SIR WALTER SCOTT.

Rebecca's Hymn.

WHEN Israel, of the Lord beloved,
Out from the land of bondage came,
Her fathers' God before her moved,
An awful guide in smoke and flame.
By day, along the astonished lands
The clouded pillar glided slow;
By night, Arabia's crimsoned sands
Returned the fiery column's glow.

There rose the choral hymn of praise,

And trump and timbrel answered keen, And Zion's daughters poured their lays, With priest's and warrior's voice between. No potents now our foes amaze,

Forsaken Israel wanders lone:

Our fathers would not know THY ways,
And THOU hast left them to their own.

But present still, though now unseen;
When brightly shines the prosperous day,
Be thoughts of THEE a cloudy screen
To temper the deceitful ray.

And oh, when stoops on Judah's path
In shade and storm the frequent night,
Be THOU, long-suffering, slow to wrath,
A burning and a shining light!

Our harps we left by Babel's streams,
The tyrant's jest, the Gentile's scorn;
No censer round our altar beams,

And mute our timbrel, harp, and horn.
But THOU hast said, The blood of goat,
The flesh of rams I will not prize;

A contrite heart, a humble thought,
Are mine accepted sacrifice.

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The Greenwood.

"TIS merry in greenwood,-thus runs the old lay,— In the gladsome month of lively May, When the wild birds' song on stem and spray

Invites to forest bower;

Then rears the ash his airy crest,

Then shines the birch in silver vest,

And the beech in glistening leaves is drest,
And dark between shows the oak's proud breast,
Like a chieftain's frowning tower;

Though a thousand branches join their screen,
Yet the broken sunbeams glance between,
And tip the leaves with lighter green,

With brighter tints the flower;

Dull is the heart that loves not then
The deep recess of the wildwood glen,
Where roe and red deer find sheltering den,
When the sun is in his power.

Less merry, perchance, is the fading leaf
That follows so soon on the gathered sheaf
When the greenwood loses the name;
Silent is then the forest bound,

Save the redbreast's note, and the rustling sound
Of frost-nipt leaves that are drooping round,
Or the deep-mouthed cry of the distant hound
That opens on his game;

Yet then, too, I love the forest wide,
Whether the sun in splendour ride,
And gild its many-coloured side;
Or whether the soft and silvery haze,
In vapoury folds, o'er the landscape strays,
And half involves the woodland maze
Like an early widow's veil,
Where wimpling tissue from the gaze
The form half hides, and half betrays,
Of beauty wan and pale.

WILLIAM B. SCOTT.

1811

BY JAMES GRANT WILSON.

WILLIAM BELL SCOTT was born at St. Leonard's, near Edinburgh, Sep. tember 12, 1811. The house then inhabited by his father Robert Scott, a landscape-engraver, was an old-fashioned villa, standing by itself, with a coat of arms over the doorway, both outside and inside of the house showing the characteristics of by-past days. Here his boyhood was passed with his two elder brothers and a sister younger than himself, who died when he was still in his teens. His father had at this time a large workshop in Edinburgh, which the boys were in the habit of frequenting; and David the eldest having learned to engrave and etch, finally became a painter, the same course being followed by William. The boys were educated at the high-school of their native city; but our author, who in after years has written so much in biography, criticism, and poetry, does not appear to have been distinguished as a pupil.

The earliest metrical compositions of William are described as of a very ambitious character, his first being a tragedy of the wildest description, which he diffidently persuaded his companions he had picked up in the street! His first published poem was the "Address to P. B. Shelley," revised and reprinted in his late illustrated volume. It appeared in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine in 1831-32, and was followed by other pieces, and by several in the "Edinburgh University Souvenir," published at Christmas, 1834. This volume, emulating the annuals then fashionable, was written and produced by a few students in the theological section, these being the most intimate friends of Scott at this time, although he had long before entered the Trustees' Academy of Art, and had determined his path in life.

