days. He often sat in silence beneath the sound of his groves, and he blamed the careless billows that rolled between him and the green isle of the west.

"One day, as the magician of Skerr sat thoughtful upon a rock, a storm arose from the sea: a cloud under whose squally skirts the foaming waters complained, rushed suddenly into the bay, and from its dark womb, at once issued forth a boat, with its white sails bent to the wind, and hung round with an hundred moving oars. But it was destitute of mariners ; itself seeming to live and move. An unusual terror seized the aged magician. He heard a voice, though he saw no human form. 'Arise, behold the boat of the heroes,—arise, and see the green isle of those who have passed away.'

"He felt strange force on his limbs, he saw no person, but he moved to the boat. The wind immediatethe cloud he sailed

ly changed. In the bosom of away, seven days gleamed faintly round him, seven nights added their gloom to his darkness. His ears were stunned with shrill voices. The dull murmur of

winds passed him on either side. his eyes were not heavy; he ate

He slept not, but not, but he was not

hungry. On the eighth day, the waves swelled into mountains, the boat was rocked violently from side to side. The darkness thickened around him, when a thousand voices at once cried out, The Isle," "The Isle !" The billows opened wide before him, the calm land of the departed rushed in light on his eyes.

"It was not a light that dazzled, but a pure, placid, and distinguishing light, which called forth every object to view in their most perfect form. The isle spread large before him, like a pleasing dream of the

soul; where distance fades not on the sight; where nearness fatigues not the eye. It had its gently sloping hills of green, nor did they wholly want their clouds: but the clouds were bright and transparent, and each involved in its bosom the source of a stream, a beauteous stream, which, wandering down the steep, was like the faint notes of the half-touched harp to the distant ear. The vallies were open and free to the ocean; trees loaded with leaves, which scarcely waved to the light breeze, were scattered on the green declivities and rising grounds. The rude winds walked not on the mountain, no storm took its course through the sky. All was calm and bright; the pure sun of autumn shone from his blue sky on the fields. He hastened not to the west for repose, nor was he seen to rise from the east. He sits in his height, and looks obliquely on the Noble Isle. In each valley is its slow moving stream. The pure waters swell over the banks, yet abstain from the fields. The showers disturb them not, nor are they lessened by the heat of the sun. On the rising hills are the halls of the departed the high-roofed dwellings of the heroes of old."

Thus far, says Mr. Macpherson, is the tale worthy of translation. Incoherent fables succeed the description, and the employments of the blessed in their Fortunate Island, differs in no respect from the amusements of the most uncultivated inhabitants of a mountainous country. The bodies with which the bard clothes his departed heroes, have more grace, and are more active, than those they left behind them in this world; and he describes, with peculiar elegance, the beauty of the women. After a very

transient vision of the noble isle, the magician of Skerr returned home in the same miraculous manner in which he had been carried across the ocean. But though, in his mind, he comprehended his absence in sixteen days, he found every thing changed at his return. No trace of his habitation remained; he knew not the face of any man. He was even forced, says the tale, to make inquiry concerning himself; and tradition had scarcely carried down his name to the generation, who then possessed the island of Skerr. Two complete centuries had passed away since his departure; so imperceptible was the flight of time in the felicity of the Celtic Paradise.

The departed, according to the tale, retained, in the midst of their happiness, a warm affection for their country and living friends. They sometimes visited the first; and by the latter, as the bard expresses it, they were transiently seen in the hour of peril, and especially on the near approach of death. It was then, that at mid-night, the death-devoted, to use the words of the tale, were suddenly awakened by a strange knocking at their gates; it was then that they heard the indistinct voice of their departed friends, calling them away to the noble Isle. "A sudden joy," continues the author of the tale, " rushed in upon their minds, and that pleasing melancholy which looks forward to happiness, in a distant land." It is worthy of being remarked, that though those who died a natural death, were not excluded from the Celtic Paradise, the more pleasant diversions of the Flath-Innis or the noble Isle, rendered the Celtic Nations careless about a transitory life, which must terminate in happiness. They threw away with indifference, e

burden, when it galled them, and became in some measure independent of fortune in her worst extreme. They met death in the field with elevation and joy of mind; they sought after him with eagerness, when oppressed with disease, or worn out with age. To the same cause, and not to a want of docility of disposition and temper, we ought to ascribe their small progress in the arts of civil life, before the Phænicians and Greeks, with their commerce, and the Romans with their arms, introduced a taste for luxury into the regions of the west and north.

In 1773, Mr. Macpherson produced a translation of the Iliad of Homer, into the same sort of poetic prose as his poeins of Ossian. Men of taste, as appears from his preface, had long solicited him to undertake the work; and there were not wanting individuals, who, now that it was completed, pronounced it to be one of the first productions of the age. "The pomp and magnificence of his diction," we were told, "conveyed without diminution the dignity of his author, and the smoothness of his periods placed the power and elegance of the English language in a more favorable point of view than it had hitherto appeared in." It is certain, however, that such was not the opinion either of the mass of good judges, or of the public at large; from the former of whom it met only with ridicule, for the bad taste in which it was conceived; and from the latter, with the neglect which is due to presumptuous competition.

The dispute, as to the authenticity of Macpherson's Poems of Ossian, which had, in the mean time, been suffered to die away, while the poems themselves continued to rise in popularity, was now revived with greater

acrimony than ever by Dr. Johnson. In the course of the tour which Dr. Johnson made, in company with Mr. Boswell, to the Hebrides, he made various inquiries concerning the traditionary poems said to exist among the Highlanders; but the information he obtained only tended to confirm the pre-conceived notions of Johnson, who, always prejudiced against Scotsmen and Scottish literature, had condemned Macpherson, almost without examination, as a literary impostor. In his Narrative of the Tour, speaking of these poems, he says, I believe they never existed in any other form than that which we have seen. The editor or author never could shew the original; nor can it be shewn by any other. To revenge reasonable incredulity, by refusing evidence, is a degree of insolence with which the world is not yet acquainted, and stubborn audacity is the last refuge of guilt. It would be easy to shew it, if he had it; but whence could it be had? It is too long to be remembered, and the language had formerly nothing written. He has doubtless inserted names that circulate in popular stories, and may have translated some wandering ballads, if any can be found; and the names and some of the images being recollected, make an inaccurate auditor imagine, by the help of Caledonian bigotry, that he has formerly heard the whole." Again: "I have yet supposed no imposture but in the publisher; yet I am far from certain that some translations have not been lately made, that may now be obtruded as parts of the original work. Credulity, on one part, is a strong temptation to deceit on the other, especially to deceit of which no personal injury is the consequence, and which flatters the author with his own ingenuity. The PART 3.]

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