In friendless intimacy day by day, With grinning things must languish life away; Of just such stiff-starched, stay'd, poor creatures more. lish distingués erect themselves into an exclusive church of fashion, which, without admitting the beau monde at large into its inner mysteries, is to be the summit towards which its thousand eyes are directed-" the glass of fa shion and the mould of form." They acknowledge no further restraints upon their conduct than is necessary to avoid outrageous scandal. Pleasure is the sole object of their lives, but a pleasure remote from vulgar annoyance, never expressing itself more forcibly than convenance admits of; in short, a pleasure which may be conceived to bear the same resemblance to the serene and tranquil enjoyment of the Elysian fields, that a French engraving does to an antique statue. The three volumes of The Exclusives are devoted to pourtraying the effects of an admission within this Circean circle, upon two young and amiable individuals of different sexes. Lord Albert d'Esterne, a highly talented, ambitious, but withal well-principled young noblernan, is seized upon at his return from his travels, by some of the leading Exclusives, as a promising recruit for their sect. Lady Tilney, the literary Whig, has a plot upon his political independence, and Lady Hamlet Vernon, a sort of Don Juan in petticoats, has a plot upon his heart. He runs little danger from the dame spirituelle; but finds a more skilful angler in the fascinating rouée, (begging our a new sexual denomination.) Lord Albert has been engaged from childhood to an amiable cousin; but Lady Hamlet finds means, by the aid of a ci-devant favourite, to create misunderstandings between the lovers, and finally to break off the match. She then attaches the victim of her intrigues more and more to herself, by a show of sympathy, which, in her susceptible and unregulated mind, assumes all the violence of a real passion. His fair hopes blasted, his love insidiously re-awakened by a new object, in a moment of infatuation he offers her his hand. The sacrifice is on the eve of being completed, when a blunder on the part of the lady shows him his danger, and he beats a timely retreat, not unwounded, however ;—kaeret in latere lethalis arundo. Time at last soothes his broken spirit: the course of affairs brings him again in contact with his first love, all things are satisfactorily explained, and he is made a happy man. THE Rev. Drs Macleod and Dewar are already advantageously known to the public as eminent Gaelic scholars, and we think their Dictionary, of which the first Num-reader's pardon for introducing the word to them under ber has just been published, promises fair to extend their reputation as benefactors to the Highlands. The valuable work of the Highland Society is useful principally to the general scholar and the learned philologist, and it will of course have a place in all public libraries; but its high price places it beyond the reach of many private individuals, who would otherwise be disposed to become purchasers. The same objection, to a lesser extent, applies to Armstrong's work; whilst the smaller vocabularies which we have seen are so full of corruption, that they furnish no standard of the language, and, besides, are very meagre and incomplete. The present publication will have all the advantages of an abridgement from the Society's larger work, with some peculiar to itself, as being to a considerable extent original. Many new words are added, and new phrases are given, especially with regard to the changes effected upon the word by prepositions, prefixes, and affixes, which are very common in Gaelic. The price Lady Georgina (the female object of these syrens' lures) of the book, when complete in 15 numbers, each contain-enters upon the scene as the new-made bride of Lord ing, we believe, about 48 octavo pages, will not exceed 15s. ; and this consideration, together with our impression of the superior manner of its execution, enables us to recommend it with confidence to all who either are or desire to be acquainted with the language. To the Highland student, and the Highland minister, it is unnecessary to recommend it, since we know that by them such a work has long been wished for, and a slight glance at the present will be sufficient to convince them of its value. We have not seen the prospectus, but we take it for granted that the editors intend to exclude Irish and Island (Arran, Bute, &c.) Gaelic from their] Dictionary, as we do not recognise any such in the specimen before us. We observe some words evidently made for the English, which are not in use in the Highlands, but whose meaning is uniformly expressed by a periphrase such, we believe, is Athan-Eolas-aeromancy. We have no objection to the insertion of such words, but we should like them to be distinguished in some manner from the more legitimate Celtic vocables. We wish, and we mean it as no small compliment, that the learned editors may meet with all the success which, judging from the present specimen, their labours deserve. Glenmore; who, shortly after their marriage, becomes secretary of state. Anxious that his young wife should learn to play in a fitting manner that part in life which becomes the spouse of one so highly raised, he recommends to her acquaintance