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he draws faithful pictures of humble life, and seems to esteem their virtues, yet he considers them merely as the dependents of other men, and is silent on every other relation they can be supposed to hold. "He seems," says

a discriminating critic, "to have never conceived the idea of a manly character in middle or humble life; and, in his novels, where an individual of these classes is introduced, he is never invested with any virtues, unless obedience, or even servility to superiors, be of the number."

THE LAST MINSTREL.1

The way was long, the wind was cold,
The minstrel was infirm and old;
His withered cheek and tresses gray
Seemed to have known a better day;
The harp, his sole remaining joy,
Was carried by an orphan boy.
The last of all the bards was he
Who sung of Border chivalry;
For, well-a-day! their date was fled;
His tuneful brethren all were dead;
And he, neglected and oppressed,
Wished to be with them, and at rest.
No more on prancing palfry borne,
He carolled, light as lark at morn;
No longer courted and caressed,
High placed in hall a welcome guest,
He poured to lord and lady gay

The unpremeditated lay;

Old times were changed, old manners gone;
A stranger filled the Stuarts' throne;

The bigots of the iron time

Had called his harmless art a crime.

A wandering harper, scorned and poor,
He begged his bread from door to door,
And tuned, to please a peasant's ear,
The harp a king had loved to hear.

He pass'd where Newark's2 stately tower
Looks out from Yarrow's birchen bower:

The "Lay of the Last Minstrel" consists of a tale in verse, supposed to be recited by a wandering minstrel who took refuge in the castle of Anne, Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth, representative of the ancient lords of Buccleuch, and widow of the unfortunate James, Duke of Monmouth, who was beheaded in 1685.

This is a massive square tower, now unroofed and ruinous, surrounded by an outward wall, defended by round flanking turrets. It is most beautifully situated, about three miles from Selkirk, upon the banks of the Yarrow, a fierce and precipitous stream which unites with the Ettricke about a mile beneath the castle. It was built by James II.

The minstrel gazed with wishful eye-
No humbler resting-place was nigh.
With hesitating step at last

The embattled portal arch he pass'd,
Whose ponderous grate and massy bar
Had oft roll'd back the tide of war,
But never closed the iron door
Against the desolate and poor.

The duchess marked his weary pace,
His timid mien, and reverend face,
And bade her page the menials tell
That they should tend the old man well:
For she had known adversity,
Though born in such a high degree;
In pride of power, in beauty's bloom,
Had wept o'er Monmouth's bloody tomb!

When kindness had his wants supplied,
And the old man was gratified,
Began to rise his minstrel pride:
And he began to talk anon,

Of good Earl Francis,' dead and gone,
And of Earl Walter, rest him, God!
A braver ne'er to battle rode;

And how full many a tale he knew
Of the old warriors of Buccleuch;
And would the noble duchess deign
To listen to an old man's strain,

Though stiff his hand, his voice though weak,
He thought even yet, the sooth to speak,
That, if she loved the harp to hear,

He could make music to her ear.

The humble boon was soon obtain'd;
The aged minstrel audience gain'd.
But, when he reach'd the room of state,
Where she, with all her ladies, sate,
Perchance he wish'd his boon denied:
For, when to tune his harp he tried,
His trembling hand had lost the ease
Which marks security to please;
And scenes, long past, of joy and pain,
Came wildering o'er his aged brain-
He tried to tune his harp in vain!
The pitying duchess praised its chime,
And gave him heart, and gave him time,
Till every string's according glee

Was blended into harmony.

1 Francis Scott, Earl of Buccleuch, father of the duchess.

Walter, Earl of Buccleuch, grandfather of the duchess, and a celebrated

warrior.

And then, he said, he would full fain
He could recall an ancient strain
He never thought to sing again.

It was not framed for village churls,
But for high dames and mighty earls;

He had play'd it to King Charles the Good,
When he kept court in Holyrood;

And much he wish'd, yet fear'd, to try

The long-forgotten melody.

