paign in this "strange eventful history." We often find that the
public discover virtues and good qualities in a man after his death,
which they had previously given him no credit for; let this be as it
may, 1828 may be deemed a very "passable" year. To use a simile, a
sick man when recovering from a fever, makes slow progress at first;
and we should fairly hope that the gallant ship is at last weathering
the hurricane of the "commercial crisis," and that the trade-winds of
prosperity will again visit us and extend their balmy influence over
our shores; and to borrow a commercial phrase, we trust to be able to
quote an improvement on this head next year.

I stood between the meeting years
The coming and the past,
And I ask'd of the future one
Wilt thou be like the last?
The same in many a sleepless night,
In many an anxious day?
Thank heaven! I have no prophet's eye,
To look upon thy way!

L.E.L.

The march of mind is progressing, and the once boasted "wisdom of our
ancestors" and the "golden days of good Queen Bess," are hurled with
derision to the tomb of all the Capulets. We regret that we cannot
chronicle a "Narrative of a first attempt to reach the cities of Bath
and Bristol, in the year 1828, in an extra patent steam-coach, by
Messrs. Burstall, or Gurney." The newspapers, however, still continue
to inform us that such vehicles are _about_ to start, so we may
reasonably expect that Time will accomplish the long talked of event.
Nay, we even hear it rumoured that the public are shortly to crest the
billows in a steamer at the rate of fifty or a hundred miles an hour!
and this is mentioned as a mere first essay, an immature sample of
what the improved steam-paddles are to effect--also in Time; who after
this can doubt the approaching perfectibility of Mars? Oh, steam!
steam! but this is well ploughed ground.

Art, science, and literature, also progress, and we almost begin to
fear we shall soon be puzzled where to stow the books, and anticipate
a dearth in rags, an extinction of Rag-Fair! (which will keep the
others in countenance,) the booksellers' maws seem so capacious.
Christmas with its rare recollections of feasting (and their _pendant_
of bile and sick headache) has again come round. New Year's Day, and
of all the days most "rich and rare," Twelfth Day is coming! But it is
in Scotland that the advent of the new year, or _Hogmanay_ is kept
with the most hilarity; the Scotch by