and imitation two of the leading Exclusives. She is marked for the prey of a male counterpart of Lady Hamlet. Her unconscious innocence enables her to tread in safety the thorny maze. The world has its sneer and its tale, but she escapes unharmed. The Exclusives, after seeing their victims escape from their meshes, continue, with some few exceptions, their old routine. Their ultimate fates are sketched with a few hasty strokes. There is some bold and vigorous painting of passion in this book, and occasionally the delicate and evanescent traits of character are happily enough hit off. The only misfortune is, that we are tired of the whole class of works to which it belongs. We wish the writers in this department would try to strike out something new. The haut gout of fashionable life is well enough at a time, but we hate toujours perdrix. The Lotus, or the Faery Flower of the Poets. Edin burgh. George A. Douglas. 18mo. Pp. 183. THIS is a tasteful and pretty little volume; and the selection of modern poetry which it contains, satisfies us that the editor understands what good verse is. The pieces, generally speaking, are not of the very highest order, but, with a few exceptions, they are all more than respectable. They have the merit, too, of not being hack neyed, which shows that they have been strung together "En! flores tibi mitto discolores,- The Athenaid; or, Modern Grecians. A Poem. By Henry J. Bradfield. London. Marsh & Miller. 1830. 8vo. Pp. 231. devotion, and an enthusiastic admiration of the works of nature, worthy of the favourite of the Almighty-of him who was taken from the sheepfold, to feed with divine knowledge Israel his people. Independently, indeed, of that inspiration with which the son of Jesse was preternaturally favoured, and thereby enabled to direct the tenor of his sacred songs so as to pre-signify that Messiah whom he himself typified, his personal history, the various situations of his life, and the contrasted and trying occurrences that successively befell him, were all of such a deeply impressive and arousing character, as naturally to call forth from his devout, impassioned, and agitated THIS is a poem in the Beppo stanza, and meant to con-spirit, effusions of the most diversified and affecting intetain a playful account of the manners and mode of living of the modern Greek. But Mr Bradfield, the unsuccessful author of “ Waterloo, or the British Minstrel," though, we daresay, a good sort of person, is rather a dull rogue. His poem, at least, is about as heavy as uniform mediocrity, and a continual failure when he attempts to be witty, can make it. Let Mr Bradfield console himself with the belief that he is a man of talent; for certainly no one will ever ask him to believe that he is a poet. To show him, at the same time, that we wish to do him all the good in our power, we subjoin the three best stanzas in his volume: 66 "A friend of mine once dining with a Greek, Upon such servile treatment of the fair: “And, should I not intrude on your good will, I would not wish it if it suits not you; "And so the lovely seraph sat her down, But not in that glad confidence of heart Phrenology in Edinburgh. John Anderson, jun. 1830. This is a sixpenny poem in praise of Phrenology, and against all those who have attacked it. We thought - Phrenology itself the dullest thing in the universe till we saw this sixpenny poem, which has convinced us that there is one thing still duller-namely, the sixpenny poem. MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE. rest. He spent his boyhood and youth amid his fanourishing a poetical mind, and gratifying to the full an ther's folds, a situation, above all others, favourable for admiration of the beauties of nature; he was selected, without having the faintest anticipation of such an advancement, to be the Shepherd of his people, the highest honour his country or his God could bestow; he became at once the object of the fondest affection, and the most bitter persecution; curses and blessings were suddenly blended in full effusion upon his person; he experienced the most rapturous triumphs, the most dispiriting defeats ; he was at once blessed, and most unblessed, in his family and servants; even his very virtue and native nobleness of soul for once forsook him, and he was misled into a most reproachful crime, the perpetration of which stung his susceptible heart for ever afterwards with the sharpest repentance. His state of mind, under all this variety of experiences, is very luminously imaged forth in his Psalms, written evidently under the immediate impression of such agitating events. We hear him exulting, in his triumphal hymn, as he ascends Mount Sion; whispering forth his trepidating notes, as he skulks in the cave of Engedi ; lamenting over the treachery of those friends who had beguiled his artless confidence; we overhear his pensive soliloquies and virtuous determinations, as he muses on his bed during the night-watches; we listen in terror to his cries of penitential agony, to his denunciation of direful curses against his enemies; we sympathise with him in his devotional raptures, when he expresses his admiration of the starry heavens-" the work of thy fingers," and summons all creation, animate and inanimate, to join with him in his hymn of praise to the