a

had touched her brain, and when she William and Hannah had led a life of opened her eyes which, as she thought, trouble and of joy, that had enlarged had been but a moment shut, she had and kindled their hearts within them scarcely time to recal to her recollec- -and they felt that henceforth they tion the image of her husband rush- were to live wholly for each other's ing out into the storm, and of a sakes. His love was the proud and daughter therein lost, till she beheld exulting love of a deliverer who, under that very husband kneeling tenderly Providence, had saved from the frost by her bed-side, and that very daugh- and the snow the innocence and the ter smoothing the pillow on which beauty of which his young passionate her aching temples reclined. But she heart had been so desperately enamourknew from the white stedfast counte- ed—and he now thought of his own nances before her that there had been Hannah Lee ever more moving about tribulation and deliverance, and she in his father's house, not as a serlooked on the beloved beings minis- vant, but as a daughter--and when tering by her bed, as more fearfully some few happy years had gone by, dear to her from the unimagined dan- his own most beautiful and most loving ger from which she felt assured they wife. The innocent maiden still callhad been rescued by the arm of the ed him her young master but was Almighty.

not ashamed of the holy affection There is little need to speak of which she now knew that she had long returning recollection, and returning felt for the fearless youth on whose strength. They had all now power to bosom she had thought herself dying weep, and power to pray. The Bible in that cold and miserable moor. had been lying in its place ready for Her heart leapt within her when she worship--and the father read aloud heard her parents bless him by his that chapter in which is narrated our name and when he took her hand Saviour's act of miraculous power, by into his before them, and vowed bewhich he saved Peter from the sea. fore that Power who had that night Soon as the solemn thoughts awaken- saved them from the snow, that Haned by that act of mercy so similar to nah Lee should ere long be his wedded that which had rescued themselves wife-she wept and sobbed as if her from death had subsided, and they had heart would break in a fit of strange all risen up from prayer, they gather- and insupportable happiness. ed themselves in gratitude round the The young shepherd rose to bid little table which had stood so many them farewell—"my father will think hours spread-and exhausted nature I am lost,” said he, with a grave was strengthened and restored by a smile, "and my Hannah's mother frugal and simple meal partaken of in knows what it is to fear for a child.” silent thankfulness. The whole story So nothing was said to detain him, of the night was then calmly recited and the

family went with him to the - and when the mother heard how door. The skies smiled as serenely the stripling had followed her sweet as if a storm had never swept before Hannah into the storm, and borne her the stars the moon was sinking from in his arms through a hundred drifted her meridian, but in cloudless splenheaps--and then looked upon her in dour—and the hollow of the hills was her pride, so young, so innocent, and hushed as that of heaven. Danger so beautiful, she knew, that were the there was none over the placid nightchild indeed to become an orphan, scene—the happy youth soon crost the there was one, who, if there was either Black-Moss, now perfectly still—and, trust in nature, or truth in religion, perhaps, just as he was passing, with would guard and cherish her all the a shudder of gratitude, the very spot days of her life.

where his sweet Hannah Lee had so It was not nine o'clock when the nearly perished, she was lying down storm came down from Glen Scrae to sleep in her innocence, or dreaming upon the Black-moss, and now of one now dearer to her than all pause of silence the clock struck on earth but her parents. twelve. Within these three hours

EREMUS.

a

MOODS OF THE MIND.

No I.

Despondency.-A Reverie. 'Twas on the evening of an August day,

A day of clouds and tempest, that I stood

Within the shade of over-arching wood,
My bosom filled with visions of decay ;
Around were strewed the shivered leaves, all wet;

The boughs above were dripping ; and the sky

Threw down the shadows of despondency, As if all melancholy things were met

To blast this lower world. I leaned my side

Against an oak, and sighed o'er human pride ! I thought of life, and love, and earthly bliss,

Of all we pine for, pant for, and pursue,

And found them like the mist, or matin dew,
Fading to nothingness in Time's abyss.
Our fathers, where are they? The moss is green

Upon the tablet that records their worth ;

They have co-mingled with their parent earth, And only in our dreams of yore are seen,

Our visions of the by-past, which have fled,

To leave us wandering 'mid the buried dead. I thought of men, who looked upon my face,

