to sing, thereby increasing, if any thing could increase, the bodily fear of the worthy Sacristan.

Merrily swim we, the moon shines bright,

Both current and ripple are dancing in light.

We have roused the night raven, I heard him croak,
As we plashed along beneath the oak

That flings its broad branches so far and so wide,
Their shadows are dancing in midst of the tide.
"Who wakens my nestlings," the raven he said,
"My beak shall ere morn in his blood be red,
For a blue swolen corpse is a dainty meal,

And I'll have my share with the pike and the eel."
'Merrily swim we, the moon shines bright,
There's a golden gleam on the distant height:
There's a silver shower on the alder's dank,
And the drooping willows that wave on the bank.
I see the Abbey, both turret and tower,
It is all astir for the vesper hour;

The Monks for the chapel are leaving each cell,
But where's Father Philip, should toll the bell?
Merrily swim we, the moon shines bright,
Downward we drift through shadow and light.
Under yon rock the eddies sleep,

Calm and silent, dark and deep.

The Kelpy has risen from the fathomless pool,
He has lighted his candle of death and of dool:
Look, Father, look, and you'll laugh to see
How he gapes and glares with his eyes on thee!

'Good luck to your fishing, whom watch ye to night?
A man of mean or a man of might?

Is it layman or priest that must float in your cove,

Or lover who crosses to visit his love?

Hark! heard ye the Kelpy reply as we passed,

"God's blessing on the warder, he lock'd the bridge fast!
All that come to my cove are sunk,

Priest or layman, lover or monk."" Vol. I. pp. 176.-180.

Father Philip's mule arrives first at the monastery, and the alarm is raised; but before the whole village could be roused, the dripping apparition of the poor Sacristan allayed the fears of the holy brotherhood.

What betwixt cold and fright the afflicted Sacristan stood before his Superior, propped on the friendly arm of the convent miller, drenched with water, and scarce able to utter a syllable.

After various attempts to speak, the first words he uttered were, "Swim we merrily-the moon shines bright."

"Swim we merrily!" retorted the Abbot indignantly, " a merry night have ye chosen for swimming, and a becoming salutation to your Superior!"

Our brother is bewildered," said Eustace; "speak, Father Philip, how is it with you?"

"Good luck to your fishing,"

continued the Sacristan, with a most dolorous attempt at the tune of his strange companion.

"Good luck to your fishing!" repeated the Abbot, still more surprised and displeased; "by my halidome he is drunken with wine, and comes to our presence with his jolly catches in his throat. If bread and water can cure this folly".

"With your pardon, venerable father," said the Sub-Prior, of water our brother has had enough; and methinks, the confusion of his eye is rather that of terror, than of aught unbecoming his profession. Where didst thou find him, Hob Miller ?"

"An it please your reverence, I did go but to shut the sluice of the mill-and as I was going to shut the sluice, I heard something groan near to me-but judging it was one of Giles Fletcher's hogs, for so please you, he never shuts his gate, I caught up my lever, and was about-Saint Mary forgive me!-to strike where I heard the sound, when, as the saints would have it, I heard the second groan just like that of a living man. So I called up my knaves, and found the Father Sacristan lying wet and senseless under the wall of our kiln. So soon as we brought him to himself a bit, he prayed to be brought to your reverence, but I doubt me, his wits have gone a bellwavering by the road. It was but now that he spoke in somewhat better form."

"Well!" said Brother Eustace, "thou hast done well Hob Miller; only begone now, and remember a second time, to pause, ere you strike in the dark."

"Please your reverence, it shall be a lesson to me," said the miller;"not to mistake a holy man for a hog again, so long as I live." And making a bow with profound humility, the miller withdrew.

"And now that this churl is gone, Father Philip," said Eustace, "wilt thou tell our venerable Superior what ails thee? art thou vino gravatus, man? if so, we will have thee to thy cell."