Creator. What were the particular metres of these songs, and with what music they were conjoined, the admirers of Hebrew poetry are, in a great measure, if not altogether, ignorant; but, judging from the well-attested musical skill of David, and the perfection in the poetical art which, it is confessed, he had attained, we must infer, that the effect of his Psalms, when sung by the voice, according to the graces of their proper prosody, and accompanied with the choral symphony of every princely instrument, must have been in the highest degree, to the ears of the congregation of Israel, ravishing and overpowering. It is in vain to look to Greece and Rome, these celebrated theatres of song, for any productions, making even an approach, in similarity, to these sacred songs of Judea. The hymns, composed by the lyric and tragic poets of Greece, in honour of their Gods, though they contain, in many places, portions of sublime and beautiful description, THE PSALMS OF DAVID, AND THEIR DIFFERENT and are copiously besprinkled with sententious precepts POETICAL VERSIONS. By William Tennant, Author of " Anster Fair," &c. As the poetry of the Hebrews is, in an eminent degree, distinguished by simplicity, pathos, and sublimity, the Psalms, or lyric productions of King David, are by no means the least in possession of these noble attributes. At the same time that they combine the tenderness of Jeremiah with the sublimity of Isaiah, they possess, in rnany places, as peculiar to themselves, a pastoral beauty, that verifies their origin from the shepherd king, and are animated, I should rather say inflamed, by a fervency of of moral instruction, are notwithstanding, in their substantial effects, frigid and lifeless as the decorated stocks and stones, which are the objects of their celebration. There is wanting the animating, the inspiring principle, whereby the Jewish hymns are identified, as it were, in their efficient and vivifying influence, with that of the It would appear that the Jews (at least Josephus) considered David's poetry as possessing a variety of metres, and a distinction corresponding to the Greek Trimeters and Tetrameters- Davions ωδας εις τον Θεον και ύμνους συνετάξατο, μέτρου ποικίλους τους μεν γαρ τριμετρους, τους δε πεντάμετρους εποίησεν. JOSEPHUS, lib. 7, c. 12. Omnipotent Spirit, whose universal energy supports, enlivens, and shines forth throughout the majesty of his created works. Even the texture of their styles, the technical frame of their composition, is altogether unlike; while the Hebrew diction is simple, concise even to bareness, conveying the loftiest and most comprehensive thought in the fewest words, with hardly one epithet or adverbal adjunct, the Greek style is full, verbose, richly larded with sounding epithets, encumbered with circumstances of laborious expansion and amplification. In one or two of these Psalms, indeed, are to be found a few of these abrupt transitions, obscure allusions, and violent ellipses, which, in a great measure, characterise all the Asiatic poetry; but the predominant attribute of their style is simplicity, unadorned plainness, an utter privation of adjuncts and epithets. Of this quality of the Hebrew lays, the great and learned author of Paradise Lost, who, of all our English poets, dead or living, best understood and knew their value, being accustomed, as he was, to feed his own sublime spirit on the pastures of their sublimity, has introduced our Saviour himself as taking notice: "Remove their swelling epithets, thick laid As varnish on a harlot's cheek, the rest mom and Thin sown with aught of profit or delight,yen Will far be found unworthy to compareddi bir de With Sion's songs, to all true tastes excelling." Paradise Regained, B. iv. 345. Of the Psalms of David, there have been compiled, in our language, for the purpose of being used in public wor ship, three poetical versions that of Sternhold, Hopkins, and a few other coadjutors the more modern one, that has in the English church superseded it, composed by Tait and Brady and that, at present used by the church of Scotland. In comparing these different versions with each other, and referring them to their original, it will be, without hesitation, confessed by every one, who knows and feels most the strength and sublimity of the Sacred Bard, that the ancient versions have the superiority. The names of Sternhold and Hopkins have, in this respect, been perhaps too harshly dealt with by the English people; and, from rather an unfair representation, have been depressed, too undeservedly, to the very lowest point of the poetical scale. For these men wrote at a time when the accentuation of English words was in a great measure unsettled; when that code of rhymes, which now regulate our meanest poetasters, had not yet been framed and, sanctioned; when the grammar of the language was, arbitrary and fluctuating; when Shakspeare himself knew not the right superlative degree, and sinned not a little, he and many others, in the use of rhymes now forbidden and proscri bed. One or two bad couplets, however, a few jarring jingles, have been picked out from the old version, and presented in glaring exhibition as specimens of the badness of the whole. It would have been much fairer to select many of their good couplets, and exhibit them as specimens of