Author's peculiar talent for describing landscape scenery, but the solitude of Glendearg, the old fortalice, the bridge, and the glen of the White Lady, are powerfully localized to the reader's imagination. One feels as if one would recognise the spot. We make room for a short extract.

The great security of Glendearg lay in its secluded and hidden situation. To come at the Tower, it was necessary to travel three miles up the glen, crossing about twenty times the little stream which, winding through the narrow valley, encountered at every hundred yards the opposition of a rock or precipitous bank on the one side, which altered its direction, and caused it to shoot off in an oblique direction to the other. The hills which ascend on each side of this glen are very steep, and rise boldly over the stream, which is thus imprisoned within their barriers. The sides of the glen are impracticable for horse, and are only to be traversed by means of the sheeppaths which lie along their sides. It would be difficult to suppose that a road so hopeless and so difficult could lead to any habitation more important than the summer shealing of a shepherd.

Yet the glen, though lonely and difficult of access and sterile, was not then absolutely void of beauty. The turf which occupied the little plain ground on the sides of the stream, was as close and verdant as if it had occupied the scythes of a hundred gardeners once a-fortnight; and it was garnished with an embroidery of daisies and wild flowers, which the scythes would certainly have destroyed. The little brook, now confined betwixt closer limits, now left at large to chuse its course through the narrow valley, danced carelessly on from stream to pool, light and unturbid, as that better class of spirits who pass their way through life, yielding to insurmountable obstacles, but as far from being subdued by them as the sailor who meets by chance with an unfavourable wind, and shapes his course so as to be driven back as little as possible.

The mountains, as they would have been called in England, Scottice the deep braes, rose abruptly over the little glen, here presenting the grey face of a rock, from which the turf had been peeled by the torrents, and there displaying little patches of wood and copse, which had escaped the waste of the cattle and the sheep and the feuars, and which, feathering naturally up the beds of empty torrents, or occupying the concave recesses of the bank, gave at once beauty and variety to the landscape. Above these scattered woods rose the hill, in barren, but purple majesty; the dark rich hue, particularly in autumn, contrasting beautifully with the thickets of oak and birch, the mountain ashes and thorns, the alders and quivering aspens, which chequered and varied the descent, and not less with the dark green and velvet turf, which composed the level part of the narrow glen.

Yet, though thus embellished, the scene could neither be strictly termed sublime or beautiful, and scarcely even picturesque or striking. But its extreme solitude pressed on the heart; the traveller felt that uncertainty whither he was going, or in what so wild a path was to terminate, which, at times, strikes more on the imagination than the grand features of a show-scene, when you know the exact distance

of the inn where your dinner is bespoken, and at the moment preparing. These are ideas, however, of a far later age; for at the time we treat of, the picturesque, the beautiful, the sublime, and all their intermediate shades, were ideas absolutely unknown to the inhabitants and occasional visitors of Glendearg.

6

They had, however, attached to the scene feelings fitting the time. Its name, signifying the Red Valley, seems to have been derived, not only from the purple colour of the heath, with which the upper part of the rising banks was profusely cloathed, but also from the dark red colour of the rocks, and of the precipitous earthen banks, which in that country are called scaurs. Another glen, about the head of Ettrick, has acquired the same name from similar circumstances; and there are probably more in Scotland to which it has been given.

'As our Glendearg did not abound in mortal visitants, superstition, that it might not be absolutely destitute of inhabitants, had peopled its recesses with beings belonging to another world. The savage and capricious Brown Man of the Moors, a being which seems the genuine descendant of the Northern dwarfs, was supposed to be seen there frequently, especially after the autumnal equinox, when the fogs were thick, and objects not easily distinguished. The Stish fairies, too, a whimsical, irritable, and mischievous tribe, who, though at times capriciously benevolent, were more frequently adverse to mortals, were also supposed to have formed a residence in a par cularly wild recess of the glen, of which the real name was, in all on to that circumstance, Corrie nan Shian, which, in corrupted Celtic, signifies the Hollow of the Fairies. But the neighbours were more cautious in speaking about this place, and avoided giving it a name, from an idea common then through all the British and Celtic provinces of Scotland, and still retained in many places, that to speak either good or ill of this capricious race of supernatural beings, is to provoke their resentment, and that secrecy and silence is what they chiefly desire from those who may intrude upon their revels, or discover their haunts.