At the age of twenty-five he resolved to leave Edinburgh, and proceeded to London in September, 1836. He here became acquainted with Leigh Hunt, who was then editing the Monthly Repository, in which Scott printed a poem of considerable length called "Rosabell," afterwards rechristened "Mary Anne," by which he became favourably known. In 1838, when he

was beginning to exhibit at the British Institution and elsewhere, he issued his first book, a very small one, called "Hades, or the Transit," two poems with two etchings by himself. This little volume, like his later ones the "Year of the World" and "Poems by a Painter," both of which in their original form were to some extent illustrated with designs by himself, is now an object of rarity and prized as such, although we believe the author would rather it had never been published at all, as the second of the two poems is a juvenile expression of the fact that there is a progress in human affairs as represented by history; and as this formed the motive in the scheme of the only large poem he has produced, the "Year of the World," which is so able and splendid as a whole, he would rather that the latter had stood quite alone.

Before the "Year of the World" was produced Scott had taken a step which serioulsy militated against his position as a historical painter, by connecting himself with the newly-formed Government Schools of Design, and by leaving London, the centre of the arts in England. Having organized the School of Art at Newcastle-on-Tyne, however, he was fortunate to be commissioned by Sir Walter Trevelyan to paint eight important pictures for the saloon of his large house at Wallington. These pictures, four of the ancient and four of the later "History of the English Border,' are among the few excellent monumental works in painting yet existing in England.

Morning.

FAIR morn, whose promise never dies,
Distributor of gifts, fair morn!

She seems to blow a magic horn,
From the conscious tops of hills,

That makes the world lift glad fresh eyes.

All the trees quiver, and the rills

Leap forward with a child's surprise:

The spell of dreams

Fades before that magic voice

Nature calling to rejoice,

Everything in earth or air,

Answers everywhere,

Making rainbows span the skies,

Scattering flowers on hastening streams,

Fulfilling prophecies.

REV. JOHN

SKINNER.

1721-1807.

BY REV. S. H. PARKES, M.A. F.R.A.S.

JOHN SKINNER was born at Balfour, in the parish of Birse, Aberdeen, on October 3rd, 1721. He was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, and was for some years schoolmaster at Kemnay and Monymusk. Whilst at the latter place he attracted the attention of Lady Archibald Grant, who obtained for him her husband's patronage. He ultimately became an inmate of their mansion, and had the unrestricted use of their family library. His residence there was eventually the means of his joining the Episcopal Ministry, into which he was ordained by Bishop Dunbar, at Peterhead, in November 1742. He was then appointed to the pastoral charge of the people of Longside, where he officiated for the long period of sixty-five years, residing all that time in a small thatched cottage at Linshart. During the rebellion, his chapel was destroyed by the soldiers of the Duke of Cumberland, who accused him of not having subscribed to the oath of allegiance, and, not satisfied with this wanton act of sacrilege, they detained Mr. Skinner in the jail at Aberdeen for six months. He died at the residence of his son-the Rev. John Skinner, Bishop of Aberdeen-on June 16th, 1807. His remains were interred in the churchyard of Longside, and his congregation marked his resting place by a handsome monument, bearing on a marble tablet an elegant tribute to the remembrance of his kindly and genial virtues. As a poet, Mr. Skinner had courted the Muse of his country, and from early youth had composed poetry in the Scottish dialect. Whilst still a lad he took delight in repeating the long poem by James I. [q.v.] of "Christ Kirk on the Green," which he translated into Latin He was on terms of intimacy with and a regular correspondent of Burns. He wrote an Ecclesiastical History of Scotland," 1788, in two volumes; several Theological Essays;" and "An Essay towards a literal or true radical exposition of the Song of Songs." Bishop Skinner, two years after his father's death, issued his "Miscellaneous works, with a memoir;" after which a third volume was added, containing the author's compositions in Latin verse, and his fugitive songs and ballads in the Scottish dialect. In 1859 Mr H. G. Reid published at Peterhead, Mr. Skinner's " Songs and Poems," to which he affixed a well written biography.

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