"Water! water! not wine," muttered the exhausted Sacristan. "Nay," said the Monk, "if that be thy complaint, wine may perhaps cure thee;" and he reached him a cup, which the patient drank off to his great benefit.

"And now," said the Abbot, "let his garments be changed, or rather let him be carried to the infirmary; for it will prejudice our health, should we hear his narrative while he stands there, steaming like a rising hoar-frost."

"I will hear his adventure," said Eustace," and report it to your reverence." And, accordingly, he attended the Sacristan to his cell. In about half an hour he returned to the Abbot.

"How is it with Father Philip?" said the Abbot; " and through what came he into such a state?"

"He comes from Glendearg, reverend sir," said Eustace; " and for the rest, he telleth such a legend, as has not been heard in this Monastery for many a long day." He then gave the Abbot the

outlines of the Sacristan's adventures in the homeward journey, and added, that for some time he was inclined to think his brain was infirm, seeing he had sung, laughed, and wept, all in the same breath.

"A wonderful thing it is to us," said the Abbot; "that Satan has been permitted to put forth his hand thus far on one of our sacred brethren."

"True," said Father Eustace; "but for every text there is a paraphrase; and I have my suspicions, that if the drenching of Father Philip cometh of the Evil One, yet it may not have been altogether without his own personal fault."

"How!" said the Father Abbot; "I will not believe that thou makest doubt that Satan, in former days, hath been permitted to afflict saints and holy men, even as he afflicted the pious Job?"

"God forbid I should make question of it," said the Monk, crossing himself; "yet, where there is an exposition of the Sacristan's tale, which is less than miraculous, I hold it safe to consider it at least, if not to abide by it. Now, this Hob the Miller bath a buxom daughter. Suppose, I say only suppose, that our Sacristan met her at the ford on her return from her uncle's on the other side, for there she hath this evening been-suppose, that, in courtesy, and to save her stripping hose and shoon, the Sacristan brought her across behind him-suppose he carried his familiarities farther than the maiden was willing to admit; and we may easily suppose, farther, that this wetting was the result of it."

"And this legend invented to deceive us," said the Superior, reddening with wrath; "but most strictly shall it be sifted and enquired into; it is not upon us that Father Philip must hope to pass the result of his own evil practices for doings of Satan. To-morrow cite the wench to appear before us-we will examine, and we will punish."

"Under your Reverence's favour," said Eustace," that were but poor policy. As things now stand with us, the heretics catch hold of each flying report which tends to the scandal of our clergy. We must abate the evil, not only by strengthening discipline, but also by suppressing and stifling the voice of scandal. If my conjectures are true, the miller's daughter will be silent for her own sake; and your Reverence's authority may also impose silence on her father, and on the Sacristan. If he is again found to afford room for throwing dishonour on his order, he can be punished with severity, but at the same time with secrecy. For what say the Decretals? Facinora ostendi dum punientur, flagitia autem abscondi debent." pp. 200-206.

Brother Philip, however, sticks firm to his story, and the grave Sub-prior Father Eustace, sets off for the tower of Glendearg, resolved to investigate the mysterious business. He regains possession of the Black Book, which had been found by the children on a spot indicated by the apparition; but his scepticism as to Brother Philip's story is doomed to vanish with the undetainable volume.

"What ho! Sub-Prior, and came you but here To conjure a book from a dead-woman's bier?

Sain you and save you, be wary and wise,

Ride back with the book, or you'll pay for your prize.
Back, back,

There's death in the track!

In the name of my master, I bid thee bear back."
To the adjuration of Sir Priest, the same voice replies:
"That which is neither ill nor well,

That which belongs not to Heaven or Hell,
A wreath of the mist, a bubble of the stream,
'Twixt a waking thought and a sleeping dream;
A form that men spy

With the half-shut eye,

In the beams of the setting sun am I."'