their general excellence. In the same psalm, (78th) where caterpillar and grasshopper are the unfortunately celebrated rhymes, the 1st and 2d verses are as follows; and they are here quoted without being singled out in any particular preference : Attend my people to my law, My mouth shall speak strange parables, Which we ourselves have heard and learn'd, 770-7974 And which, for our instruction, Our fathers have us told. Nothing can be more simple and accordant to the spirit of the original. Now let us have Messrs Tait and Brady: Hear, O my people; to my law Devout attention lend;" Scarcely could it be rendered more wordy, nerveless, and How The Lord their cattle smote; And all their flocks and herds likewise, He cast upon them in his ire Displeasure, wrath, and evil sprites, superior is this to Lightning and hail made flocks and herds He turn'd his anger loose, and set And, with their plagues, bad angels sent, Their torments to increase! Indeed, there occur in this old version so many passages of particular psalms of such excellence, and even a few whole psalms of such simple, yet skilful execution, that it is to be regretted that the English Church, instead of allowing them to be supplanted altogether, good and bad, by a new version, considered not the advantage of purifying the old, by the requisite corrections, clearing it of its false rhymes, and long disused words, and so combi Of all the Psalms, the 119th is the most remarkable; it is, indeed, doogpov, and, of all the compositions of antiquity, is to a literary man the most curious. For, besides the proverbial form of its verses, it is divided into as many sections as the Hebrew alphabet has letters. Each section contains eight verses; and each verse begins with a word whose first letter is that letter of the alphabet to which each section is successively appropriated, In fact, it is the first Alliterative poem on record, and is the parent of the multitudinous family of Alliteratives, Anagrams, Acrostics, &c. throughout the various languages. It may be remarked, moreover, that as there ning and venerable language of an tiquity, taste. correctness exacted by modern are only three or four words in Hebrew beginning with the letter VAN, the royal Lyrist feels in this letter the oppressiveness of the artificial restraint imposed-upon himself, being compelled to begin every verse of that section with the copulative conjunction AND, TenOf Tait and Brady's version, the highest commendation dering it thereby heavy and monotonous 235026 30 30 Of all the Greek, or even the European poets, Eschylus to me is to say, that its diction is copiously eloquent,-its metre appears to be the most Asiatic, in the tone of his mind and colour of smooth and unruffled, its grammar faultlessly correct, his language, and to bear the greatest resemblance to the poetry of the Bible, Homer himself not excepted. His vehemence and subli--and its rhymes authorised, all and each of them, by mity, the dark, mysterious terror of his images, his elliptical and the Rhyming Dictionary. It, moreover, deserves this tortuous constructions, his audacious metaphors, nay, his very obscurity, are all Asiatic-liker the composition of the book of Job, than additional eulogy, that in the obscurer psalms, it acts as that of any other writer. And it is remarkable that that celebrated general and poet, so Oriental in the cast of his mind, flourished at that particular period when Europe was deluged with an army of Asiatic invaders, from whom, though he fought against and conquered them, he seems to have imbibed the daring spirit of their poetry. I find that Sternhold died fifteen years before Shakspeare w born. Hopkins lived much later, and was the friend of Dryden. The best versified psalms are undoubtedly Sternhold's; though Hop kins seems to excel him in the facility of his rhymes. Those marked W. W., &c. are the worst, a sort of commentary, elucidating, by its wordy diffusion, what in the older versions is left either too meagre, or altogether unintelligible. It has the same advantages, the same defects, with the translation of Buchanan, which, he that relishes Hebrew sublimity the most, will read with the least pleasure, and with no commendation saving of the command of Latin phraseology and Latin prosody there so ostentatiously exhibited. Simplicity is lost amid the exuberance of paraphrases; sublimity is expanded out into tameness by circumstantial details,is frittered away, and nearly extinguished, amid a load of superfluous adjuncts and vocables. And they are the sublimest and finest passages that fare the worst under this plethargy; they cannot live-they are choked to death under such an accumulation of language, just as the simpler features of beauty are lost amid an accumulation of floating finery. Let us take but one example of this deterioration, and let it be the sublime passage in the 18th psalm, noticed, as is said, by Dryden: And he bowed the heavens, and came down, and darkness under his feet. And he rode on a cherub and flew; yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind." Here is a lofty sentiment, so simple, so denuded of useless words, that even the substantive verb is scorned as redundant. Of this Buchanan makes: 731 "And thence he did descend van nati And thickest clouds of darkness didere, nổ day Under his feet attend: And he upon a cherub rode, mit And thereon he did fly; Of these four poetical versions, it is evident that the two riot, which, if not ludicrous, is at least not suitably dignified. Our Scottish version has adhered to, and best expressed the original, which is simply, "he rode upon a cherub," a plain, yet expressive enunciation, whose sublimity consists in the obscurity and incomprehensible nature of the mysterious creature concerned, to accompany the descent of the Almighty. It would be unjust, however, to deny that the modern English version is happy in some of its passages, as in the last line of verse 7th of Psalm 68th— "Twas so of old, when thou didst lead, And in the 5th verse of Psalm 112th, by the judicious expansion of the thought —– And Yet what his charity impairs, But, unfortunately, there are too few such. Not only are there introduced metaphors and figures quite heathenish, and abhorrent from the pastoral simplicity of Jewry, as, Virgin led to the altar, crown'd with nuptial garlands,Covenant with our fathers sign'd, — Entail the land,heirs-at-law, labyrinths, &c.; but expressions vulgar and undignified are not very cautiously employed, as, stupid fools, hardened reprobates, remorseless wretches, &c. ; to say nothing of the dry, sapless, hackney phrases of commonplace poetry, and the long, many-syllabled epithets foisted in, apparently to lengthen the line, as unexampled, undissembled, unexhausted, commissioned vengeance, truest interests, &c. * Of our Scottish version, it is a perplexing and perhaps a perilous thing to speak: It shines out with so many beauties, and, at the same time, is blotted with so many blemishes. It is, in the greater part of its Psalms, so majestically simple, yet disfigured so largely with pseudorhymes, double-rhymes, and no-rhymes,-so spotted with violations of ordinary grammar, vicious accentuations, and vulgar Scoticisms, that moderation of praise and dispraise can scarcely be preserved. The best proof of its general excellence is, its still, notwithstanding these blotches and rags of disfigurement, retaining its place upon our Scottish pulpits. Yet it cannot but fill an Episcopalian stranger, nay, even a Presbyterian layman, with pity, to hear the ministers of our church, the best educated men of the country, whose sermons are penned and uttered with taste and grammatical accuracy, reading to their people from a psalter where they must of necessity, at every second page, stumble upon and flounder through the most vulgar Scoticisms, obsolete accentuation, and erroneous grammar. But a purification, we hope, is at hand; sooner or later it must take place; and let us be wiser than our brethren of England, let us purify, not supplant-correct, not displace. This is called for, now loudly called for, by the improved taste of our people, the laity of Scotland; by the highly respectable character and acknowledged literary attainments of her clergymen ; above all, by the very dig * Poor Sternhold's blunders have been pointed out by many a scornful finger. Let the critical reader determine whether the fol lowing passages are not somewhat ludicrous or absurd. In Psalm 104, v. 10, there occurs Yet thence in smaller parties drawn, nity itself, and admirable excellence of the original composi-footed, very readily took me on his back, addressing him tions. But this is a theme tooʻpregnant to be dilated upon at present; at another time it may be resumed and enforced with some critical illustrations. Devongrove, Banks of the Devon, 4th December, 1829. RECOLLECTIONS OF A PARSONAGE. DAFT JOCK. JOCK TAIT was one of those characters which lie halfway betwixt idiocy and wit, with too much sense to be designated fatuous, and too much obliquity of mental perception to be accounted compos. His mother, who was a widow woman, called him Jock, and by this name he was known, teazed, and flattered, by the children of the neighbourhood. His habits were in general inoffensive, yet there sometimes peeped through a kind of brighter light, as if, Brutus-like, he had all along been acting a part. Jock was (for, alas! he is now numbered with the wise and the foolish of the times gone by) a constant hearer of mine, and I could see him occupying his seat upon the kirk-yard dike every Sabbath morning, by the time that the second bell was rung. In the church he took his seat by the door-way, on the stool upon which the collection was made, and whilst he kept one eye inwards upon the pulpit, he never failed to keep another upon the external world. As I had prohibited all dogs from the church, Jock rendered himself useful in carrying my injunctions into effect, and neither cur nor mastiff longed to encounter a second vistation of Jock's hazel rung. The elders again and again remonstrated against Jock, as scarcely wellbehaved, but I had a kind of liking for the creature, and protected him manfully in his privileges. One day that I chanced to be a little, or rather not a little, more animated in my peroration than usual, Jock, who in general, like others of the congregation, took things easy, began to be peculiarly arrested. At first he became restless, and his eyes seemed moving on opposite tacks from each other, then he placed his hands on the edges of his stool, and fairly poised his body, like Mahomet's