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SUNDAY.

A day of rest it is by the laws of the land, and ought to be by the laws of God—­let us be thankful when we thus find them in agreement; but a day wholly dedicated to devotion it was not intended to be by either, nor in the nature of things can it possibly be so.  The greater part of it must be spent in the quiet enjoyment of domestic life, or in out-of-door recreation, or in idleness.  In the former and better manner it is passed by the majority of the middle classes; it is the day on which friends and relations meet, whom business keeps apart during six days of the week; and the stoppage of stage-coaches within twenty miles of London on the Sunday would take away more moral and wholesome enjoyment than any act of the legislature can produce.  But supposing public worship were duly attended by all persons, as, according to what has now become a fiction of the law, it is designed to be, how are the remaining portions of the day to be disposed of by those who have no domestic circle to which they can repair—­no opportunities for that refreshment both of body and mind, which the Sabbath, when wisely and properly observed, affords?  Or who, if belonging to or placed in religious families, are not yet at years of such discretion as suffices to repress their natural activity and the instinctive desire of recreation?  Rigorous gamelaws do not more certainly encourage poaching, than the puritanical observance of the Sabbath leads to Sabbath-breaking.—­Quarterly Review.

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BURNS.

This extraordinary man, before he produced any of the pieces on which his fame is built, had educated himself abundantly; and when he died, at the age of thirty-seven, knew more of books, as well as of men, than fifty out of a hundred in any of the learned professions in any country of the world are ever likely to do.—­Ibid.

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THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD.

When the Ettrick Shepherd was first heard of, he had indeed but just learned to write, by copying the letters of a printed ballad, as he lay watching his flock on the mountains; but thirty years or more have passed since then, and his acquirements are now such, that the Royal Society of Literature, in patronizing him, might be justly said to honour a laborious and successful student, as well as a masculine and fertile genius.  We may take the liberty of adding, in this place, what perhaps may not be known to the excellent managers of that excellent institution, that a more worthy, modest, sober, and loyal man does not exist in his majesty’s dominions than this distinguished poet, whom some of his waggish friends have taken up the absurd fancy of exhibiting in print as a sort of boozing buffoon; and who is now, instead of revelling in the license of tavern-suppers and party politics, bearing up, as he may, against severe and unmerited misfortunes, in as dreary a solitude as ever nursed the melancholy of a poetical temperament.—­Ibid.