WILLIAM THOM'S RHYMES AND RECOLLECTIONS. THE author of this little

volume is a Scotch hand-loom weaver, with a taste for music and a turn for verse. The American failures a few years since reduced him and his family to absolute destitution, and threw them upon the world houseless wanderers. After a struggle of some months in a state of vagrancy, times began to mend, and THOM was again employed at his trade. But he was still doomed to trouble. One of his children had died of cold and hunger during their wanderings ; soon after his settlement at In- verury his wife sank, in childbed, under the hardships she had en- dured; work again became slack, and Taos' had no prospect but the House of Refuge at Aberdeen. He appears to have always had an itching for verse, and his earlier compositions had excited the applause of his fellow-workmen : during the last weeks of his enforced idleness he had been able to divert his mind from the pressure of circumstances by employing it on composition. One of his pieces had been sent to the Aberdeen Herald, and copied into the Aberdeen Journal, where it attracted the attention of Mr. GORDON of Knockespock. The result is narrated by Tnom- " On a cold, cold winter day, we sat alone, my little ones and I, looking on the last meal procurable by honourable means. My purpose was settled: our wearables, such as they were, lay packed up for the journey—Aberdeen and the souse of Refuge our next home. I felt resigned. True, we might have breathed on a little while longer, had I been able to worm through all the creeping intricacies that lie between starvation and parish charities. But oh ! bow preferable, surely, the unseen silent sadness in a House of Refuge, to the thousand-and-one heartless queries, taunts, and grumblings, that accompany the elder's • eighteenpence.' Heaven averted all these, at any rate. On the forenoon of that same day, there came to me a post-letter, dated 'Aberdeen Journal Office."

This letter contained five pounds from Mr. GORDON. Some fur- ther communication took place between the poet and the patron ; and not long after, Trtom and his daughter "were dashing it in a gilded carriage through the streets of London"; and, under the patronage of Mr. Goanosr, Ile "was introduced to many of the master-minds of you great city." Unfortunately, he had to return to the loom; and the usual fate of those whose wages scarcely suffice for the passing day seems again impending over THOM : the hand-loom is sinking before the "waves of monopoly," or rather the powers of capital and machinery ; and these Rhymes and Recollections are sent forth to see if the lyre will make up for the deficient profit of the loom. The little volume published with this object consists of prose and verse. The prose "Recollections" give a full narrative of the author's difficulties during the fearful time we have mentioned, and contain other notices of himself, so as to become substantially his autobiography. The verse consists of a variety of short poems, some personal, some occasional, and mostly in the Scotch dialect. By some publications beyond the Tweed Thom has been hailed as one of the greater luminaries of Caledonia. When his compo- sitions are compared with his opportunities of education and means of study, he exhibits a remarkable and very creditable specimen of industry struggling with adverse circumstances: but we must confess that we can see in him no traits of poetical genius, and that we prefer his prose to his poetry. It may have a little too much of that finery and obtrusive artifice which characterize the mere writer, or the inexperienced writer ; but everything in his auto- biography is clear, attractive, and real, in despite of the taint we speak of. The verses strike us as being little beyond clever and ingenious repetitions of other poetry ; to which the language fails to give character, even to Southern ears. Indeed, the Doric dialect seems to us a test of his want of poetical genius. It rarely reads as if chosen because it was congenial to the subject and naturally rose to the lips of the speaker, but appears more like English verses turned into Scotch, as if the writer had learned his lesson from one language and then translated it into the other.

The two most considerable poems in the volume are "The Blind Boy's Pranks" and " Knockespock's Lady." The Blind Boy is Cupid; who figures through three cantos ; in the first endowing a lass of Ury side with winning powers, next surveying the death of a forsaken one, and in the third transfixing a lawyer. The poem is not devoid of fancy in the design or sprightliness in the execution; but in the second canto Cupid is merely a spectator, and the words are so very Scotch that it will scarcely be intelligible in the South. It is, however, by far the best in the book, and has more the air of Bueals than any of the rest. "Knockespock's Lady" is a versified tradition in the family of his patron ; a wife of a former laird having carried her sick husband through the flames of their burn- ing house, and then returned for blankets to wrap him in. But the poem is not equal to the theme ; and Tnom, strange to say, omits the main action of the incident—the conveyance of the laird, which he indicates instead of telling.

