FRIENDSHIP'S OFFERING.

This beautiful annual offering keeps pace with its numerous rival cotemporaries, and is this year at least equal to any of this class of publications. The embellishments are numerous and splendid: Reading the News, Catherine of Arragon, Echo, and Early Sorrow, are charming little gems and of themselves stamp a value on the volume. In the literary department, Mr. Pringle has got together a rare host of living talent, including most of the living literati of the age. From these we present our readers with a short and sweet poem, and the following tale of interest.

THE LOVER'S LEAP. A HIGHLAND LEGEND.

BY LEITCH RITCHIE.

Near the village of Inverneith, in the north of Scotland, there is a lake which has only lately been subjected to the visits of the rhyming, story-telling travellers of the present day. The comparative obscurity in which it remained so long, was not owing to any deficiency in those attributes of beauty or sublimity which attract the real or pretended worshipper of nature to her wildest shrines, but rather, I should imagine, to its remote and hidden situation. The unfrequent traveller, who was induced formerly to wander from the main road, to visit, from motives either of whim or business, the neighbourhood of Inverneith, returned, in most cases, without having become aware of the existence of the most remarkable object in its scenery but occasionally, a stranger, while wandering among the rugged and somewhat unsightly mountains of the neighbourhood, was startled into awe and admiration, by arriving suddenly at the borders of the unknown lake.

The spot, when seen at a little distance from any point of the compass, presents the appearance of a jungle of stunted fir, hazel, and mountain ash; and the visitor, already tired with his clambering walk, is often glad to descend to the level of the earth, without encountering the additional obstacle; but when conducted, either by accident or love of adventure, through the skirt of trees, growing among masses of rock, that look like the ruins of some primeval edifice, he is surprised to

find himself on the brink of a truly frightful gulf. A clear, cold, placid lake lies at the bottom, in an amphitheatre of rocks several hundred feet high. The descent is rugged and uneven, affording, in one place, an avenue to the water not more inconvenient than a very steep stair-case; about the middle of which precipitous road, a leap of a few feet, to him who has a heart and head steady enough to perform the feat in such a situation, lands the adventurer upon a large level rock, from which he may view at his ease one of the most remarkable scenes he probably ever beheld. The sides of the precipice are decorated, in some places, with small mountainashes, which appear to be growing out of the rock, and whose clusters of bright red berries, in autumn, have a pleasing and lively effect; in other quarters, a rich drapery of blaeberry bushes, or flowering heath, contrasts finely with the naked brown of the surrounding surface; and here and there, in some clefts or interstices, where a few handfuls of fine earth have been deposited by the rains, the wild strawberry raises its modest head, and diffuses a faint sweet odour around. Approaching the top, the mountain-ash mingles with the hazel, the glittering holly, and the tall fir; and the edges of the precipice, broken into fragments, which thrust their grey angular heads through the foliage, look like the ramparts of some fortress of giants fallen into decay.

The tabular rock we have mentioned juts out from this wall of nature in a very singular manner, resembling an artificial scaffold but without support from beneath; and we believe there are few, even of the boldest visitors, who do not feel a thrill of terror as they look down from its edge into the smooth, black, distant waters below. While performing a feat, however, which custom has made indispensable, the timid or weakheaded tourist may grasp, with his left hand, a rugged point of the rock, which, rising gradually at one side from the wall, attains near the outer edge the elevation of a man's breast. The name of the rock is Lover's Leap, and the point just mentioned is called the Lady's Grip. The former name is so common, that I at first despaired of arriving at any authentic legend appertaining to the spot; and the latter seemed to have been given merely with reference to the sex of the visitors supposed most likely to make use of the support in looking over the precipice. Accident, however, threw me in the way of

that most valuable of village chroniclers-an old woman; and from her I learnt the following legend of the lake of the Lover's Leap, the circumstances of which, I was surprised to find of comparatively recent date.

At the time I allude to, there lived near the village, in a house, the ruins of which are still standing, a family of the name of Gordon. The father of the then inheritor cf the name, had been a man of considerable importance in the neighbourhood: his lands were extensive, although consisting, in the greater part, of barren rocks and hills; and his moderate income, arising chiefly from the precarious source of a sheep-farm, was sufficient to place him at the head of the district in point of wealth. Moving along, however, I hardly know by what steps, in the revolution which seems to have swept this class of proprietors from the soil of Scotland, he gradually sunk from his elevation: the circle of his property became narrower every year; the sheep, which had once whitened his native hills, spotted the heather like some lingering patches of snow when the winter has departed; and, at his death, the heir of the waning house found himself the possessor of little more than a few acres of heath, and the barren title of laird.

Having arrived at middle age, before his father's death, Mr. Gordon had witnessed the gradual decline of his family, which had been brought home to himself in particular, by many a token of pain and deprivation. The only male scion of the once stately tree, had been fixed, as if by destiny, to the spot where he grew; seeing, no doubt, with a withering heart, the companions of his studies at the country town, launching one by one from the land, upon some high and gallant course of adventure, and returning in later years to fertilise the hard soil of their country with the riches of the east and the south. Chained, like Prometheus, to his rock, with the vulture of pride knawing his heart, a gloomy reserve was gradually superadded to the family hauteur which had been for many generations the characteristic of the Gordon brow. He shunned society,-confined himself exclusively to the business of his farm, and the more arduous business of making the two ends of the year meet, by the most rigid economy; and contented himself with recognising the shadow, at least, of his former power in the traditionary respect of the peasants.