and pathetic reflections—those effusions of sentiment, sometimes beautiful, and sometimes bombastic, are only to be found in Macpherson's version. In the original, the Wooing of Evirallin is addressed to a young woman who had refused Ossian a drink, unless on certain conditions, which the aged bard was incapable of accepting. She then applied to him the contemptuous epithet of old dog. 'He is a dog,' answered the bard, who is not compliant; I tell you, wanton girl, I was once valiant in battle, though I am now worn out with years. When we went to the lovely Evir of the shining hair,' &c. This is, by Macpherson, thus happily altered and applied to Malvina, the widow of Oscar; a fictitious personage,' says Mr Laing, for whom there is no foundation even in tradition.' 6 Daughter of the hand of snow, I was not so mournful and blind, I was not so dark and forlorn, when Evirallin loved me; Evirallin with the dark brown hair, the whitebosomed daughter of Branno.'

"We would not wish the Gaël to misunderstand us. We do not affirm that their ancestors were incapable of generous or kindly feelings; nor do we insist that their poetry, to be authentic, should be devoid of occasional sublimity, or even elegance. We only say, that the character of all rude poetry, whether in diction or sentiment, is inequality; that bursts of generosity, flowing from the feeling of the moment, and not from the fixed principles acquired in a civilized society, will always be attended by an equally capricious and irregular exertion of the angry passions. We believe it is Byron who mentions, that an Indian, who had just saved his life, was going, an hour after, to murder him for throwing away a mussel shell. The passions and feelings of men in a savage state, are as desultory as their habits of life; and a model of perfect generosity and virtue, would be as great a wonder amongst them, as a fine gentleman in a birth-day suit. Neither is it a sufficient answer, that Ossian may have exaggerated the virtues of his countrymen, as is ingeniously urged in the Report, p. 150. Ossian, however gentle or generous his natural disposition, can hardly be supposed to have formed for his countrymen an ideal standard of perfection, depending on a refinement drawn from the internal resources of his own mind, and inconsistent with all he witnessed around him. We might also have expected to have met with some peculiarities respecting the manners of the ancient Celts, in genuine poems of the length of Macpherson's. But, alas, what hints of this kind occurred in the original ballads or legends, were rejected by the fastidious delicacy of their translator; and what is substituted in their place is obviously drawn from sacred or classical poetry. Thus, the daughters of Morven mourned for Lorma one day in the year, as the daughters of Israel mourned yearly four days for the victim of Jephthah's vow; and, we fear, no better authority than the fables concerning the passage of the Styx will be found for the ghosts hovering on the Lake of Lego, until the song of the bards had dismissed them to the winds. The honour of the spear' is also mentioned and explained as a tournament, when the natives of Argyleshire were strangers to the use of horses, except for draught, as the rest of Europe were to the tourney, which certainly was not introduced before the 10th century."

Sir William Chambers.

BORN A. D. 1726.-died a. d. 1796.

THIS architect was descended of the ancient Scottish family of Chalmers, barons of Tartas in France. His grandfather, a Scottish merchant, suffered considerably in his fortune by supplying Charles XII. of Sweden with military stores and money, which that monarch repaid in the adulterated coin his necessities compelled him to issue. Sir William's father went over to Sweden to endeavour to recover a portion of the family property; his family accompanied him, and the subject of this article was born at Stockholm, about the year 1726.

His father returned to England in 1728, and at a proper age sent him to school at Rippon, in Yorkshire, At the age of sixteen he was sent as a supercargo to Canton, in a ship belonging to the Swedish East India company. "These,” says Allan Cunningham, "were certainly tender years for situations of mercantile trust and adventure, and the fact implies the appearance of early talents and prudence. It seems too that the boy-for such we must at these years regard him—extended his views beyond merchandise: on reaching Canton he saw and admired the picturesque buildings and gardens of the Chinese, and having acquired some skill in drawing at school, made as many sketches as sufficed for a little publication on his return home. These engravings, though recommended by the skilful hands of Grignion and Rooker, were sharply censured by the critics, and the taste of Chambers was questioned and assailed; there was more zeal than discretion in all this; for surely whoever widens the sphere of knowledge, and makes us acquainted with the taste or the scientific skill of a distant nation, is, more or less, our benefactor. At the age of eighteen, and after he had made one voyage to the east, says one of his biographers, he abandoned all commercial pursuits: another, with more probability, gives him the advantage of two visits to China, and continues his connection with the sea till his twenty-second year; but neither of them says any thing of his early architectural studies; and we are left to imagine that he acquired his knowledge in his own way. It is curious to observe the blossoms of the tree transforming into fruit; and it is still more curious and instructive to watch the human mind rough-shaping its own purposes; the stripling, who built houses of snow and fortifications of sand, rising into an architect, and working in more stable materials."

Abandoning, however, commercial pursuits, he followed, says Hardwicke, "the natural bent of his genius, and travelled into Italy-for the purpose of studying the science of architecture, not only by measuring and drawing the invaluable remains of antiquity, but likewise those admirable productions of the revivors of the arts which distinguished the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He carefully examined and studied, with unwearied application, the works of Michael Angelo, Sangallo, Palladio, Scamozzi, Vignola, Peruzzi, Sanmichele, Bernini, and other Italian architects, whose designs were in general guided by the rules of the ancients, but whose extraordinary talents, exalting them above the character of mere imitators, produced an originality in their composi