natural, or otherwise than salutary in its ultimate effects. A fallow time was necessary, but several concurrent causes rendered it more prolonged than such seasons of recuperation usually are. In the meantime, it may not be uninstructive to note how she served her new mistress, Devotion. Hume was the second son of Patrick Hume of Polwarth, and was born about 1560. He was educated at St Andrews, but, according to the custom of the times, completed his studies in law, to which profession he was destined, in France. A short trial of advocate probation, which he describes in a poetical epistle to his friend Dr Moncreiff, the King's physician, and of which some features may be recognised as still existing, gives us his own reasons for quitting the bar. "Three years, or near that space, I haunted maist our highest pleading place, Mine ears were deaved with maissar's cries and din, Whilk procutors and parties called in: Tired of the law courts, he next tried the King's court, where his brother, Montgomery's rival, appears to have been in favour; but he did not find this a more congenial sphere than the other : "Some officers we see of naughty brain, And flattering fellows oft are mair regarded; And by their manners show where they have been, Whilk have the word of God before their eyes, It may be doubted if the Church, as an ecclesiastical organization, has been guided less by motives and influences at variance with its ideal, than any other human institution; yet there is no other institution which presents to certain minds such congenial spheres for the quiet indulgence of that morbid sensitiveness which shrinks from the rude conflicts of secular life. Such appears to have been the influence under which Hume chose the Church as his last resource, and nowhere in Scotland could he be placed in a spot more suited to his disposition than the church of Logie, in Clackmannanshire, to which he was appointed in 1598. In 1599, he published his "Hymnes, or Sacred Songs, wherein the right use of Poesie may be espied." These he dedicated to Lady Culross, the authoress of "Ane Golden Dream." He died in 1609. We select the "Day Estivall, or Summer's Day," as his most poetical piece. It shows a very pleasing and correct observance of nature, but wants the spirit and imagination, without which, descriptive poetry is a mere inventory of natural objects and phenomena, without relief or perspective |