is is only a reminiscence, in my own
line, of an illustrious friend among the mountains.

The enthusiasm with which he recited, and spoke of our ancient ballads,
during that first tour of his through the forest, inspired me with a
determination immediately to begin and imitate them, which I did, and soon
grew tolerably good at it. Of course I dedicated The Mountain Bard to him:

Blest be his generous heart for aye;
He told me where the relic lay,
Pointed my way with ready will,
Afar on Ettrick's wildest hill,
Watched my first notes with curious eye,
And wonder'd at my minstrelsy:
He little ween'd a parent's tongue
Such strains had o'er my cradle sung.

_Edinburgh Literary Journal._

* * * * *

RETROSPECTIVE GLEANINGS.

NOTES OF A BOOKWORM.

(_For the Mirror_.)

Robberies and iniquities of all kinds were so uncommon in the reign of
Alfred, that it is said, he hung up golden bracelets near the highways,
and no man dared to touch them.

Earl Godwin, in order to appease Hardicanute, (whose brother he had been
instrumental in murdering,) made him a magnificent present of a galley
with a gilt stern, rowed by fourscore men, who wore each of them a golden
bracelet on his arm, weighing sixteen ounces, and were clothed and armed
in the most sumptuous manner. Hardicanute pleased with the splendour of
the spectacle, quickly forgot his brother's murder, and on Godwin's
swearing that he was innocent of the crime, allowed him to be acquitted.

The cities of England appear by _Domesday Book_, to have been at the
conquest little better than villages; York itself, though it was always
the second, at least the third city in England, contained only 1,418
families; Norwich contained 738 houses; Exeter, 315; Ipswich, 538;
Northampton, 60; Hertford, 146; Bath, 64; Canterbury, 262; Southampton, 84;
and Warwick, 225.

As the extreme ignorance of the age made deeds or writings very rare, the
county or hundred courts were the places where the most remarkable civil
transactions were finished. Here testaments were promulgated, slaves
manumitted, bargains of sale concluded; and sometimes for greater security,
the most remarkable of these deeds were inserted in the blank leaves of
the parish Bible, which thus became a register too sacred to be falsified.
It was not unusual to add to the deed an imprecation on all such as should
be guilty of that crime.

The laws of Alfred enjoin