As an example of a writer who, if not a poet, is too singular an Instance of pursuing literature under difficulties to quit without a specimen, we take

OLD FATTIER FROST AND /HS FAMILY.

Grim father Frost, he bath children twain, The cloud-born daughters of Lady Rain ; The elder a coquetish, pattering thing, Would woo you in winter and pelt you in spring ; At times you might scarce feel her feathery fall, Anon she will beard you with icicle-ball ; When the warrings of heaven roll higher and higher,

She, coward-like, flees from the conflict of fire—

Yet heightens the havoc, for her feeble power, Though scaithless the oak, how it fells the frail flower !

And the bud of the berry, the bloom of the bean, Are foundered to earth by the merciless queen ; E'en the stout stems of summer full often must quail To this rattling, brattling, head-breaking hail.

1'11 not say a word of how rudely she breaks On the dream of the garret-doomed maid, and awakes A thousand regrets in the marrowless lass, And cruelly mimics the "touch on the glass," With her cold little pearls, that dance, bound, and play, Like oar am n bonnie bairns on Candlemas-day.

You know her meek sister ? 0, soft is the fall

Of her fairy footsteps on hut and on hall ! To hide the old father's bleak doings below, In pity she cometb, the ministering snow. With her mantle she covers the shelterless trees, As they groan to the howl of the Borean breeze ; And baffles the search of the subtle wind, Guarding each crevice lest it should find Its moaning way to the fireless fold Of the trembling young and the weeping old.

When through her white bosom the daisy appears, She greets the fair stranger with motherly tears : And they mingle so sweet with the golden ray Of the struggling beam that chides her away.

But where 's the last speck of her brightness seen,

Mid the bursting spring and its saucy green ?

In the coldest side of you lone churchyard, Neglected graves she loveth to ward ; But not where gorgeous marble pleads, And frequent foot of mourner treads ; But down by the stranger's noteless lair,

Where sighs are few and footsteps rare—

She loveth—she loveth to linger there !

O'er hearts forgotten that sleep below, There is none to weep but the friendly snow.

From a passage in the " Recollections," it would seem that the author has stored his mind with characters and incidents observed during his wanderings among the lowest of the poor ; and that he may probably make of them a literary use. We suspect he would succeed much better in a series of prose sketches, or articles, than in poetry ; especially if he would check a tendency to fine writing, and act upon the maxim " ars celare artem." The following ex- tract from the earlier part of his prose narrative is true, touching, and graphic in its description of individual circumstances and suffering; with a breadth and general character that writers of higher name do not always reach even when trying their best. There is something of historic grasp and pith in the opening passage : and what an insight it gives into the misery of immense multitudes, and the results that follow a commercial crisis—as fearful perhaps as a battle, though less visibly frightful and slower in operation !

LEAVES FROM TI3E LIFE OF THE POOR.

In the spring of 18—, the failure of certain great commercial establishments in America, combining with other causes, silenced, in one week, upwards of 6,000 looms in Dundee, and the various agencies in its connexion, and spread dismay throughout the whole county of Forfar. Among the many villages thus trade-stricken, none felt the blow more severely than that of Newtyle, near Cupar-Angus. This village was new, having sprung up since the completion of the Dundee Railway, a few years ago. It consisted chiefly of weaving-shops and dwellings for the weavers. The inhabitants, about two hundred in num- ber, were strangers to the place and to each other, having been recently col- lected from distant places by advertisements promising them many advantages, but which, when the evil day came, were little regarded. While employers were some unwilling and many unable to do anything for the relief of those whom they had brought together for their own purposes, the people of the neighbourhood, including those of the old village of Newtyle, regarded them with stern prejudice, as intruders, " that naebody kent naething aboot." It were too much to say that they were positively persecuted by their neighbours, but certainly they received no sympathy in their distresses from that quarter,. much less any relief. A little while thinned the village ; those only remaining who had many children, and were obliged to consider well before they started. To these (and I was of the number) one web was supplied weekly, bringing five shillings. The weaver will know what sort of job the weaving of an " Osnaburg" was that price. It had been a stiff winter and unkindly spring ; but it passed away, as other winters and springs must do. I will not expatiate on six human lives subsisted on five shillings weekly—on babies prematurely thoughtful, on comely faces withering—on desponding youth and too quickly declining age. These things are perhaps too often talked of. Let me describe but one morning of modified starvation at Newtyle, and then pass on.

