1823.7 Overtures, is Beethoven's Overture to the Ruins of Athens. Mr. Killick, an organist at Gravesend, has commenced an arrangement of Handel's Overtures for the organ or pianoforte.The first number is from the occasional The Daisy in India. man, Book X. of favourite Airs from Rossini's Operas, consisting of a first selection from La Gazza Ladra, for the harp and pianoforte, with an ad libitum flute and violoncello accompaniment. The second Book of Selections from Pietro l'Eremità, is published by M. Latour, as Duets for the Pianoforte. The two first Books of the Airs from La Donna del Lago are also arranged by M. Latour, for the pianoforte and flute; and, in this shape, the music of the opera is more beautiful and interesting, than as heard from the orchestra of the King's Theatre. Mr. Clementi has arranged Mozart's celebrated Symphony, The Jupiter, for the pianoforte, with ad libitum accompaniments, for flute, violin, and violoncello. Amusemens de l'Opéra, being a selection of the latest operas and ballets of Rossini, Weber, Paer, Winter, Gallemberg, &c. arranged for the pianoforte, Nos. I. and II. The Antologia Musicale is of the same description. The Twelfth Number contains a specimen of the style of Leopold Mozart, the father of the great composer of that name. No. VIII. of Boosey's Selection of oratorio. Mr. Burrowes has adapted the beautiful old music in Macbeth, as duets for the harp or pianoforte, with ad libitum accompaniments for flute and violoncello. The vocal list is very meagre; there is scarcely any thing worth notice. The Fairy Queen, a duet, in the manner of the old writers, by Dr. Carnaby, is upon words of no very poetical structure. The Jasmin Wreath, a canzonet, adapted from Carafa, is an agreeable song, but by no means equal to Fra tante Angoscie, the only work of the author knoten in England. Queen of every moving Measure, by Mr. Dannelly, is equal at least to the general run of ballads. Mr. W. Collard has brought out two more of his very commendable series of moral songs. : THE DAISY IN INDIA : SUPPOSED to be addressed by the Rev. Dr. Carey, the learned and illustrious Baptist Missionary, at Serampore, to the first plant of this kind, which sprang up unexpectedly in his garden, out of some English earth, in which other seeds had been conveyed to him from this country. The subject was suggested by reading a letter from Dr. Carey to a botanical friend, in England, an interesting extract from which is given at the foot of these verses. 1. Thrice welcome, little English Flower! 2. Thrice welcome, little English Flower! With unabash'd but modest eyes L Extract from a Letter of Dr. Carey, in India, to Mr. J. Cooper of Wentworth, Yorkshire. : "With great labour I have preserved the common Field Daisy, which came up accidentally in some English earth, for these six or seven years; but my whole stock is now only one plant. I have never been able, even with sheltering them, to preserve an old root through the rains, but I get a few seedlings every year. The proportion of small plants in this country is very inconsiderable, the greater number of our vegetable productions being either large shrubs, immense climbers, or timber trees. By the kindness of yourself and other gentlemen, who have lately sent me roots or seeds, our number of small shrubs is much increased, and our stock of bulbous plants become very respectable. Still, however, tulips, hyacinths, snowdrops, most of the lilies, &c. are strangers to us. I have a great desire to possess honeysuckles, especially the common woodbine. I mix the seeds which I send you with twice or thrice their bulk of earth, and ram the whole in a box (a cask would be better), and nail or hoop them up close. I have no doubt but a quantity of most of your wild seeds, and many others, would succeed here, if well packed in earth as I have done with this box. A cask of your peat-earth, thus full of seeds, would be an invaluable treasure, as the earth itself would be of great service in the culture of many plants. We have no peat in India. All our soils are either strong clays, deep loam, or loose, but fertile, sands. I need not say, that the seeds should be packed as soon as possible after they are ripe. Old seeds have scarcely ever succeeded in this country." 1823.] THE CHILD ANGEL:-A DREAM. I CHANCED upon the prettiest, oddest, fantastical thing of a dream the other night, that you shall hear of. I had been reading the "Loves of the Angels," and went to bed with my head full of speculations, suggested by that extraordinary legend. It had given birth to innumerable conjectures; and, I remember, the last waking thought, which I expression to on my pillow, was a sort of of wonder, "what could come of it." gave I was suddenly transported, how or whither I could scarcely make outbut to some celestial region. It was not the real heavens neither-not the downright Bible heaven-but a kind of fairy-land heaven, about which a poor human fancy may have leave to sport and air itself, I will hope, without presumption. Methought-what wild things dreams are !