moving away, Donald Macpherson guarded the jail-door with a drawn sword. Many persons, assembled at the market, had experienced James Macpherson's humanity, or had shared his bounty; and they crowded round the jail as in mere curiosity, but, in fact, to obstruct the civil authorities from preventing a rescue. A butcher, however, was resolved, if possible, to detain Macpherson, expecting a large recompense from the magistrates: he sprang up the stairs, and leaped from the platform upon Donald Macpherson, whom he dashed to the ground by the force and weight of his body. Donald Macpherson soon recovered, to make a desperate resistance; and the combatants tore off each other's clothes. The butcher got a glimpse of his dog upon the platform, and called him to his aid; but Macpherson, with admirable presence of mind, snatched up his own plaid, which lay near, and threw it over the butcher, thus misleading the instinct of his canine adversary. The dog darted with fury upon the plaid, and terribly lacerated his master's thigh. In the mean time, James Macpherson had been carried out by Peter Brown, and was soon joined by Donald Macpherson, who was quickly covered by some friendly spectator with a hat and great coat. The magistrates ordered webs from the shops to be drawn across the Gallowgate; but Donald Macpherson cut them asunder with his sword, and James, the late prisoner, got off on horseback. He was some time after betrayed by a man of his own tribe; and was the last person executed at Banff, previous to the abolition of heritable jurisdiction. He was an admirable performer on the violin; and his talent for composition is still in evidence in "Macpherson's Rant," " Macpherson's Pibroch," and " Macpherson's Farewell." He performed those tunes at the foot of the fatal tree; and then asked if he had any friend in the crowd to whom a last gift of his instrument would be acceptable. No man had hardihood to claim friendship with a delinquent, in whose crimes the acknowledgment might implicate an avowed acquaintance. As no friend came forward, Macpherson said, the companion of many gloomy hours should perish with him; and, breaking the violin over his knee, he threw away the fragments. Donald Macpherson picked up the neck of the violin, which to this day is preserved, as a valuable memento, by the family of Cluny, chieftain of the Macphersons.

B. G.

THE MAID'S REMONSTRANCE.

FROM AN UNPUBLISHED OPERA, BY T. CAMPBELL.

NEVER wedding, ever wooing,
Still a lovelorn heart pursuing,

Read you not the wrongs you 're doing
In my cheek's pale hue?

All my life with sorrow strewing,
Wed, or cease to woo.

Rivals banish'd, bosoms plighted,
Still our days are disunited;
Now the lamp of hope is lighted,
Now half-quench'd appears,
Damp'd, and wavering, and benighted,
Midst my sighs and tears.

Charms you call your dearest blessing,
Lips that thrill at your caressing,
Eyes a mutual soul confessing,
Soon you'll make them grow
Dim, and worthless your possessing,
Not with age, but woe!

ABSENCE.

FROM THE SAME.

"Tis not the loss of love's assurance,
It is not doubting what thou art,
But 'tis the too, too long endurance
Of absence, that afflicts my heart.

The fondest thoughts two hearts can cherish,
When each is lonely doom'd to weep,
Are fruits on desert isles that perish,
Or riches buried in the deep.

What though, untouch'd by jealous madness,
Our bosom's peace may fall to wreck;
Th' undoubting heart, that breaks with sadness,
Is but more slowly doom'd to break.

Absence! is not the soul torn by it

From more than light, or life, or breath?

'Tis Lethe's gloom, but not its quiet,

The pain without the peace of death.

ON THE COMPLAINTS IN AMERICA AGAINST THE

BRITISH PRESS.

Ir may not be known to all our readers that several citizens of America, addicted to writing books, or, like ourselves, to the less ambitious composition of periodical articles, consider themselves to be in a state of declared and justifiable hostility with the British press, for what they call the indiscriminate and virulent abuse," which it has lately heaped upon their country; and that in consequence some very angry appeals and remonstrances, and retaliative effusions, have been sent forth, to expose the extreme injustice and illiberality with which their unoffending republic has been treated on this calumniating side of the Atlantic. The vanity, or at least the views, of the writers to whom we allude, seems to have taken rather a singular turn. Heretofore a self-sufficient and irritable author's first ambition was to create an extraordinary bustle about himself; and he accordingly, as often as the fit was on him, loudly called upon the world to become a party in his personal squabbles and fantastic resentments; but the present race of paper-warriors of Boston and Philadelphia, magnanimously dismissing all consciousness of themselves, are displaying a more expanded fretfulness, as assertors of their country's reputation: and lest, we suppose, their sincerity should be questioned, they have entered into their patriotic animosities with all the blind and morbid zeal, and all the petty punctilious susceptibility of affront, that might have been expected from the most sensitive pretender to genius, while defending his own sacred claims to admiration and respect.

