happy pair, I pity them! Were we to guess our way in the dark a wee
farther, I think it not altogether unlikely, that he must have fallen in
with his sweetheart abroad, when wandering about on his travels; for what
follows seems to come as it were from her, lamenting his being called to
leave her forlorn, and return home. This is all merely supposition on my
part, and in the antiquarian style, whereby much is made out of little;
but both me and James Batter are determined to be unanimously of this
opinion, until otherwise convinced to the contrary. Love is a fiery and
fierce passion everywhere; but I am told that we, who live in a more
favoured land, know very little of the terrible effects it sometimes
causes, and the bloody tragedies, which it has a thousand times produced,
where the heart of man is uncontrolled by reason or religion, and his
blood heated into a raging fever, by the burning sun that glows in the
heaven above his head.

Here follows the poem of Taffy's master's foreign sweetheart; which,
considering it to be a woman's handiwork, is, I daresay, not that far
amiss.

SONG OF THE SOUTH.

I.

Of all the garden flowers
The fairest is the rose;
Of winds that stir the bowers,
Oh! there is none that blows
Like the south--the gentle south--
For that balmy breeze is ours.

II.

Cold is the frozen north;
In its stern and savage mood,
'Mid gales, come drifting forth
Bleak snows and drenching flood:
But the south--the gentle south--
Thaws to love the willing blood.

III.

Bethink thee of the vales,
With their birds and blossoms fair--
Of the darkling nightingales,
That charm the starry air
In the south--the gentle south,--
Ah! our own dear home is there.

IV.

Where doth Beauty brightest glow,
With each rich and radiant charm,
Eye of light, and brow of snow,
Cherry lip, and bosom warm;
In the south--the gentle south--
There she waits, and works her harm

V.

Say, shines the Star of Love,
From the clear and cloudless sky,
The shadowy groves above,
Where the nestling ringdoves lie?
From the south--the gentle south--
Gleams its lone and lucid eye.

VI.

Then turn ye to the home
Of your brethren and your bride;
Far astray your steps may roam,
But more joys for thee abide,
In the south--our gentle south--
Than in all the world beside.

After reading a lot of the unknown gentleman's compositions in prose and
verse, something