which, though fresh and fascinating to them as they first beheld it, could not subdue the inward, homeward throbings of their own vexed hearts, nor obliterate therefrom the sense of other recollections, impossible to be described, and impossible to be reviewed, by any narrative whatever from the pen of any human being on this earth.

'Tis Tannahill, we think, who wrote the following lines:

"The fate-scourged exile destined still to roam
Through desert wilds, far from his early home,
If some fair prospect met his sorrowing eyes
Like that he owned beneath his native skies;
Sad recollection, murdering relief,

He bursts in all the agonies of grief;

Mem'ry presents the volume of his care

And harrows up his soul' with 'such things were.'
'Tis so in life, when youth folds up his page,

And turns the leaf to dark, black, joyless age,

Where sad experience speaks in language plain,
Her thoughts of bliss and highest hopes were vain.
O'er present ills I think I see her mourn,

And 'weep past joys that never will return.'”

Our readers may here excuse us if we point out to them in a few plain words, and as nearly as possible, the exact relative position of those three gentlemen thus stationed together for the first time in New South Wales. Muir, at that date, was about thirty years of age, unmarried. Skirving was then about forty-five years of age, married, with an accomplished wife, and several young children left behind, sobbing and sighing for him in Scotland; one of these children, still alive, in a good old age, may be recognised now in the person of the venerable Mr. Alexander Skirving, late of Messrs. Barclay and Skirving, the eminent auctioneers of this city.

We

may here observe of Skirving, that he was in early life a minister of the Gospel, connected either with the

Baptist or Relief, or other body, no matter which; and he was once, we find, tutor in the family of Sir Alexander Dick, of Prestonfield, near Edinburgh; but he came to prefer agricultural pursuits, and at the date of his trial he was becoming, by his steady habits, energy, and enterprise, one of the most successful farmers in the Lothians, near Edinburgh. It was only when going occasionally to the city of Edinburgh, that he became acquainted with its leading Political Reformers, and heartily gave them his honest and active support. Palmer was now about forty years of age, unmarried. He was a highly educated gentleman, having studied in the Universities both of Oxford and Cambridge. He was related to some of the first families in England, and was a licentiate of the Church of England. It was only when coming occasionally to Scotland, and residing at Perth, that he lent his abilities, and broke out into all the strains of fervent English eloquence in favour of Scottish Reform; but for this, almost as a matter of course, he was held to be guilty of sedition, and banished beyond seas. Margarot was a light-hearted, jolly, good Englishman, with a sprightly wife, who died in grief soon after his banishment, uttering these words from an old Scottish ditty: "Ye cruel, cruel, that combined

The guiltless to pursue ;

My Margarot was ever kind,

He could not injure you.

A long adieu! but where shall fly,

Thy widow all forlorn?

When every mean and cruel eye
Regards my woe with scorn.”

Joseph Gerald, who afterwards joined them in captivity, was in the thirty-ninth year of his age, a widower, leaving behind him a son and daughter of good estate. In early

life he was one of the favourite pupils of the celebrated Dr. Samuel Parr, to whom he was devotedly attached. From one of his eloquent letters, written after sentence of banishment was pronounced, to Mr. Phillips, one of his early and unswerving friends, we extract the following passages, which at once show the classical scholar and accomplished gentleman:

