diverse meet and agree:
Can the affected mincing trip,
Exalted brow, and pride-pressed lip,
In strange incongruous union meet,
With all that stamps the hypocrite?
We see they do: but let us scan
Those secret springs which move the man.

Though now he wields the knotty birch,
His better hope lies in the Church:
For this the sable robe he wears,
For this in pious guise appears.
But then, the weak will cannot hide
Th' inherent vanity and pride;
And thus he acts the coxcomb's part,
As dearer to his poor vain heart:
Nature's born fop! a saint by art!!
But hold! he wears no fopling's dress
Each seam, each thread, the eye can trace
His garb all o'er;--the dye, though true,
Time-blanch'd, displays a fainter hue:
Dress forms the fopling's better part;
Reconcile this, and prove your art.

"Chill penury represses pride;"--
A maxim by the wise denied;
For 'tis alone tame plodding souls,
Whose spirits bend when it controls,--
Whose lives run on in one dull same,
Plain honesty their highest aim.
With him it merely can repress--
Tailor o'er-cow'd--the pomp of dress;
His spirit, unrepressed, can soar
High as e'er folly rose before;
Can fly pale study, learn'd debate,
And ape proud fashion's idle state:
Yet fails in that engaging grace
That lights the practised courtier's face.
His weak affected air we mark,
And, smiling, view the would-be spark;
Complete in every act and feature,--
An ill-bred, silly, awkward creature.

My school-days fairly over, a life of toil frowned full in front of me;
but never yet was there a half-grown lad less willing to take up the man
and lay down the boy. My set of companions was fast breaking up;--my
friend of the Doocot Cave was on the eve of proceeding to an academy in
a neighbouring town; Finlay had received a call from the south, to
finish his education in a seminary on the banks of the Tweed; one
Marcus' Cave lad was preparing to go to sea; another to learn a trade; a
third to enter a shop; the time of dispersal was too evidently at hand;
and, taking counsel one day together, we resolved on constructing
something--we at first knew not what--that might serve as a monument to
recall to us in after years the memory of our early pastimes and
enjoyments. The common school-book story of the Persian shepherd, who,
when raised by his s