Had the Author kept steadily in remembrance this account which the Spirit gives of herself, we should have had nothing more serious to object against the introduction of such a personage, than that she would seem to belong rather to poetry than to romance; the length and variety of her metrical recitations being very far beyond the proprieties of literal narrative. But there is nothing in the incidents themselves thus far, that might not have taken place in the imaginations of the worthy priests; and the reader, with this easy explanation at hand, is content to resign himself, with half-shut eye,' to a similar delusion in favour of the truth of the legend.

Years glide on, and the mysterious volume is not found. Mary Avenel had attained her fifteenth year, and she and Edward bad diligently profited in their studies from the frequent visits of Father Eustace, when, one day, Halbert, a duller scholar but a fiery blade, taking offence at something which occurs, breaks away from his companions, exclaiming that he knows a better teacher than their grim old Monk, and a better book than his breviary. He has by some means or other learned the spell which wakes the White Maid of Avenel, and he resolves to call her to his assistance. A long scene ensues, half dialogue, half singing, between the bold youth and his airy familiar, in the course of which he descends with her to an unknown depth, and in a magical grotto discovers the said black book encircled with fire. Like another Thalaba, he bears off the prize; but, more fortunate than the son of Hodeirah, safely emerges again into the upper air. In reading this part of the work, we were several times tempted to suspect that the Author had the Royal Circus or Sadler's Wells in view, and had a mind to try his hand at a mélodrame. The songs of the Spirit, if set to music by Mr. Reeve or Mr. Whitaker, would, we have little doubt, be extremely popular, and the subterranean grotto

would form an admirable last scene. But in a romance, and a romance, too, by the Author of Waverley, surely all this must be pronounced puerile and tasteless to the extreme of absurdity.

And yet all this is nothing compared to the dull extravagance contained in the subsequent volumes. For want of better incidents, the gentle reader is compelled to take part in the bustle occasioned in the Tower of Glendearg by the arrival of a stranger knight yclept Sir Piercie Shafton, who has fled from England, and is quartered upon the Glendinnings by the Abbot of St. Mary's, that he may elude his pursuers. This Sir Piercie has evidently cost our Author far more pains than have turned to good account. He is a laboured fac-simile of a finished dandy and euphuist of the court of Elizabeth, and we have no doubt that he talks nonsense on good authority; but he is too grave to be amusing, and so insufferably insolent as well as tiresome, that there is no enduring his company. Halbert and Sir Piercie do not agree at all; but still the knight disdains to fight with the churl, till the latter shews him a silver bodkin which his friend, the White Lady, had given him, for the purpose of acting as a spell upon Sir Piercie's angry passions. This said bodkin, we are told, the White Lady wore in her hair; but she could do without it, which the Author of Waverley could not. The way in which this harmless weapon acts upon the imagination of the knight, is mysteriously intimated in the sequel: it comes out, that, though akin to the Piercie on his father's side, Shafton's mother's father was a tailor! Alas! and is this the Author of Guy Mannering and Old Mortality? If he could make no better use of legendary superstitions than this, it is indeed more than time he had done with them.

To be just, there are better things in the romance, although we could almost regret that there are any on account of which it should have the chance of living. We pass over the gratuitous absurdity of the grave which is dug by nobody knows whom, for nobody knows what, in the place where Sir Piercie and Halbert fight, and which is afterwards so strangely filled up again, just for the purpose of countenancing the idea that the knight has murdered Glendinning, while Glendinning flies, imagining he has slain the knight, whose wounds are healed by witchcraft. This double entendre smacks of Sadler's Wells again; and Joey Grimaldi would make an admirable Sir Piercie. Passing all this over, we must refer to the scene in the castle of Avenel, to the well-supported character of Julian Avenel, and to the finely developed one of Edward Glendinning, as not unworthy of the Author of Waverley. The Miller's daughter, too, excites some degree of interest; and Abbot Boniface is, though not very original, sufficiently entertaining. There is not much scope for the