Breathing, and life-like, breathless now and cold,

I heard their voices issuing from the mould,
Amid the scenes that bear of them no trace.
I thought of smiling children, who have sat

All evening on my knees, and pressed my hand,

Their cherub features and their accents bland, Their innocence,- and their untimely fate;

How soon their flower was cropt, and laid below

The turf, where daisies spring, and lilies blow, I thought of sunless regions, where the day

Smiles not, and all is dreariness and death;

Of weltering oceans, where the winter's breath
Beats on the emerald ice, and rocky bay;
I thought me of the old times,-of the halls

Of ancient castles mouldering to the dust

Of swords, long used in war, bedimm'd with rust, Hanging in danky vaults, upon the walls,

Where coffined warriors rest, amid the night

Of darkness, never tinged by morning light. The unsheltered cattle lowed upon the plain ;

The speckled frog was leaping ʼmid the grass,

Down to the lakelets edge, whose breast of glass
Was wrinkled only by the tardy rain.
Dim was the aspect of the sullen sky ;-

The night scowled gloomier down: I could not throw

From off my heart the weary weight of woe,
But loathed the world, and coveted to die;

Beholding only in the earth and air
Omens of desolation and despair.”

A No II.

The Woodland Glen.

1.
The sun is sinking behind the mountain,

The Evening Star is bright,
And the ceaseless gush of the twilight fountain

Is heard, with calm light,
By the spirit, that far from the homes of men,
Delights in the still of the woodland glen.

2.
When the heart is sullen, and sad, and lonely,

Mid worldly toil and care ;
When pleasure, and friendship, and love forsaking,

Behind leave blank despair,
Oh! fly to the lone, the sequestered spot,
Where Nature presides, and where man is not !

3.
The hazel, the willow, and birch tree weeping,

With tresses long and drear,
Descending from slaty rocks, and steeping

Their boughs in waters clear ;
The flap of the night bird skimming by,
And the drowsy hum of the beetle fly.

4.
The sound of the gentle rills, that tinkle

Adown their pebbly beds ;
The aspect of the stars that twinkle,

The azure gloom that spreads,
Soften the troubled heart, and sooth
The waves of the spirit, till all is smooth.

5.
If sorrow the blossom of manhood wither,

If fortune prove unkind,
If the world to thee is estranged, come hither

And breathe the fragrant wind,
And learn, that far from the snares of men,
Peace and Liberty dwell in the woodland glen !

No III.

The Isle of Despair. A Vision.

Cold blew the noisy winds unceasingly
Across the waste, where never summer-flower,
Expanding, spread its bosom to the sun,
Or drank the freshness of the matin dew;
Where never tree was seen to rear its head,
Branching, nor verdure to o'erspread the lawn;
Where sound was never heard, except the roar
Of battling elements

the sleety north
When Eurus buffeted, or tortured waves
Lashed foaming on the rocks--except the how]
Of famished bears and sea birds; or the crash

Of frozen masses, with o'erwhelming force,
That, bursting, thundered from the mountain-tops,
And woke the slumbering echoes from repose.
A solitary waste- a waste of snows-
Bleak rocks and frozen waters-desolate,
Beyond the painter's touch, or poet's thought.
Dark precipices bound it, giant-like,
Hiding their snowy scalps amid the clouds,
And listening to the storms that growled below,
And to the lazy ocean fathomless,
In icy greenness, rolling with its waves.

Sure to the voice of man these barren rocks Re-echoed never ! sure, by human steps, Were never trodden these eternal snows, But silence, slumbering on her mountain, though Voiceless, hath governed since the first of time, A region darkened with the shadow of death! More bleak and blank, more desolate and drear, Than ever fancy conjured to the mind Of dreaming murderer, on his midnight couch.

What moving creature stirs on yonder height, And, with his breath, disturbs the solitude ? Severed from all communion with mankind, For ever severed, like a ghost he stands Above the ocean, where he cannot drown; And where, thro' countless labyrinths of years, Years that have neither origin nor end, Summer nor sunshine, he is doomed to bear The burden of his solitude ; to drink The thoughts of gall and bitterness ; to feel The curse of immortality; and long For death that mocks him still. His hollow eye, His haggard visage, and his flowing beard, White as December's billow, wind-enchafed, Bespeak the desolation of his soul; And as the she-wolf, when the hunter's hand Hath robbed her of her young, with starting eye, And piercing howl, stands maddening in her den, So, in the torment, but without the power To utter it unto the winds of heaven, Voiceless he stood.

