In vain by foreign arts assail'd,

No foreign loves her breast beguile ;
And England's honest valour fail'd,

That o'er thy cheeks those roses stray'd;

Thy breath, the violet of the vale,

Thy voice, the music of the shade:

Ah! woe to thee, that Ellen's love

Alone to thy soft tale would yield;
For soon those gentle arms shall prove
The conflict of a ruder field!'

" 'Twas thus a wayward sister spoke,
And cast a rueful glance behind,

As from her dim-wood glen she broke,
And mounted on the moaning wind."

The lines descriptive of Ellen's re

tiring to slumber, and of the accompanying scenery, have always appeared to me of almost unparalleled beauty, and as conveying to the fancy a painting worthy of the best Italian

master:

" "Twas when, on summer's softest eve,
Of clouds that wander'd west away,
Twilight with gentle hand did weave
Her fairy robe of night and day:

"When all the mountain-gales were still, And the wave slept against the shore;

And the sun, sunk beneath the hill,

Left his last smile on Lemmormore.'

The allusion to the power presiding

over dreams, and its wonder-working in

fluence, is very striking:

"There is some kind and courtly sprite
That o'er the realm of Fancy reigns,
Throws sunshine on the mask of night,
And smiles at slumber's powerless chains.

""Tis told, and I believe the tale,

At this soft hour the sprite was there,
And spread with fairer flow'rs the vale,
And fill'd with sweeter sounds the air."

The miraculous bower is most fanci

fully embellished:

"Yet it was wrought in simple show;

Nor Indian mine nor orient shores
Had lent their glories here to glow,
Or yielded here their shining stores.

"All round a poplar's trembling arms

The wild-rose wound its damask flow'r;

The woodbine lent its spicy charms,

That loves to weave the lover's bow'r.

"The ash, that courts the mountain-air,
In all its painted blooms array'd;
The wilding's blossom, blushing fair,
Combin'd to form the flow'ry shade.

"With thyme, that loves the brown hill's breast; The cowslip's sweet reclining head;

The violet, of sky-woven vest,

Was all the fairy ground bespread."

At a time and in a place thus auspicious to love, the vision of Nithisdale, with "hunter's spear and warrior's bow," is presented to the fancy of the sleeping Ellen; when the poet interrupts his

narrative by an appeal to the experience of his reader; of whom he asks, whether he, too, has not been led by the

sprite of dreams over embroidered lawns

and flowery valleys; and adds, b}

"Hast thou not some fair object seen,

And, when the fleeting form was past,

Still on thy mem'ry found its mien,

And felt the fond idea last?”

M

This is preparatory to the subsel quent interview between Nithisdale and Ellen, whose heart is thus prepossessed in favour of him who is the ruler of her destiny. She finds him sleeping; he awakes while she gazes on him, and, subdued by the eloquence with which passion inspires her youthful lover, she is irretrievably captivated. The meet