1

A mysterious terror was thus attached to the little dale, which af forded access from the broad valley of the Tweed, up the little glen we have described, to the fortalice called the Tower of Glendearg. Beyond the knoll, where, as we have said, the little tower was situated, the hills grew more steep, and narrowed on the slender brook, so as scarce to leave a foot-path; and there the glen terminated in a wild water fall, where a slender thread of water dashed in a precipitous line of foam over two or three precipices. Yet farther in the same direction, and above these successive cataracts, lay a wild and extensive morass, frequented only by water-fowl, wide, waste, appa. rently almost interminable, and serving in a great measure to separate the inhabitants of the little glen from those who lived to the northward.' pp. 93-99,

The ABBOT' has for one thing which the Monastery' has not, a plan, a beginning, a middle, and an end; and it has also a hero. That hero is Roland Græme, the spoilt page of the Lady of Avenel. Ten years are supposed to have elapsed since the union of Sir Halbert and his lady, which would have been as happy as mutual affection could render it, but for two circumstances; the distracted state of Scotland, which is continually calling away Sir Halbert from his home to the camp or to court, and the want of offspring. It was during one of the long solitary intervals which his lady was doomed to pass apart, that she conceived a strong interest for the boy, in consequence of having been instrumental in preserving him from drowning. He proves to be an orphan, his only surviving relative being a grandmother, the saintly Meg Merrilies of the tale. Of his parentage he is himself imperfectly informed, but he has been told that he is of gentle blood; and the ungentle airs which he gives himself, by virtue of this assurance, occasion at length his dismissal from the castle. In his way to the abbey of Kennaquair, where he is going to ask the counsel of Father Ambrose, the Edward Glendinning of the former tale, he visits the cell of Saint Cuthbert, where erst dwelt a holy monk. The spot is thus described.

A few roods of fertile land afforded the monk his plot of garden ground; an eminence, well-clothed with trees, rose behind the cell, and sheltered it from the north and the east, while the front, opening to the south-west, looked up a wild but pleasant valley, down which wandered a lively brook, which battled with every stone that interrupted its passage. The cell itself was rather plainly than rudely built -a low Gothic building, with two small apartments, one of which served the priest for his dwelling place, the other for his chapel.

The page's first movement was to knock at the door, when he observed, to his surprise, that it was open, not from being left unlatched, but because, beat off its upper hinge, it was only fastened to the doorpost by the lower, and could therefore no longer perform its functions. Somewhat alarmed at this, and receiving no answer when he knocked and called, Roland began to look more at leisure upon the exterior of the little dwelling, before he ventured to enter it. The flowers, which had been trained with care against the walls, seemed to have been recently torn down, and trailed their dishonoured garlands on the earth; the latticed window was broken and dashed in. The garden, which the monk had maintained by his constant labour in the highest order and beauty, bore marks of having been lately trod down and destroyed by the hoofs of animals and the feet of men.

The sainted spring had not escaped. It was wont to arise beneath a canopy of ribbed arches, with which the devotion of elder times had secured and protected its healing waters. These arches were now almost entirely demolished, and the stones of which they were built, were tumbled into the well, as if with the purpose of choking up and destroying the fountain, which, as it had shared in other days the honour of the saint, was, in the present, doomed to partake his unpopularity. Part of the roof had been pulled down from the

house itself, and an attempt had been made with crows and levers upon one of the angles, by which several large corner-stones had been forced out of their place; but the solidity of ancient mason-work had proved too great for the time or patience of the assailants, and they had relinquished their task of destruction. Such dilapidated buildings, after the lapse of years during which nature has gradually covered the effects of violence with creeping plants, and with weather stains, exhibit, amid their decay, a melancholy beauty. But when the visible effects of violence appear raw and recent, there is no feeling to mitigate the sense of devastation with which they impress the spectators; and such was now the scene on which the youthful page gazed, with the painful feelings it was qualified to excite.