Amid the strings his fingers stray'd,

And an uncertain warbling made,

And oft he shook his hoary head.

But when he caught the measure wild,
The old man raised his face, and smiled;
And lighten'd up his faded eye

With all a poet's ecstasy!

In varying cadence, soft or strong,

He swept the sounding chords along:
The present scene, the future lot,
His toils, his wants, were all forgot:
Cold diffidence, and age's frost,
In the full tide of song were lost;
Each blank, in faithless memory void,
The poet's glowing thought supplied;
And, while his harp responsive rung,
'Twas thus the LATEST MINSTREL Sung.

DESCRIPTION OF MELROSE ABBEY.

If thou would'st view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight;
For the gay beams of lightsome day
Gild, but to flout, the ruins gray.

When the broken arches are black in night,
And each shafted oriel glimmers white;
When the cold light's uncertain shower
Streams on the ruined central tower;

When buttress and buttress, alternately,
Seem framed of ebon and ivory;

When silver edges the imagery

And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die;

When distant Tweed is heard to rave,

And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave,

Then go-but go alone the while

Then view St. David's ruined pile;
And, home returning, soothly swear,
Was never scene so sad and fair!

LOVE OF COUNTRY.

Breathes there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned

From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go mark him well:
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor'd, and unsung.

O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,
Land of my sires! what mortal hand
Can e'er untie the filial band

That knits me to thy rugged strand!

Still as I view each well-known scene,

Think what is now, and what hath been,

Seems as to me, of all bereft,

Sole friends thy woods and streams were left;

And thus I love them better still,

Even in extremity of ill.

By Yarrow's streams still let me stray,

Though none should guide my feeble way;

Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break,

Although it chill my withered cheek;

Still lay my head by Teviot stone,
Though there, forgotten and alone,

The bard may draw his parting groan.

[graphic]

LOCK KATRINE.

And now, to issue from the glen,

No pathway meets the wanderer's ken,
Unless he climb, with footing nice,

A far projecting precipice.

The broom's tough roots his ladder made,

The hazel saplings lent their aid;

And thus an airy point he won,
Where, gleaming with the setting sun,

One burnished sheet of living gold,
Lock Katrine lay beneath him rolled;
In all her length far-winding lay,
With promontory, creek, and bay,
And islands that, empurpled bright,
Floated amid the livelier light;
And mountains, that like giants stand
To sentinel enchanted land.

High on the south, huge Ben-Venue
Down to the lake in masses threw

Crags, knolls, and mounds, confus'dly hurl'd,
The fragments of an earlier world;
A wildering forest feather'd o'er
His ruin'd sides and summit hoar,

While on the north, through middle air,
Ben-An heaved high his forehead bare.

TIME.

The window of a turret, which projected at an angle with the wall, and thus came to be very near Lovel's apartment, was half open, and from that quarter he heard again the same music which had probably broken short his dream. With its visionary character it had lost much of its charms-it was now nothing more than an air on the harpsichord, tolerably well performedsuch is the caprice of imagination as affecting the fine arts. A female voice sung, with some taste and great simplicity, something between a song and a hymn, in words to the following effect:"

"Why sitt'st thou by that ruin'd hall,

Thou aged carle so stern and gray?

Dost thou its former pride recall,
Or ponder how it pass'd away?"-

"Know'st thou not me?" the Deep Voice cried;
"So long enjoy'd, so oft misused—

Alternate, in thy fickle pride,

Desired, neglected, and accused!

"Before my breath, like blazing flax,
Man and his marvels pass away:
And changing empires wane and wax,
Are founded, flourish, and decay.

"Redeem mine hours-the space is brief

While in my glass the sand-grains shiver,

And measureless thy joy or grief,

When TIME and thou shalt part for ever."

REBECCA'S HYMN.

"It was in the twilight of the day when her trial, if it could be called such, had taken place, that a low knock was heard at the door of Rebecca's prison

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