If the questions at issue were confined to the respective merits of Mr. Walsh, the great American appellant, against the calumnies of English writers, and our principal periodical reviews, which he so bitterly arraigns, we should leave the belligerents to fight out their differences in a course of harmless missile warfare across the Atlantic; but we can perceive from the tone of Mr. Walsh's book, and of his Boston reviewert, that they have taken up the affair in a spirit far exceeding that of an ordinary literary quarrel. They have laboured hard to impress upon America, that she has become in this country the object of

* An Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain respecting the United States of America. Part first, containing an Historical Outline of their Merits and Wrongs as Colonies, and Strictures upon the Calumnies of British Writers. By Robert Walsh, junior. Second edition. Philadelphia, 1819, 8vo. pp. 512.

+ North American Review and Miscellaneous Journal. New series, No. 11. April 1820, Boston.

systematic hatred and contumely. Many obselete questions have been revived for the mere purpose of exasperation, and discussed in a tone of the fiercest recrimination. We have hints, not of a very pacific kind, of the consequences that may accrue to England from her perverse insensibility to the merits of the United States. These topics and the inferences extorted from them, are throughout supported by considerable exaggeration, and occasionally, we regret to observe, either by direct falsehoods, or by suppressions that amount to falsehoods; so that were it not for our confidence in the better sense and information of the community which those productions are designed to inflame, we should expect to find every American that possessed a spark of national pride, burning to retaliate upon us, by acts of more substantial vengeance than verbal reprisals, for the insolent and unmanly sarcasms against his country that he is taught to believe has been of late the favourite occupation of English writers.

We profess to take a very anxious interest in all that relates to America. The Boston reviewer derides the notion of the endearing influence of consanguinity; but we feel it in all its force. We have not enough of his philosophy to forget, that the community which he is seeking to inflame against us, is principally composed of the children of British subjects-that our fathers were the countrymen of Washington and Franklin. We can never bring ourselves to consider the land of their birth as absolutely foreign ground. Many generations must pass away, and great vicissitudes in our mutual sentiments and relations mark the close of each, before a contest between America and England can be any thing else than what the late one was regarded, an unnatural civil war. We cannot but feel too, that the character of the principles and institutions that most attach us to our own country, is vitally connected with the moral and political destiny of the United States; and that in spite of the violent separation, and of any changes of forms and titles that may have ensued, the Americans of future times will be regarded by the world as a race either of improved, or of degenerate Englishmen. Entertaining these sentiments, we cordially unite with those who deprecate all attempts to excite a hostile spirit in either country; and with this view shall proceed to point out a few instances of the extraordinary and unpardonable precipitation with which the above-mentioned writers have levelled their sweeping accusations against the English press; and, for brevity sake, shall take the review of Mr. Walsh's book in preference to the cumbrous original of which it contains an analysis.

With the generality of our readers it might indeed be sufficient to assert, and to appeal to their own knowledge of the fact, that

in this country America is the object of no such sentiment as systematic hatred or contempt; but as the Boston critic has boldly cited some examples to the contrary, we may as well stop to examine how far his selection has been fortunate.

It is well known (says he) that one of the most severe attacks ever made against this country in a respectable quarter, is the one contained in the 61st number of the Edinburgh Review;" and the writer (Mr. Sydney Smith) is classed among the "malignant contributors," to whom "abusive books of travels in America are entrusted," and who do not hesitate to gratify their feelings of personal animosity, and their jocular propensities, at the expense of truth and candour. We have this offensive libel before us, and we answer

It accuses the English cabinet of impertinence for treating the Americans with ridicule and contempt, and dwells upon the astonishing increase of their numbers and resources as a proof that England and the other powers of the old world must soon be compelled to respect them. It praises the cheapness of the American establishments. It compares the spirit of the American and English governments in relation to the liberty of the subject, and gives the preference to the former.

It praises the simple costume of the American judges and lawyers, and is unsparing in its ridicule of the "calorific wigs" of our Ellenboroughs and Eldons. It commemorates the cheapness and purity of the administration of justice in America, and exposes the expense and delays of the English Court of Chancery.

The reverend and "malignant contributor" extracts the details of Mr. Hall's visit to Mr. Jefferson, and Mr. Fearon's to Mr. Adams, both tending to increase our admiration of those respectable characters.

He agrees with Mr. Fearon that the indolence of the American character is a proof of the prosperity of the country.-He gratifies his "personal animosity" by expressing his "real pleasure" in citing Mr. Bradbury's attestations to their independence and hospitality, and Mr. Hall's, to the good sense and courtesy prevailing in their social circles-to their extraordinary liberality to strangers in pecuniary transactions-and to "the gallantry, high feeling, and humanity of the American troops;" and finally, the libeller vents some encomiums upon the religious habits of the American people, and the great respectability of their clergy.

Here is praise enough, one should think, for national vanity of an ordinary appetite; but Mr. Smith has had the arrogance to glance at two little facts, upon the first of which the Boston critic seems particularly sore-the scantiness of their native literature-and the institution of slavery, the greatest curse and stain