St. John's. III. 'Tis thus with vain endeavour, Man plays a part unmeet; The sounds will ne'er be sweet ;- And grant a proper part; Man swells the lyre, and now it x-c2-0. To the EDITOR of the Brighton Magazine. SIR-I have just received and carefully perused, the four first Numbers of what I may venture to call your University Magazine; and, though it is long since I quitted for ever the walks and cloisters of St. John's, I have still enough of the Cantab about me, most heartily to wish you success. As a small proof of my good will, I send you the following lines, which, I trust, will be found not entirely unworthy of a place in your poetical department. I am, Sir, faithfully yours, W. W. THE CURSED TREE. 'TIS Nature's mantle wraps Creation round, Yet are there some who never share her smiles; . Her scenes delight them not, her stirring gales Has touch'd their temples, drop into the grave. Nor is it man alone, that thus disown'd Of love maternal pines-yon prostrate ash, That vex'd our coast) I've known it twenty years, Ev'n from a seedling shoot, and to my thought, Shot from the sphere of some malignant star. Its leaves, ev'n from their budding with dark spots And nourish all things. Thus it lies, - and now With me had witness'd its decay, has mark'd, Half serious, half in sport,-" THE CURSED TREE." St. John's. A FAIRY SCENE. Heu! quam breviter. THE moon is high, and not a cloud Save the bubbling of the rill; Now in wanton haste they fleet, In circled mazes round the fountain; Every noon-day care is banished,— x-c2-0. THE SALMON - FISHER, A TALE. A melancholy man That lov'd unseen beneath some shelt'ring cliff FREQUENTLY, on my journey to Inverness, in passing an almost desolate glen of cliffs near the borders of Murray Frith, I had observed a solitary cabin in the bosom of this retired and romantic spot. There was a stormy grandeur, a wild and captivating sublimity in the scene, which always drew me towards it, and induced me to pass that way, although considerably from the main road. Often, as I paused to gaze, with emotions of untold delight, on the picturesque beauties which the pencil of Nature had here sketched, I imagined this little lonely dwelling the habitation of some melancholy being, who, like myself, valued more the peaceful seclusion afforded by those shapeless rocks, than all the pomp and pageantry of the world. Why I entertained such ideas, I am at a loss to imagine; they must have been created by the influence of the prospect on my own romantic imagination. One morning, I came earlier than usual to my favourite haunt; the sun's golden beams had scarcely tinged the whitefoaming waters of the frith. I ascended an eminence, where, unseen, I could distinctly observe the fishermen, with their nets loosely flung across their arms, entering their rude barks, and piloting them along the flood; even the joyous tones of their matin songs were for a time distinguishable, till they either died away in distance, or became lost in the hoarser murmurs of the breaker's roar. "Ah!" thought I, "on these banks there is nothing but peace; it is only in retirements like this that true happiness is to be found. These simple fishermen are strangers to the cares and calamities which dwell beneath the gilded domes of kings, and enter the crowded assemblies of the great. Theirs is a golden age; their employment is an invaluable mine, from which they not only extract the means of existence, but the objects that alone can render it desirable-health and vigour." Thus musing, I almost conceived myself a fisherman; and had fashioned a little world of uninterrupted felicity, peopled with creatures of my own dispositions and my own sympathies. I VOL. I. 12 M began to consider, that the desolate cabin, which had hitherto shewn no sign of being tenanted, would form a delightful hermitage; and, mechanically directing my eyes towards the declivity on which it hung, how was I astonished, at beholding a figure, totally unlike the inhabitants of the adjoining hamlet, slowly emerging from its narrow door. Curiosity induced me minutely to observe him. He was above the common height, moved with a majestic step, and possessed an air infinitely superior to the generality of salmon-fishers. His dress was composed of coarse grey cloth, over which he wore a plaid, thrown with a careless grace across one shoulder, and almost sweeping the ground with its long folds; he had on a bonnet also, fashioned like those of his neighbours, from which a profusion of long black tresses escaped, and, wafted by the breeze, mingled themselves with the descending ringlets of his unshorn beard. The winding path, by which he descended, (with his eyes bent on the earth, his hands clasped in each other, and his whole frame wrapped, as it