MY DEAR MR. PHILLIPS,-I know not how to express the rising sentiments of my heart for your unbounded kindness to me. The best return, the only return I can make, is, to convince you, by the virtue and energy of my conduct, that I am not altogether unworthy of your friendship. A parade of professions neither suits you nor me, nor the occasion. You know my feelings, and will, therefore, do justice to them; and with this simple observation I close the subject. To the greater part of my friends I have written-to Dr. Parr I have not written; but to his heart my silence speaks. The painter who could not express the excessive grief, covered with a veil the face of Agamemnon. Tell him, then, my dear Mr. Phillips, that if ever I have spoken peevishly of his supposed neglect of me, he must, nay, I know he will, attribute it to its real cause-a love, vehement and jealous, and which, in a temper like Gerald's, lights its torches at the fire of the furies. And when my tongue uttered any harshness of expression, even at that very period my heart would have bled for him; and the compunction of the next moment inflicted a punishment far more than adequate to the guilt of the preceding one. Tell him to estimate my situation not by the tenderness of his own feelings, but by the firmness of mine. Tell him, that if my destiny is apparently rigorous, the unconquerable firmness of my mind breaks the blow which it cannot avert; and that, enlisted as I am in the cause of truth and virtue, I bear about me a patient integrity which no blandishments can corrupt, and a heart which no dangers can daunt. Tell him, in a word, that as I have hitherto lived, let the hour of dissolution come when it may, I shall die the pupil of Samuel Parr.-Ever yours,

JOSEPH GERALD.

In one of Mr. Palmer's first letters, dated from Sydney, New South Wales, 15th December, 1794, to his friend

Mr. Jeremiah Joyce, then one of the most eminent men in the city of London, he thus gives the following original and very interesting account of the Colony; and we publish it here, because it proves how well some of his predictions about it have come to pass :

MY DEAR SIR,—I wrote you an imperfect account of myself by the "Resolution," Captain Locke, about a month ago. I write now to show you that I cannot forget you, but you must not expect a long letter. Mr. Muir, at whose house I write (our three houses are contiguous), and honest Mr. Skirving are both well, and I think as cheerful as myself.

The reports you have had of this country are mostly false. The soil is capital-the climate is delicious. I will take it upon me to say that it will soon be the region of PLENTY. To a philanthropic mind it is a wonder and delight; to him it is a new creation. The beasts, the fish, the birds, the reptiles, the plants, the trees, the flowers are all new-so beautiful and grotesque that no naturalist would believe the most faithful drawing, and it requires uncommon skill to class them.

We have gone into some of these particulars from the desire to show, or rather to prove, that the prisoners were not the low, grovelling, seditious wretches, as some might suppose them to be, and as many at first actually believed them to be in this country, but that they were in truth most amiable and accomplished persons; and from other particulars in our possession we have ascertained the fact, and delight to mention it, namely, that as every Sabbath morning came round, while they were thus in bondage far away, they remembered, as they did at home, the homage due from them to their Creator, and chaunted from their hearts, and with melody from their lips, the following still-abiding and ever-enduring paraphrase :

"O God of Bethel! by whose hand
Thy people still are fed;

Who through this weary pilgrimage
Hast all our fathers led:

Our vows, our prayers, we now present
Before thy throne of grace:

God of our fathers! be the God
Of their succeeding race.

Through each perplexing path of life
Our wand'ring footsteps guide;
Give us each day our daily bread,
And raiment fit provide.

O spread thy cov'ring wings around,
Till all our wand'rings cease,
And at our Father's lov'd abode
Our souls arrive in peace.

Such blessings from thy gracious hand
Our humble pray'rs implore;
And thou shalt be our chosen God,

And portion evermore."

We pause here with some propriety, we hope-to question whether, up to that period (1794), such pathetic and sublime strains had ever before been heard by any human being in that vast vacant region-that boundless contiguity of space. The Governor and his quiet family, living at no great distance, accidentally overheard them, and were at first perfectly entranced or delighted with them.

"Hark! how the awakened strains resound,

And break the yielding air:

The ravished sense how pleasingly they wound,

And call the listening soul into the ear."

Thus the old Scottish Psalmody, which Skirving and Muir could give with perfect harmony, went with the thrilling remembrance of its pure old cadence in Scotland, into the Governor's own glowing Scottish heart. He came again and again and listened, and thanked them for the pleasure they had given to him in this exercise; and Sabbath after Sabbath for some space, as regularly as that blessed day of rest came round, was occupied by these seditious