The famished bear came by, Grinding his teeth in famine ; in the path Prostrate he threw himself, and hoped for death Turning his eye towards her—'twas in vain ! Howling she fled in cruel mockery, And, with remorseless and unnatural rage, I saw her rush towards her suckling cubs, Dart on them in her hungry wretchedness, And crunch their young bones, with unfeeling maw!

The clouds grew dark-the shadows hovered round They hovered round, and compassed him about, As with a garment; and I heard a cry, Ear-piercing-horriblema desolate cryThe circling hills re-echoed it; around They caught the tone, till faint and far away Lowly it died; and, listening there I heard, Alone, the weltering of the dreary sea.

RECOLLECTIONS.

No IV.

Mark MACRABIN, the Cameronian.

(Continued from Last Number.)

Adventure with the Gypsies.

Mine honest and ancient friend, the present from the minister's wife of Cameronian, having forsaken the gen- Kipplekimmer-a handmaiden on eitle lady of Lagghill, and her kind and ther side accompanied her on foot, and enthusiastic followers, thus continued four men, bearing green branches, folhis narrative. “ Truly, Miles Cameron, lowed. The procession was closed by wise was he who rendered into rhyme the congregation marching in mass, that famous maxim of circumspection conducting a cavalcade of horses loadand prudence, 'Ay keep something ed with the travelling equipage of the to yoursel, you scarcely tell to ony, establishment. The men and the woand wiser still would men be could men sung, alternately, verses of a wild they practise it. My next adventure hymn-between every verse the four was a strange one, and happened men winded their horns, and thus they among a people of unstable residence, pursued their journey till they passed infirm faith, and imperfect morality. from my sight among the woods of the When I promised to relate my history, vale of Dalgonar. I might have held, by mental re- “ From gazing on those respectable servation, the right of exercising my enthusiasts, I turned my face towards own judgment on indiscreet or un- the river Nith, my forlorn condition seemly circumstances; and truly, my began to claim my concern, and I readventure with the hopeful progeny of solved to pass into the moorland part Black-at-the-bane is a thing not to be of the parish of Closeburn, and seek proclaimed in the public places. The employment as a shepherd. I was acprofane songs and profaner conduct quainted with several opulent Cameof a moving camp of roving gypsies ronian moorland farmers, and I had a will sound unseemly after the enthu- love for their patriarchal calling. I siastic hymns and hosannahs of my had acquired, from tale and from song, excellent friends the Buchanites. And a great liking to shepherds' pipes, well yet there is a kind of pleasure in replenished scrips, kilted damsels, and speaking of conduct and relating con- kitted whey. I thought, too, it was versation, of which prudence cannot assuredly a pleasant thing to lie in the wholly approve-it relieves the mono- sun, on the green side of a high hill, tony of sedate thought, brings the with all my flocks around me, listen sunny morning of youth upon us a- ing to the silting o'the laverocks, and gain—it is a joy that the gravest in- daun'er with them down the green dulge in-and so, with the quiet at- margin of a burn among the flowers tention of my friend, and the inspire and the primroses. Resolving to prove ing aid of this potent peat reek, I the charms of this primitive vocation,

r shall proceed.

I hastened on my way, making the up" Leaving Lagghill and Lagg's ru- lands ring with the charming old ined tower behind me, I ascended a Nithsdale song of the ' Wakerife green eminence on the opposite side, Minnie.' and, looking back from its summit, “I soon found myself on the borsaw the camp of our lady descending ders of the old forest, which covers the into the plain towards the stream of eastern side of the hills of the Keir, Dalgonar. It was conducted with all and reaching down to the Nith, lines the precision, and much of the pomp, its margin with stately groves of ash, of a regular march. Four men beara elm, and oak, the whole thickly intering green boughs marched in front woven with hazel, mountain-ash, sloetwo others followed, blowing at inter- thorn, and green holly. Through vals on harvest horns—then came our these ancient groves, and chiefly on lady, mounted on a white poney, a the river bank, the laird had cut many