were, in the deepest rumination,) conducted him past the angle behind whose extremity I was standing. There was a pale dignity in his features a grief, not to be expressed, which at once put to flight my supposition, that this solitude was the abode of unalloyed tranquillity. Never had I beheld such an expression of intense feeling, as the countenance of this stranger exhibited: it was too evidently the index of a great mind sinking beneath a weight of overwhelming sorrow. Partially concealed by the jutting rock, he passed me unobserved; and, turning abruptly under some shelvings of the height, suddenly disappeared. A feeling of the most powerful interest, excited possibly by the singularity of his appearance, induced me to follow at a distance his footsteps. In a few moments he reached the banks of the frith, and seated himself on a fragment of rock, his feet almost touching the water: of which he evidently remained unconscious. By a scattered net, extending from his listless hand, I had no doubt but his occupation was that of a salmon-fisher, however he might refrain from mingling in the society of a class of men, whose boisterous habits, I was willing enough to believe, were materially at variance with his own. It appeared a singular circumstance to me, that any species of misfortune should be capable of throwing such a degree of dignity over a man, as totally to distinguish him from his companions. I felt an ardent desire to become acquainted with the object of my surprise; my heart dictated, that perhaps my hand might afford the means of mitigating his too visible sufferings, although I could scarcely prevail upon myself to suppose, that those sufferings were other than mental ones, only to be alleviated by the hand of heaven. At this instant two of the other fishermen approached him, but, with a courtesy perfectly unlike that which I knew they accustomed themselves to practise towards each other. He, too, seemed to shake off his abstraction, and, with an unexpected cheerfulness, accompanied them to their boat, and aided them in their employment and exertions. I followed their course with my eyes to a considerable distance, and in the course of my excursion through the glen, called at the cabin of an old peasant, to whose infirmities I was in the habit of administering pecuniary aid; where, in reply to my inquiries concerning the peasant for whom I was so strangely interested, he informed me, that his real name was as much unknown to the inhabitants of the place as to myself. It appeared, by an indistinct account, that he had been almost shipwrecked in the western ocean; but with a part of the crew, and a lady, supposed to be his wife or daughter, had effected his escape on a raft. He had abandoned his seafaring brethren, and accompanied only by his female partner, wandered as far as the little cabin in this glen, which, from its unfrequented stillness, seemed best suited to his wishes, as he immediately fixed on it for a residence. Of his fair companion in seclusion, I could gather nothing; it was seldom she appeared abroad, and seldomer addressed herself to either the fishermen or their wives. Sometimes, indeed, they had been noticed, like lovers, slowly rambling along the sides of the craigs by moonlight; and often, during the calm of evening, the sounds of music were heard from the rock on which they were known often to seat themselves. Among the fishermen, the stranger was distinguished by the title of Rholf; with them he was considered serious, but not melancholy, and they respected him, not more as a superior being to themselves, than for that kindness of heart which he had on several occasions displayed. What I had heard, added to what I had seen, convinced me still more, that the person whose secret grief I had so undesignedly witnessed, was far above the rank of a salmon-fisher; nor could I cease to dwell upon the deep impression his looks and situation had made upon my mind. I felt an insurmountable desire to effect an interview with him, and to make a tender of my services; but feared that any intrusion on my part might be considered as the efforts of impertinent curiosity. With these reflections passing in my breast, I arrived at the extremity of the glen, from which it was necessary to cross a ferry, in order to join my servant, who waited my return at a small public-house at no great distance. The boat had glided about half way from the shore, when, by some accident, it upset, and plunged both the ferryman and myself into the water. In a few moments my luckier navigator succeeded in effecting his escape; and I, who was a tolerably expert swimmer, should have done the same, had not the belt of my game bag, by escaping from my shoulder, twisted itself about my feet in such |