the abfurdities of popery with an unusual degree of abhorrence and afperity. In the course of the poem before us, an allegory on the corruptions of the church is introduced, not destitute of invention, humour, and elegance: but founded on one of the weak theories of Wickliffe, who not confidering religion as reduced to a civil establishment, and because Chrift and his apostles were poor, imagined that fecular poffeffions were inconfiftent with the fimplicity of the gospel. In the primitive and pure ages of christianity, the poet fuppofes, that the Church married Poverty, whose children were Chastity and Devotion. The emperour Conftantine foon afterwards divorced this fober and decent couple; and without obtaining or asking a difpenfation, married the Church with great folemnity to Property. Pope Silvester ratified the marriage: and Devotion retired to a hermitage. They had two daughters, Riches and Senfuality; who were very beautiful, and foon attracted fuch great and universal regard, that they acquired the chief ascendancy in all spiritual affairs. Such was the influence of Senfuality in particular, that Chastity, the daughter of the Church by Poverty, was exiled: she tried, but in vain, to gain protection in Italy and France. Her fuccefs was equally bad in England. She strove to take refuge in the court of Scotland: but they drove her from the court to the clergy. The bishops were alarmed at her appearance, and protefted they would harbour no rebel to the See of Rome. They fent her to the nuns, who received her in form, with proceffions and other honours. But news being immediately dispatched to Senfuality and Riches, of her friendly reception among the nuns, she was again compelled to turn fugitive. She next fled to the mendicant friers, who declared they could not take charge of ladies. At last she was found fecreted in the nunnery of the Burrowmoor near Edinburgh, where fhe had met her mother Poverty and her fifter Devotion. Senfuality attempts to befiege this religious house, but without effect. The pious fifters were armed at all points, and kept an irresistible piece of artillery, called Domine cuftodi nos. Within quhose schot, thare dar no enemies d I know not whether this chafte fisterhood had the delicacy to observe strictly the injunctions prescribed to a fociety of nuns in England; who, to preserve a cool habit, were ordered to be regularly blooded three times every year, but not by a fecular perfon, and the priests who performed the operation were never fuffered to be strangers". I must not difmifs this poem, without pointing out a beautiful valediction to the royal palace of Snowdon; which is not only highly fentimental and expreffive of poetical feelings, but strongly impreffes on the mind an image of the romantic magnificence of antient times, fo remote from the ftate of modern manners. Adew fair Snawdoune, with thy touris hie, Our author's poem, To the Kingis grace in contemptioun of fyde taillis, that is, a censure on the affectation of long trains worn by the ladies, has more humour than decency. He allows a tail to the queen, but thinks it an affront to the royal dignity and prerogative that, Every lady of the land Should have hir taill fo fyde trailland '.— The morne wyll counterfute the quene. In barn, nor byir, fcho woll nocht byde They waist more claith [cloth] within few yeiris In a statute of James the fecond of Scotland', about the year 1460, it was ordered, that no woman fhould come to church or to market with her face muffaled, that is muzzled, or covered. Notwithstanding this seasonable interpofition of the legislature, the ladies of Scotland continued muzzled during three reigns'. The enormous excrefcence of female As appears from a paffage in the poem before us. Bot in the kirk and market placis I think thay fuld nocht hide thair facis.He therefore advises the king to iffue a proclamation, Both throw the land, and Borrowftonis, Hails ane Frence lady quhen ye pleis, tails was prohibited in the fame statute, "That na woman "wear tails unfit in length." The legitimate length of these tails is not, however, determined in this ftatute; a circumstance which we may collect from a mandate issued by a papal legate in Germany, in the fourteenth century. "It is decreed, that the apparel of women, which ought to be "confiftent with modefty, but now, through their foolish nefs, is degenerated into wantonnefs and extravagance, "more particularly the immoderate length of their petti"coats, with which they sweep the ground, be restrained to "a moderate fashion, agreeably to the decency of the fex, "under pain of the fentence of excommunication '." The orthodoxy of petticoats is not precisely ascertained in this falutary edict: but as it excommunicates those female tails, which, in our author's phrase, keep the kirk and caufey clean, and allows fuch a moderate ftandard to the petticoat, as is compatible with female delicacy, it may be concluded, that, the ladies who covered their feet were looked upon as very laudable conformifts: an inch or two lefs would have been avowed immodefty; an inch or two more an affectation bordering upon herefy". What good effects followed from this ecclefiaftical cenfure, I do not find: it is, however, evident, that the Scottish act of parliament against long tails was as little observed, as that against muzzling. Probably the force of the poet's fatire effected a more speedy reformation of fuch abuses, than the menaces of the church, or the laws of the land. But these capricious vanities were not confined to Scotland alone. In England, as we are informed by several antiquaries, the women of quality firft wore trains in the reign of Richard the fecond: a novelty which induced a well meaning divine, of those times, to write a tract Contra caudas dominarum, against the Tails of the Ladies". Whether or no this remonftrance operated fo far, as to occafion the contrary extreme, and even to have been the diftant cause of producing the fhort petticoats of the present age, I cannot fay. As an apology, however, for the English ladies, in adopting this fashion, we should in justice remember, as was the cafe of the Scotch, that it was countenanced by Anne, Richard's queen: a lady not less enterprising than successful in her attacks on established forms; and whofe authority and example were fo powerful, as to abolish, even in defiance of France, the fafe, commodious, and natural mode of riding on horseback, hitherto practiced by the women of England, and to introduce fide-faddles *. An anonymous Scotch poem has lately been communicated to me, belonging to this period: of which, as it was never printed, and as it contains capital touches of fatirical humour, not inferior to thofe of Dunbar and Lyndefay, I am tempted to transcribe a few ftanzas. It appears to have been written foon after the death of James the fifth. The poet mentions the death of James the fourth, who was kill ed in the battle of Flodden-field, fought in the year 1513*. It is entitled DUNCANE LAIDER, or MAKGREGOR'S TESTAMENT'. The Scotch poets were fond of conveying invective, under the form of an affumed character writing a will. In the poem before us, the writer exposes the ruinous |