-I was present-at what would you imagine? - at an angel's gossiping. Whence it came, or how it came, or who bid it come, or whether it came purely of its own head, neither you nor I know-but there lay, sure enough, wrapt in its little cloudy swaddling bands-a Child Angel. Sun-threads---filmy beams-ran through the celestial napery of what seemed its princely cradle. All the winged orders hovered round, watching when the new-born should open its yet closed eyes: which, when it did, first one, and then the other with a solicitude and apprehension, yet not such as, stained with fear, dims the expanding eye-lids of mortal infants-but as if to explore its path in those its unhereditary palaceswhat an inextinguishable nable titter that time spared not celestial visages! Nor wanted there to my seeming-0 emingthe inexplicable simpleness of dreams! -bowls of that cheering nectar, -which mortals caudle call below Nor were wanting faces of female Then were celestial harpings heard, not in full symphony as those by which the spheres are tutored; but, as loudest instruments on earth speak oftentimes, muffled; so to accommodate their sound the better to the weak ears of the imperfect-born. And, with the noise of those subdued soundings, the Angelet sprang forth, fluttering its rudiments of pinions-but forthwith flagged and was recovered into the arms of those fullwinged angels. And a wonder it was to see how, as years went round in heaven a year in dreams is as a day-continually its white shoulders put forth buds of wings, but, wanting the perfect angelic nutriment, anon was shorn of its aspiring, and fell fluttering-still caught by angel hands---for ever to put forth shoots, and to fall fluttering, because its birth was not of the unmixed vigour of heaven. And a name was given to the Babe Angel, and it was to be called Ge-Urania, because its production was of earth and heaven. And it could not taste of death, by reason of its adoption into immortal palaces; but it was to know weakness, and reliance, and the shadow of human imbecility; and it went with a lame gait; but but in its goings it exceeded all mortal children in grace and swiftness. Then pity first sprang up in angelic bosoms; and yearnings (like the human) touched them at the sight of the immortal lame one. And with pain did then first those Intuitive Essences, with pain and strife to their natures (not grief), put back their bright intelligences, and reduce their etherial minds, schooling them to degrees and slower processes, so to adapt their lessons to the gradual illumination (as must needs be) of the half-earth-born; and what intuitive notices they could not repel (by reason that their nature is to know all things at once), the halfheavenly novice, by the better part of its nature, aspired to receive into its understanding; so that Humility and Aspiration went on even-paced in the instruction of the glorious Amphibium. But, by reason that Mature Hu manity is too gross to breathe the air of that super-subtile region, its portion was, and is, to be a child for ever. And because the human part of it might not press into the heart and inwards of the palace of its adoption, those full-natured angels tended it by turns in the purlieus of the palace, where were shady groves and rivulets, like this green earth from which it came so Love, with Voluntary Humility, waited upon the entertainment of the new-adopted. And myriads of years rolled round (in dreams Time is nothing), and still it kept, and is to keep, perpetual childhood, and is the Tutelar Genius of Childhood upon earth, and still goes lame and lovely. nevertheless, a correspondency is be tween the child by the grave, and that celestial orphan, whom I saw above; and the dimness of the grief upon the heavenly, is as a shadow or emblem of that which stains the beauty of the terrestrial. And this correspondency is not to be understood but by dreams. And in the archives of heaven I had grace to read, how that once the angel Nadir, being exiled from his place for mortal passion, upspringing on the wings of parental love (such power had parental love for a moment to suspend the else irrevocable law) appeared for a brief instant in his station; and, depositing a won drous Birth, straightway disappeared, and the palaces knew him no more. And this charge was the self-same Babe, who goeth lame and lovely-but Mirzah sleepeth by the river A Pison. ELIA. By the banks of the river Pison is seen, lone-sitting by the grave of the terrestrial Mirzah, whom the angel Nadir loved, a Child; but not the same which I saw in heaven. pensive hue overcasts its lineaments; THE FAIRY MILLER OF CROGA. I wish my story so well as to wish it had happened in some more noted nook of earth, where Fame had already sounded her trumpet, where Nature had been less frugal of her sweets, and where Fiction might delight to place her heroes. But I have no wish to plant lilies where nature sows nettles, nor breathe a foreign perfume among the wild bells and foxgloves of a rustic landscape. Nature is ever wise, and men would do well to step as she steps, and hold by the skirts of her many-coloured and ever changing robe, even as a child clings tottering to the side of its mother. The man who knows more than Nature, knows far too much; she has made no hill wholly desolate, and no land utterly barren; she has scattered every where the most rare and remarkable things; and he who seeks to embellish her beauty is no wiser than the lunatic who called his grace of Queensberry a fool for not planting the vale of Nith with raspberries. It happened one fine evening nigh the close of autumn,-when the corn wore its covering of broom in the stack-yard,-when the nuts began