this jeering and gibing,
and grinning and hissing, and pointing with the finger--marrying and
giving in marriage, births and christenings, continue their career of
prosperity; and the legitimate population doubles itself somewhere about
every thirty-five years. Single houses rise out of the earth--double
houses become villages--villages towns--towns cities--and our Metropolis
is itself a world!

While the lyrical poetry of Scotland is thus rife with reproach against
wedlock, it is equally rife with panegyric on the tender passion that
leads into its toils. In one page you shudder in a cold sweat over the
mean miseries of the poor "gudeman;" in the next you see, unconscious of
the same approaching destiny, the enamoured youth lying on his Mary's
bosom beneath the milk-white thorn. The pastoral pipe is tuned under a
fate that hurries on all living creatures to love; and not one lawful
embrace is shunned from any other fears than those which of themselves
spring up in the poor man's thoughtful heart. The wicked betray, and the
weak fall--bitter tears are shed at midnight from eyes once bright as
the day--fair faces never smile again, and many a hut has its broken
heart--hope comes and goes, finally vanquishing, or yielding to
despair--crowned passion dies the sated death, or, with increase of
appetite, grows by what it feeds on--wide, but unseen, over all the
regions of the land, are cheated hopes, vain desires, gnawing jealousy,
dispirited fear, and swarthy-souled revenge--beseechings, seductions,
suicides, and insanities--and all, all spring from the root of Love; yet
all the nations of the earth call the Tree blest, and long as time
endures, will continue to flock thither panting to devour the fruitage,
of which every other golden globe is poison and death.

Smile away then, with all thy most irresistible blandishments, thou
young and happy Bride! What business have we to prophesy bedimming tears
to those resplendent eyes? or that the talisman of that witching smile
can ever lose its magic? Are not the high-born daughters of England also
the high-souled? And have not honour and virtue, and charity and
religion, guarded for centuries the lofty line of thy pure and
unpolluted blood? Joyful, therefore, mayst thou be, as the dove in the
sunshine on the Tower-top--and as the dove serene, when she sitteth on
her nest within the yew-tree's gloom, far within the wood!

Passing from our episode, let us say that we are too wel