coffin, in the air, then inhaling like a whale, he gradually swelled, like the frog in the fable, till his very cheeks were inflated; at length, on hearing my concluding sentence, he lifted up his hands, permitted his body to resume its position, stretched out his arms over head, and emitting his breath with the whizz of a steam-boiler, became all at once quiescent. On another occasion, when a young preacher, whose mother belonged to the parish, had officiated, I ventured, from a principle of curiosity, to interrogate Jock at the kirk-stile on the subject. "Well, Jock," said I, "what do you think o' Master Andrew, now that ye bae heard him preach ?" Jock was silent, upon which I repeated my enquiry. "What think ye, Jock, o' the new preacher the day?" “Ou ay,” said Jock, giving a loud hem, as if studying the weather, "it's a braw day, atweel, and atweel ist, I trow." This was not enough to the point, and so I returned anew to the charge, with a " But, Jock, listen to what I'm saying. Wasna yon a braw sermon we had the day, frae ye're auld friend Andrew?" Jock, however, was not to be entrapped into the praise of one against whom he owed an old grudge, so, after looking me fully in the face, and putting his hand to his hat, as if he had not noticed me previously," Oh," said he, "but she be a fine body the mother o' him!"-I got no more information from Jock. One day when I was fishing, I forgathered, as they say, with Jock on the side of the water, which, from the direction of the wind, I was anxious to cross; but, like the cat similarly circumstanced, I had no wish to wet my feet. Jock, who generally perambulated the fields bare self to the crossing of the stream; but, to my utter & tonishment and mortification, just as he had reached the deepest part, he very quietly and deliberately stooped unde: and deposited his burden. "What's the meaning o' this Jock?" said I, greatly enraged at finding myself stemning the current, up to the haunches; "what for have ye me down here?"—" Oh!" said Jock, very deliberately making the best of his way to the bank at which he had entered, "I'm no sae keen as I was." Jock, for what reason I never knew distinctly, had an antipathy to ducks. He seemed to regard their bills, in particular, with abhorrence; and wherever he met with them, they were in danger of decapitation. One day I found him busy at the grindstone, to which he was hold ing a duck's bill, very much to the duck's annoyance, which | did not fail to remonstrate loudly against Jock's proceedings. "What gars her gabble worms, then?" was Jock's | reply-imitating most ludicrously, at the same time, the duck's action in swallowing. So much for Daft Jock. LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES OF EDINBURGH. SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF SCOTLAND. Monday, 14th December. Sir HENRY JARDINE in the Chair. Present,-Drs Brunton, Carson, Hibbert, Maclagan; Thomas Allan, James Skene, Gregory, Esquires, &c. JAMES SKENE, Esq. curator of the Society's Museum, reported the donations made to it since last meeting. The most interesting were:-A brass gun, taken in 1828, at the fortress of Bhurtpore, bearing the inscription.— "Jacobus Monteith, me fecit, Edinburgh, anno Dom. 1642;" presented by the Governor-General and Council to Captain L. Carmichael, of his Majesty's 59th regiment, and gifted by him to the Society;-thirty-two coins of the Spanish colonies and municipia, with a full descrip tive catalogue; presented by the Rev. W. J. D. Waddelove, of Bracon Grange; a collection of four gold and thirty-one silver coins of Assam, with a descriptive catalogue; presented by George Swinton, Esq., Secretary to the Bengal government;-an ancient and very perfect querne, presented by Chalmers Izett, Esq.;—and a num ber of books from different donors. The Rev. Dr Brunton, secretary to the Society, next proceeded to read an Essay by Lieut.-Colonel Miller, F. R. S. of London, &c., entitled, "An Enquiry respect ing the site of the Battle of Mons Grampius." The author prefaced his investigation by an enumeration of the grounds upon which he went in coming to the conclusion he intended to support. They were five :-The personal character of Agricola, leading us to expect decision, misgled with caution and kindliness, and consequence in his operations ;—the narrative of Tacitus, brief and vague in its geographical details; the topography of the country, as it may still be witnessed; the remains of Roman erections which might be supposed to indicate the route of the invaders; and, lastly, the traditions of the country people, the least certain of all. He next adverted to the neces sity, in attempting to establish the site of the battle against Galgacus, of keeping in view the previous operations of Agricola. That general assumed the command in Britain immediately after the tide of victory had been again turned in favour of the Romans by the exertions of Petilius Cerealis. The first and second years of his government were occupied in reducing and pacifying the Roman province and the island of Anglesea; an undertaking effected by a ternate demonstrations of force and blandishments. The operations of the third summer are characterised by a change of system. The natives were terrified by deva tations of their country. This altered plan of operation |