is | On the third day, having followed the description of the knight's ap- our guides, we arrived at the Dead Sea. proach to the Dead Sea, and the In our journey thither we had a view of scenery of that spot of desolation! || that frightful and horrid place, where · Crossing himself as he viewed the God did so signally pour down his vendark mass of rolling waters, in colour geance upon the Sodomites. The land as in quality unlike those of every other lying round about is full of pits, covered lake, the traveller shuddered as he re. over with ashes, that seem newly cast membered, that beneath these sluggish | up there: it scarcely ever produceth any waves lay the once proud cities of the thing green; but ever looks black, and plain, whose grave was dug by the thun- || as it were scorched and blasted with der of the heavens, or the eruption of lightning. It is full of pits and holes, subterraneous fire; and whose remains into which our mules stumbling, and were hid, even by that sea which holds throwing us upon the ground, gave us no living fish in its bosom, bears no skiff occasion, sometimes of laughing, and on its surface, and, as if its own dread sometimes of compassionating the poor ful bed were the only fit receptacle for its creatures. It had rained for a long time sullen waters, send not, like other lakes, when we were there, and by that means a tribute to the ocean. The whole land the earth was grown soft and spongy, so around, as in the days of Moses, was

* Martin Baumgarten was à German nobrimstone and salt; it is not sown, nor

that if any chanced to fall, the ground || welled out from beneath their shade in giving' way, immediately received, and, sparkling profusion. as it were, hugged him in its bosom, We have spoken of a moment of being covered above with the clammy truce in the midst of war; and this, a tough earth; one had much ado to get spot of beauty in the midst of a sterile up again. Shortly after we came to the desert, was scarce less dear to the imaDead Sea, and there, having secured our gination. It was a scene which, perhaps, mules by fastening them to some bushes elsewhere would have deserved but little that grew there, we advanced to the notice; but as the single speck, in a shore. The suffocating suink, the me- boundless horizon, which promised the lancholy and hellish aspect of this place, refreshment of shade and living water, the shore full of reeds and rotten trees, these blessings, held cheap where they the unwholesome saltness and binding are common, rendered the fountain and quality of the water, which is bitter as its neighbourhood a little paradise. Some gall, represented to our eyes the dread generous or charitable hand, ere yet the ful vengeance of an offended and angry evil days of Palestine began, had walled God.

in and arched over the fountain, to pre

serve it from being absorbed in the earth, Apathy. The “ Unknown” had

or choked by the flitting clouds of dust been reading that passage when he

with which the least breath of wind cowrote his own.

vered the desert. The arch was now • Montague. Well, and suppose broken, and partly ruinous; but it still vad. Is he not right to procure so far projected over and covered in the the best information, and to consult | fountain, that it excluded the sun in a the best authorities, relative to the great measure from its waters, which, localities of which he treats, if he hardly touched by a straggling beam, cannot be himself an eyewitness of while all around was blazing, lay in a . them? Can you blame him for that? steady repose, alike delightful to the eye Or is it a crime in him, that he sup and the imagination. Stealing from unplies a deficiency so much felt and der the arch, they were first received in complained of in many imaginative a marble basin, much defaced indeed, writers; viz. that their descriptions | but still cheering the eye, by shewing of scenery and places are as fictitious that the place was anciently considered as their stories? .

as a station, that the hand of man had Counsellor Eitherside. Don't you

been there, and that man's accommoda

tion had, in some measure, been attendthink, Reginald, that the fountain, called the diamond of the desert"

ed to. The thirsty and weary traveller

was reminded by these signs, that others by the novelist, is Elisha's well ?

had suffered similar difficulties, reposed Reginald. I have little doubt of

in the same spot, and doubtless found it. Sir Kenneth has now obtained

their way in safety to a more fertile couna companion in a Saracen, whom he try. Again, the little scarce visible curencounters in the desert; and the rent which escaped from the basin, servtwo are pursuing their destination to led to nourish the few trees which sura spot where they can partake of rounded the fountain, and where it sunk some refreshment; and their ap- into the ground and disappeared, its reproach to it is thus described: freshing presence was acknowledged by

'à carpet of velvet verdure... . They were now arrived at the knot of palen-trees, and the fountain which I This is touchingly described; and

vs and forty. wilderness the foul spi

not less beautifully characteristic is il fidel warrior beside him, and, however the sketch of that wild scene where acceptable his gay and gallant bravery our Saviour was tempted of the De would have rendered him as a companion vil, and fasted forty days and forty elsewhere, Sir Kenneth felt as if, in these nights in the mountains. The knight

wildernesses, the waste and dry places, and the Saracen have left the foun- |

in which the foul spirits were wont to tain, and are proceeding onward to

wander when expelled the mortals whose their destination:

form they possessed, a bare-footed friar

would have been a better associate than Meanwhile, as they advanced, the the gay but unbelieving paynim. scene began to change around them. They were now turning to the eastward,

Il Miss Primrose. That is indeed a and had reached the range of steep and beautiful passage! Shall I turn to barren hills, which binds in that quarter some of our friends here (extending the naked plain, and varies the surface. her hand to a shelf, on which the of the country without changing its ste- most celebrated Voyages and Travels rile character. · Sharp, rocky eminences were arranged), and see how true to began to rise around them, and in a short nature the picture is drawn? time deep declivities and rents, both || Basil Firedrake. Aye, aye, haul formidable in height and difficult from over their cargoes; and as I can't the narrowness of the path, offered to do any thing else. I'll read for you. the travellers obstacles of a different

Our fair associate first took down kind from those with which they had re

Maundrell's Travels from Aleppo cently contended. Dark caverns and

to Jerusalem, which journey was chasms among the rocks, those grottoes

made in the year 1697; and finding so often alluded to in Scripture, yawned fearfully on either side as they proceed

the illustrations she wanted, the galed; and the Scottish knight was informed

| lant captain read as follows:

tant ca by the Emir, that these were often the As soon as we entered the plain, we refuge of beasts of prey, or of men still turned up on the left hand, and going more ferocious, who, driven to despera about one hour that way, came to the tion by the constant war and the oppres- || foot of the Quarantana, which, they say, sion exercised by the soldiery as well of is the mountain into which the Devil took the Cross as of the Crescent, had become our blessed Saviour when he tempted him robbers, and spared neither rank nor re with that visionary scene of all the kingligion, neither sex nor age, in their depre doms and glories of the world. It is, as dations.

St. Matthew styles it, an exceeding high The Scottish knight listened with mountain, and in its ascent not only difindifference to the accounts of ravages ficult but dangerous. It has a small committed by wild beasts or wicked men, chapel at the top, and another about half secure as he felt himself in his own va 1 way up, founded upon a prominent part lour and personal strength; but he was of the rock: near this latter are several struck with mysterious dread when he caves and holes in the sides of the mounrecollected that he was now in the awful tain, made use of anciently by hermits, wilderness of the forty days' fast, and and by some at this day, for places to the scene of the actual personal tempta- keep their Lent in, in imitation of that tion wherewith the Evil Principle was of our blessed Saviour. permitted to assail the Son of Man. He Turning down from hence into the withdrew his attention gradually from the plain, we passed by a ruined aqueduct, light and worldly conversation of the in- | and a convent in the same condition ;