to drop ripe from their husks, and the morning flowers hung white with hoar frost, that two riders entered the southward gorge of the wild glen' of Croga. It was wearing late,the moon had still a full hour to march before she reached the tops of the western hills,-the lights began to disappear from the windows of the peasantry, and, besides the murmuring of the water of Orr, which winded among the rocks and trees, an anxious ear might hear the cautious step and the lifting latch of some young ploughman holding tryste with his love. It was a market night, and to these soft and pleasurable sounds might be added the sharp, shrill, and rapid admonition of woman's tongue, when a late hour, a pennyless pocket, and a head throbbing with drink, called forth a torrent of sage and gracious remarks on her husband's folly and her own wisdom and forbearance. But of those sounds, if such sounds were, the two riders seemed to take no note; they entered the glen abreast, and inclining their heads beyond the graceful uprightness of good horsemanship, laid them together in the true spirit of confidential communication. It may be imagined that as they were of different sexes, I could honestly say as much of him: love, or some such cause of mu--he is never seen, and he is often tual attraction, inclined them to this heard;-but he's a brave miller, and friendly fellowship. I wish to leave I have tasted meal of his grinding no room for such unfounded sus- myself:-But that was in my youthpicion. One was a man in years, ful days, when I had less of the fear of a douce and grave exterior, with of God and the grave afore me :-we much of that devout circumspection have been all foolish upon a time, and prudence of look, which might miller,-but it's the surest saint that mark him out to the parish minister has had the soundest fa';-a proverb in a nomination of elders. His dress, that ought to have been in the goslike himself, seemed fit for the wear pel." and tear of the world,-firm of texture and home-made; a good gray mixture, adapted to the dusty la bours of a mill, and a miller he was, and one as good as ever wet a wheel in water-the miller of Croga mill, and his name was Thomas Milroy. Of his companion I ought to say something; but how can a man less than inspired touch off the sedate simplicity, the matronly demeanour, and that look of superstitious awe and love for the marvellous, which belonged to Barbara Farish, the relict of the laird of Elfknowe. Her very horse seemed conscious of his load of surpassing sanctity and knowledge, and looked on the dapple gray nag of the dusty miller with an arched neck, and an eye worthy of the steed of so good and so gifted a dame. Her gray riding skirt hung far beneath her feet, and nearly reached the ground; a black silk hood, lined with gray, covered her head, and was fastened beneath her chin; while over a nose, long and thin, and transparent as horn, looked forth two deep-set and searching eyes, of a light and lively blue. I have said they were in earnest conference; I must let the voice of the miller be heard first. "Ye say true, woman," said he of the sieve and the millstone: "all ye have spoken is as true as that my outer wheel runs round, and my hopper holds corn. There are elves about, woman, and strange spirits, -Croga glen is swarming with them; -I have heard them at the dead hours of night, and I may say I have as good as seen them, and that in broad day." "'Deed, miller," said she of the Elfknowe, "we all ken full well that the mill of Croga has two millers,-one of flesh and blood, and as douce a man as ever wet corn with water, even yourself, Thomas; but for the other, I wish "And ye have tasted meal of the Elf-miller's grinding, good-wife? said the miller:-" hegh, woman, but ye're a fearless bodie. Now, touching the miller, I could tell something of a tale myself. It was ae fine summer night, I mind it well,-it was just the time lang Tam Freysel died, and that I lost three mug ewes in the side-ill. The wind was down, and the moon shone so clear ye might have gathered saxpences on Crogahill, and seen needles and pins in the bottom of my mill-dam. I went out to pray at my own house-end,---for to tell ye nae fiction, I am far from being so bold as one with so clear a conscience might be, who never wronged a man aboon the worth of three handfulls of meal at a time. So to my knees I went,---and I mind well I was petitioning against the drought of summer, for the streams were parched up, and a drove of oxen would have drunk Croga mill-dam dry; but I trow I got a raising. I heard a sound as of the rushing of water,---the clapper of my mill began to clap, the wheels went dunnering round, the dust streamed out as thick as a corn sack from door and wicket, and I heard the din as of twenty tongues making merry over a meller of meal. Now, said I, through might from aboon I shall see who they are that run off my milldam with this wicked speed,--but it was may be for my soul's health, that I was not to be made so wise. I had reached the brink of my milldam, and the lights shone, and the mirth abounded, more than ever. Judge ye now, good wife, if it was ought good that beguiled and be fooled me sae; instead of my bonnie mill-dam shining beneath the summer moon, what beheld I but a palace of burning gold, rising before me with carved pillars nae doubt, and sculptured porches I'll warrant, |