Imagine a cold spring forenoon. It is eleven o'clock, hut our little dwelling shows none of the signs of that time of day. The four children are still asleep. There is a bed-cover hung before the window, to keep all within as much like night as Possible; and the mother sits beside the beds of her children, to lull them back to Bleep whenever any shows an inclination to awake. For this there is a cause ; for our weekly five shillings have not come as expected, and the only food in the house consists of a handful of oatmeal, saved from the supper of last night. Our fuel is also exhausted. My wife and I were conversing in sunken whispers about making an attempt to cook the handful of meal, when the youngest child awoke beyond its mother's power to hush it again to sleep ; and then tell a whimpering ; and finally broke out in a steady scream, which, of course, rendered it impossible any longer to keep the rest in a state of unconsciousness. Face after face sprung up, each with one consent exclaiming, Oh, mother, mother, gie me a piece!" How weak a word is sorrow to apply to the feelings of myself and wife during the remainder of that dreary forenoon !

We thus lingered on during the spring, still hoping that things would come a little round, or that at least warmer weather would enable us with more safety to venture on a change of residence. At length, seeing that our strengt12, was rapidly declining, I resolved to wait no longer. Proceeding t. Daiidee, there exchanged, at a pawnbroker's, a last and most ....clued relic of better days for ten shillings ; four of which !spent on such little articles as usually consti- tute "a pack," designing this to be carried by my wife ; while other four shil- lings I expended on second-hand books, as a stock of merchandise for myself: but I was very unfortunate in my selection, which consisted chiefly of little volumes containing abridgments of modern authors, those authors being gene- rally of a kind little to the taste of a rustic population.

On a Thursday morning we forsook our melancholy habitation ; leaving in it my two looms and some furniture, (for we thought of returning to it,) and the key with the landlord. On the third day, Saturday, we passed through the village of Inchture in the Carse of Gowrie, and proceeded towards Kinnaird. Sunset was followed by cold sour E ,st winds and rain. The children becoming weary and fretful, we made frequent inquiries of other forlorn-looking beings. whom we met, to ascertain which farm-town in the vicinity was most likely to afford us quarters. Jean was sorely exhausted, bearing an infant constantly at the breast, and often carrying the youngest boy also, who had fairly broken- down in the course of the day. It was nine o'clock when we approached the large and comfortable-looking steading of B—, standing about a quarter of a mile off the road. Leaving my poor flock on the wayside, I pushed down the path to the farm-house with considerable confidence; for I bad been informed. that B— (meaning by this local appellation the farmer) was a humane man who never turned the wanderer from his door. Unfortunately for us, the worthy farmer was from home and not expected to return that night. His housekeeper had admitted several poor people already, and could admit no more. 1 pleaded with her the infancy of my family, the lateness of the night, and their utter unfitness to proceed—that we sought nothing but shelter—that the meanest shed would be a blessing. Heaven's mercy was never more earn- estly pleaded for than was a night's lodging by me on that occasion : but "No, no, no," was the unvarying answer to all my entreaties. I returned to my family. They had crept closer together, and all except the mother were fast asleep. "Oh, Willie, Willie, what keepit ye? inquired the trembling woman. "I'm dootfu! o' Jeanie," she added; " isna she waesome like? Let's in frae the cauld." " We've nae way to gang, lass," said I, "whate'er come o' us. Yon folk winna hae us." Few more words passed. I drew her mantle over the wet and chilled sleepers, and sat down beside them.