ontain this idea, and were copied
long ago from the poet's corner of a provincial paper, with the title of
"The Language of the Stars, a fragment," worth preserving?

"The stars bear tidings, voiceless though they are:
'Mid the calm loveliness of the evening air,
As one by one they open clear and high,
And win the wondering gaze of infancy,
They speak,--yet utter not. Fair heavenly flowers
Strewn on the floor-way of the angels' bowers!
'Twas HIS own hand that twined your chaplets bright,
And thoughts of love are in your wreaths of light,
Unread, unreadable by us;--there lie
High meanings in your mystic tracery;
Silent rebukings of day's garish dreams,
And warnings solemn as your own fair beams."

* * * * *

BOOKS BURNED BY THE COMMON HANGMAN.

(Vol. viii., p. 272.)

Your correspondent BALLIOLENSIS should remember that at the time Dr. Drake
published his {347} _Historia Anglo-Scotica_, 1703, there were no bounds to
the angry passions and jealousies evoked by the discussion of the projected
union; consequently, what may appear to as in the present day an
insufficient reason for the treatment the book met with in the northern
metropolis, wore a very different aspect to the Scots, who, under the
popular belief that they were to _be sold_ to their enemies, saw every
movement with distrust, and tortured everything said or written on this
side the Tweed, upon the impending question, to discover an attack upon
their national independence, their church, and their valour.

Looking at Dr. Drake's book, then, for the data upon which it was
condemned, we find that it opens with a prefatory dedication to Sir E.
Seymour, one of Queen Anne's Commissioners for the Union, and a high
churchman, wherein the author distinctly ventures a blow at Presbytery when
he says to his patron:

"The languishing oppressed Church of Scotland is not without hopes of
finding in you hereafter the same successful champion and restorer that
her sister of England has already experienced."

He farther calculated upon Sir Edward inspiring the neighbouring nation
"with as great a respect for the generosity of the English as they have
heretofore had to dread their valour." Now the Scots neither acknowledged
the Episcopacy which Seymour is here urged to press upon them, nor had they
any such slavish fear of the vaunted English prowess with which Dr. Drake
would have them intimidated; witho