north-east of the castle; which formed the head of the pool, a sluice in the middle of it, (formerly arched over,) served to drain off the superfluous waters of the lake, which washed the foot of the lists on the west side, while a wall towards the east effectually prevented the horses from swerving on that side, in the martial exercises of the tilts and tournaments performed here. "At the end of the tilt-yard, and formerly connected with it by a bridge, the ruins of which still remain, there is a piece of ground strongly fortified with a deep ditch and rampart of earth. Over this, (until Lord Leicester built the gate house,) lay the road to the castle; and the remains of the two stone towers, that stood on each side the entrance, are still to be seen. From this spot there is a very good near view of the castle, as also from the end of the meadow to the south-west, and another from the hills to the northwest; but perhaps, the spot from which the castle ap, pears to the greatest advantage is on the road from Honily to Warwick, where it seems proudly situated in the midst of a noble wood, and appears to be

"Bosomed high in tufted trees."

S.H.

FOR THE POCKET MAGAZINE.

ESSAY ON FRIENDSHIP.

PERHAPS on no subject have so many essays been >written as on friendship: every tale, and drama too, has the heroism or the perfidy of a friend as an essential part of its plot, yet perhaps no passion of the hu -man heart is so little understood-no feeling so generally, or so wrongly considered. Every body can say, and most people do say

And what is friendship but a name?

A charm that lulls to sleep?

A shade that follows wealth and fame,
And leaves the wretch to weep!

These hacknied, and almost always misquoted lines of the sweetest of poets, have frequently attracted my

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attention, from the improper, and even absurd manner in which they were applied. Goldsmith certainly meant to represent them, not as his own opinion or experience, but as the sentiments of a disappointed lover; one whose hopes of happiness had been blighted, and who, like too many in the present day, railed at maukind, because his own plans had failed. Edwin had been, what is commonly termed, “ crossed in love," so he avers that "friendship is a shade," love an empty sound, and women are all perfidious. Thus an acquaintance cuts you for some trivial reason, one that could not have existed where friendship dwelt; yet you immediately exclaim against the perfidy of friends, and say you have experienced the truth of what Goldsmith asserted.

The object, however, of my scribbling is not to prove what Goldsmith did or did not mean, but to defend the noblest and purest of our affections from the obloquy it is now customary to cast upon it. The cause of the reproach and derision with which friendship is frequently spoken of, I consider to be the careless manner in which the word "friendship" is generally used. Nothing is more common than to hear people say they have" invited a few friends." Now in this party probably there is not one worthy, or, whom they consider as worthy of bearing that sacred title: yet they unhesitatingly confer it on all. Ask the opinion of numbers of persons who thus speak of many as their "friends," and most of them, with the common and contemptible affectation of misanthropy, will answer, "Friendship! what the world calls friendship, is but a collection of hollow professions! No! friendship, real friendship is imaginary!" This I deny.-I will not say, that when you hear of" my friend so and so," you are to believe that the spirit which has immortalized Damon and Pythias, now animates the speaker and his "friend" but I do say that, even now, degenerate as we are, in some bosoms there burns a never-dying flame, as bright, as holy, as that which made Pylades scorn every danger, forsake every happiness, to follow Orestes in misfortune, in madness, even in death. Yet I am no visionary; I do not expect to meet in this "vale of tears" with a Blandford, unre

1

repiningly resigning his Coraly, or a Nelson, silently writhing under the influence of a passion friendship forbids him to avow; instead of this, we see too often the lover, far from reminding his mistress of the sacred ties that bind her to his friend, exerting all his eloquence to make her forget them. "In love," says our immortal bard," in love who respects his friend?"

Campbell, the refined and sensitive Campbell, in his "Exile of Erin," a poem which must ever be admired for its elegant simplicity, has these beautiful lines: "Where is my cabin door fast by the wild wood? Sisters and Sirs! did ye weep for its fall!

