MY MOUNTAIN HAME.

AIR--_"Gala Water."_

My mountain hame, my mountain hame!
My kind, my independent mother;
While thought and feeling rule my frame,
Can I forget the mountain heather?
Scotland dear!

I love to hear your daughters dear
The simple tale in song revealing,
Whene'er your music greets my ear
My bosom swells wi' joyous feeling--
Scotland dear!

Though I to other lands may gae,
Should Fortune's smile attend me thither,
I 'll hameward come, whene'er I may,
And look again on the mountain heather--
Scotland dear!

When I maun die, oh! I would lie
Where life and me first met together;
That my cauld clay, through its decay,
Might bloom again in the mountain heather--
Scotland dear!

THOMAS SMIBERT.

A poet and indefatigable prose-writer, Thomas Smibert was born in
Peebles on the 8th February 1810. Of his native town his father held for
a period the office of chief magistrate. With a view of qualifying
himself for the medical profession, he became apprentice to an
apothecary, and afterwards attended the literary and medical classes in
the University of Edinburgh. Obtaining licence as a surgeon, he
commenced practice in the village of Inverleithen, situated within six
miles of his native town. He was induced to adopt this sphere of
professional labour from an affection which he had formed for a young
lady in the vicinity, who, however, did not recompense his devotedness,
but accepted the hand of a more prosperous rival. Disappointed in love,
and with a practice scarcely yielding emolument sufficient to pay the
annual rent of his apothecary's store, he left Inverleithen after the
lapse of a year, and returned to Peebles. He now began to turn his
attention to literature, and was fortunate in procuring congenial
employment from the Messrs Chambers, as a contributor to their popular
_Journal_. Of this periodical he soon attained the position of
sub-editor; and in evidence of the indefatigable nature of his services
in this literary connexion, it is worthy of record that, during the
period intervening between 1837 and 1842, he contributed to the
_Journal_ no fewer than five hundred essays, one hundred tales, and
about fifty biographical sketches. Within the same period he edited a
new edition o