Anxious to discover if the monk of St. Cuthbert's had at least escaped personal harm, Roland Græme entered the half ruined cell. The interior was in a state which fully justified the opinion he had formed from its external injuries. The few rude utensils of the solitary's hut were broken down and lay scattered on the floor, where it seemed as if a fire had been made with some of the fragments to destroy the rest of his property, and to consume, in particular, the rude old image of St. Cuthbert, in its episcopal habit, which lay on the earth like Dagon of yore, shattered with the axe and scorched with the flames, but only partially destroyed. In the little apartment which served as a chapel, the altar was overthrown, and the four huge stones of which it had been once composed lay scattered around the floor. The large stone crucifix which occupied the niche behind the altar, and fronted the supplicant while he paid his devotion there, had been pulled down, and dashed by its own weight into three fragments. There were marks of sledge hammers on each of these; yet the image had been saved from utter demolition by the size and strength of the remaining fragments, which, though much injured, retained enough of the original sculpture to shew what it had been intended to repre

sent.

Roland Græme, secretly nursed in the tenets of Rome, saw with horror, the profanation of the most sacred emblem, according to his creed, of our holy religion.

It is the badge of our redemption, he said, which the felons have dared to violate-would to God my weak strength were able to replace it-my humble strength to atone for the sacrilege!

He stooped to the task he first meditated, and with a sudden, and to himself almost an incredible exertion of power, he lifted up the one extremity of the lower shaft of the cross, and rested it upon the edge of the large stone which served for its pedestal. Encouraged by this success, he applied his force to the other extremity, and, to his own astonishment, succeeded so far as to erect the lower end of the limb into the socket, out of which it had been forced, and to place this fragment of the image upright.

While he was employed in this labour, or rather at the very moment when he had accomplished the elevation of the fragment, a voice, in thrilling and well-known accents, spoke behind him these words:"Well done, thou good and faithful servant! Thus would I again meet the child of my love-the hope of my aged eyes.”

Roland turned round in astonishment, and the tall commanding form of Magdalen Græme stood beside him. She was arrayed in a sort of loose habit, in form like that worn by penitents in Catholic countries, but black in colour, and approaching as near to a pilgrim's cloak as it was safe to wear in a country where the suspicion of Catholic devotion in many places endangered the safety of those who were suspected of attachment to the ancient faith. Roland Græme threw himself at her feet. She raised and embraced him with affection indeed, but not unmixed with a gravity which amounted almost to

sternness.

"Thou hast kept well," she said, "the bird in thy bosom. As a boy, as a youth, thou hast held fast thy faith amongst heretics-thou hast kept thy secret and mine own amongst thine enemies. I wept when I parted from you-I, who seldom weep, then shed tears, less for thy death than for thy spiritual danger-I dared not even see thee to bid thee a last farewell-my grief, my swelling grief had betrayed me to these heretics. But thou hast been faithful-down, down on thy knees before the holy sign, which ill men injure and blaspheme: down and praise saints and angels for the grace they have done thee, in preserving thee from the leprous plague which cleaves to the house in which thou wert nurtured."'

The whole scene is too long to transcribe, and it is somewhat too long for effect; but it is picturesque and dramatic. The cell affords old Magdalen and her son a shelter for the night. In the morning, she announces to him in mysterious terms, that he is destined to take part in a mighty project, in which he will have for his partners, the power of the church and the pride of the noble, and she demands his implicit concurrence. Roland is half-beguiled, half-terrified into an assent, and they set off together for the abode of a sister enthusiast.

About the hour of noon they reached a small straggling village, in which, as usual, were seen one or two of those predominating towers, or peel-houses, which, for reasons of defence elsewhere de tailed, were at that time to be found in every Border hamlet. A brook flowed beside the village, and watered the valley in which it stood. There was also a mansion at the end of the village, and a little way separated from it, much dilapidated and in very bad order, but appearing to have been the abode of persons of some consideration. The situation was agreeable, being an angle formed by the stream, bearing three or four large sycamore trees, which, being in full leaf, served to relieve the dark appearance of the mansion, which was built of a deep red stone. The house itself had been a large one, but was now obviously too big for the inmates; several windows were built up, especially those which opened from the lower storey; others were blockaded in a less substantial manner. The court before the door, which had once been defended with a species of low outer-wall, now ruinous, was paved, but the stones were completely covered with long grey nettles, thistles, and other weeds, which, shooting up betwixt the