Where is the mother, that looked on my chidhood? And where is the bosom friend, dearer than all ?"! Such have been the sentiments of most poets and authors, who have noticed the passions of mankind; and though even 1, advocate as I am of this feeling, cannot concur in believing a friend to be dearer than the parents, who tended our infancy, and the sharers in their love, the companions of our youth, yet surely friendship is, as Mrs. Chapone calls it, "the noblest and happiest of affections." Of all friendships, the most lasting and fervent must be the fraternal.— "Other attachments," says the same celebrated authoress," you form, but this was formed for you, if I may so express it, by the hand of God!" Unhappy it is when this sacred bond is broken! when the golden thread is rudely severed. It is sad for him who can say, and say truly, "I have no friend!" but his loneliness is bliss compared to that bitter feeling, that heart rending emotion, which we experience when the heartlessness of him we trusted is discovered, when we exclaim with the royal psalmist, "It is not an open enemy that hath done me this dishonour, for then I could have borne it. Neither was it mine adversary, that did magnify himself against me, for then peradventure I would have hid myself from him. But it was even thou, my companion, my guide, and mine own familiar friend."

I have, perhaps, already written too much, yet, ere I conclude, let me hope all I have said in praise of friendship has not been in vain; and now, ye unbelievers, ye seoffers at that much abused and sacred tie, renounce your infidelity! My last argument is unan

swerable! Remember the title of friend was used by the friend of all! Remember it was friendship drew tears from his eyes, who came to wipe away all tears! Lazarus was in the grave. Jesus wept. Then said the Jews," Behold how he loved him!" E.M.

No. 40.-EARTHQUAKE IN SCOTLAND.

THIS earthquake took place on the evening of August 13th, 1816, at a quarter before eleven o'clock such at least is the precise time in which most of the evidences agree; for a variation of the clocks and watches of different places has led to a corresponding variation as to the time of the commencement of the phenomena, to the extent of nearly half an hour between the extremes of all the different accounts. But there is no thing in any of these to lead us to suppose that the shock was not every where perfectly simultaneous, As it appears to have been infinitely more violent, so its influence appears to have been of wider extent, than that of any of those which have hitherto agitated Great Britain. Taking as our guide the names of those places from which there have been certain accounts of its having produced some kind of sensation; and in or der to mark the surrounding outline of the field of its action on the map, we should begin at the Pentland Firth, and, tracing round the coast to the westward and south, we should touch at Gairloch and Loch Carron; and proceeding by Loch Lochy south eastwards to Glasgow, and afterwards to the river Tweed at Coldstream, we should return northward by Edinburgh and Leith, and so along the whole eastern coast of Scotland to the point from whence we at first set out. Perhaps, indeed, the shock may have been sensible at points even without this line, to the westward and south; but such is the result of an inspection of the various notices which I have seen. The two diameters of the space inclosed by this extensive boundary, with in which its effects were manifested in a greater or less degree, may at a rough calculation be supposed to

measure, the one about 240 miles from north to south, and the other about 100 miles froin east to west. But as the sensation appears to have been but slightly felt at Glasgow, Coldstream, and Edinburgh; and as it hardly affected that portion of Scotland where these towns are situated, we must confine the range of its more active exertion to the country between the Tay and the Pentland Frith. All the different details seem to agree that the direction of the concussion was from north-west to south-east. But there is not the same uniformity of opinion as to the duration of the phenomena: some accounts making it only one or two se conds, while others are of opinion that it lasted as many minutes. I have no doubt that as difference of situation might produce a very considerable difference in the intensity, so it might also in the continuance of the vibration. Yet after mature reflection, and a due comparison of the various testimonies, I am inclined to think that the whole of the phenomena attending it could not any where have occupied a much greater portion of time than one minute. Although its violence was differently modified in different situations, and those two at no great distance from each other, yet its grandest efforts were unquestionably exerted under the town of Inverness; from which point, as a centre, speaking generally, its force seemed to diminish, with the exception of some anomalies, in every direction towards the line of circumference already defined. But your readers will form a better idea of the nature and strength of its operations, from an exhibition of the substance of some of the more prominent and interesting accounts, given by observers in different quarters, which I shall proceed to lay before them in succession, after describing, in the first place, what were my own personal observations and feelings on the occasion.

The situation of this place is a rocky peninsula, composed almost entirely of gneiss, between the rapid and deep bedded rivers Findhorn and Divie; the latter describing nearly three fourths of a circle round the site of the house, which stands on a thick bed of gravel lying over the subjacent rock; insulated on every

Relugas, the seat of T. L. Dick, Esq. the author of this narrative.