"

(_To be Continued._)

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: Snails.]

CAN THIS BE THE LAND?

"_How are the mighty fallen!_"

Can this be the land where of old heroes flourished?
Can this be the land of the sons of the blast?
Gloom-wrapt as a monarch whose greatness hath perished,
Its beauty of loneliness speaks of the past:--
Tell me ye green valleys, dark glens, and blue mountains,
Where now are the mighty that round ye did dwell?
Ye wild-sweeping torrents, and woe-sounding fountains,
Say, is it their spirits that wail in your swell?

Oft, oft have ye leaped when your children of battle,
With war-bearing footsteps rushed down your dark crests;
Oft, oft have ye thundered with far-rolling rattle,
The echoes of slogans that burst from their breasts:--
Wild music of cataracts peals in their gladness,--
Hoarse tempests still shriek to the clouds lightning-fired,--
Dark shadows of glory departed, in sadness
Still linger o'er ruins where dwelt the inspired.

The voice of the silence for ever is breaking
Around the lone heaths of the glory-sung braves;
Dim ghosts haunt in sorrow, a land all forsaken,
And pour their mist tears o'er the heather-swept graves:--
Can this be the land of the thunder-toned numbers
That snowy bards sung in the fire of their bloom?
Deserted and blasted, in death's silent slumbers,
It glooms o'er my soul like the wreck of a tomb.

SUNDERLAND. WM. ALLAN.

HIGHLAND FOLK-LORE.

BY "NETHER-LOCHABER."

FOLK-LORE--a word of recent importation from the German--is a big word,
and Highland Folk-Lore is a big subject, so big and comprehensive that
not one Magazine article, but a many-chaptered series of Magazine
articles would be necessary ere one could aver that he had done his
"text" anything like justice. On the present occasion, therefore, we do
not pretend to enter into the heart of a subject so extensive and
many-sided: we shall content ourselves with a little scouting and
skirmishing, so to speak, along the borders of a territory which it is
possible we may ask the readers at some future time to explore along
with us more at large. A few of the many proverbs, wisdom words, and
moral and prudential sentences in daily use shall, in clerical phrase,
meantime form "the subject-matter of our discourse." Nor mu