Let Rome and England do their worst,
Howe'er attainted and accursed,
If Bruce shall e'er find friends again
Once more to brave a battle-plain,
If Douglas couch again his lance,
Or Randolph dare another chance,
Old Torquil will not be to lack
With twice a thousand at his back.-
Nay, chafe not at my bearing bold,
Good abbot! for thou know'st of old,
Torquil's rude thought and stubborn will
Smack of the wild Norwegian still;
Nor will I barter freedom's cause

For England's wealth or Rome's applause."

The third canto commences with the following beautiful lines:
'Hast thou not heard, when o'er thy startled head
Sudden and deep the thunder-peal has roll'd,
How when its echoes fell, a silence dead
Sunk on the wood, the meadow, and the wold?
The rve-grass shakes not on the sod-built fold,
The rustling aspen leaves are mute and still,
The wall-flower waves not on the ruin'd hold,
Till murmuring distant first, then near and shrill,

The savage whirlwind wakes and sweeps the groaning hill !' Such was the silence which ensued upon the disappearance of the abbot. As the assembled chiefs begin to recover from their astonishment, Lorn and the Lord of the Isles are observed earnestly speaking together; in a minute after, the former starts forward, and having uttered some passionate expressions of indignation at the proposal which Ronald had made to him of embracing the cause of Bruce, he is about to depart, when information is brought to him that Edith is no where to be found. His surprize may easily be conceived; nor was his anger at all lessened when he learned, that she and her nurse had gone off in the abbot's vessel. Immediately he orders every galley which could be spared to set sail in pursuit of the fugitives, and Cormac Doil, a noted pirate among his followers, is the foremost to obey. Lorn and those who were attached to him then take their departure, and after the requisite apologies from Ronald for the interruption which their mirth had met with, the remainder of the guests withdraw to their respective chambers. Bruce and his brother are, however, scarcely retired to rest, when they are startled by hearing a secret door jar and perceiving the light of a taper on the ground. It was Ronald and Torquil, who had come in order to swear allegiance to Bruce, and to promise him the assistance of all their powers for the purpose of restoring him to his throne. The poem here takes rather too much

the

the tone of common conversation; however, their 'plan of fu ture operations is settled, and orders are immediately given for manning all the barks, which accordingly leave the haven, part, with Edward and Isabel on board, setting sail for Ireland, and the rest, with Ronald and Bruce, for the coast of Sky. The weather having become squally, these last found themselves, at the close of the next day, under the necessity of taking shelter in Scavigh Bay, where they resolve to land for the purpose of killing deer, at which, it seems, Lord Ronald's page Allan was particularly skilful. They had not proceeded far, when Bruce breaks out into admiration of the scenery, protesting that although he had seen nature in her wildest forms, yet never had he seen a scene so 'sublime in barrenness' as that before them.

'No marvel thus the monarch spake,
For rarely human eye has known
A scene so stern as that dread lake,
With its dark ledge of barren stone.-
The wildest glen but this can shew
Some touch of Nature's genial glow;
On high Benmore green mosses grow,
And heath-bells bud in deep Glencroe,
And copse on Cruchan-Ben:

But here above, around, below,
On mountain or in glen,

1

Nor tree, nor shrub, nor plant, nor flower,
Nor aught of vegetative power

The weary eye may ken.

For all is rocks at random thrown,

Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone,

As if were here denied

The summer sun, the spring's sweet dew,
That clothe with many a varied hue

The bleakest mountain-side.'.

This picture of barren desolation is admirably touched. Bruce is about to moralize upon its particular features, when suddenly they perceive under a jutting crag five men, whom, by the badge which they wore in their bonnets, Ronald judges to be followers of Lorn. Bruce resolves to wait their approach; and as soon as they are sufficiently near, he desires them to stop and explain who and what they are. They inform him that they had been shipwrecked upon the island the preceding night, and that supposing those to whom they were speaking might be in the same unfortunate circumstances, they had come for the purpose of offering to share with them a fallow deer which they had killed. Bruce thanks. them for their intentiou, but declines accepting the offer, as his vessel is waiting for him and his companions in the bay. The

strangers

strangers reply, that if the vessel to which they allude belonged to them, they may spare themselves the trouble of seeking her, for that upon the appearance of an English vessel she had been seen by some of their party from a mountain-head making sail, and was by this time probably out of sight. As this information left Bruce but little alternative, he agrees to follow the strangers, resolving, however, to keep their two parties separate. Upon entering the cave in which the strangers had taken up their quarters, Bruce was surprized to find a beautiful boy, dressed in the garb of a minstrel, who, upon hearing the voice of Ronald, shewed evident symptoms of the deepest emotion and agitation. To their inquiries, the strangers answer that the boy was a captive whom they had taken the evening before in a vessel which, with their own, had suffered shipwreck; his mother, whom they had taken at the same time, and who was drowned with the remainder of the crews, informed them, that he had been a mute from his infancy. The strangers then desire Bruce and his companions to unbelt their swords and sit down to their cheer; instantly the captive gave the king a keen and warning look which was immediately understood; accordingly Bruce answers, that he and his companions are upon a pilgrimage, and that in consequence of a vow which they had made never to take off their swords, or to sit at a stranger's board, or to sleep except by turns, it is necessary that they should be allowed not only to sleep in beds separated from those of their hosts, but also to eat at a separate fire. This the strangers seem to consider as rather a churlish vow; nevertheless, as Bruce adds that it does not bind them to fast' when force or gold may buy repast,' they make no further objections to the whim of their guests, and matters are arranged accordingly. Ronald watches till midinght; he is then to be succeeded by the king, after whom Allan, Ronald's page, is to take his turn. Lord Ronald easily keeps himself awake by thinking of the lovely Isabel- of the strange chance by which he had so lately seen her-of Edith, and of the engagements which he had contracted with her brother. Bruce, in his turn, lightly wards off the sleepy influence by reflections upon the unhappy state of Scotland, and the unjust usurpation of England-by filling his imagination with the thoughts of castles stormed,' and 'cities freed, and of battles and routs, and truces, and so forth; but poor Allan, who was neither a lover nor a king, finds his division of the watch a matter of some hardship; however, although his musings were neither so amorous nor so high as those of Ronald and Bruce, yet they were much more poetical.

To Allan's eyes was harder task
The weary watch their safeties ask.

He

He trimm'd the fire, and gave to shine
With bickering light the splinter'd pine;
Then gazed awhile where silent laid
Their hosts were shrouded by the plaid.
Then thought he of his mother's tower,
His little sister's green-wood bower;
How there the Easter gambols pass,
And of Dan Joseph's lengthen'd mass.
But still before his weary eye,
In rays prolong'd the blazes die-

Again he roused him on the lake

Look'd forth, where now the twilight flakei
Of pale cold dawn began to wake.

On Coolen's cliffs the mist lay furl'd,
The morning breeze the lake had curl'd,
The short dark waves, heaved to the land,
With ceaseless plash kiss'd cliff or sand
It was a slumb'rous sound-he turn'd
To tales at which his youth had burn'd,
Of pilgrim's path by demon cross'd,
Of sprightly elf, or yelling ghost;
Of the wild witch's baneful cot,
And mermaid's alabaster grot,
Who bathes her limbs in sunless well
Deep in Strathaird's enchanted cell.
Thither in fancy wrapt he flies,
And on his sight the vaults arise;
That hut's dark walls he sees no more,
His foot is on the marble floor,
And o'er his head the dazzling spars
Gleam like a firmament of stars!

Hark! hears he not the sea-nymph speak

Her anger in that thrilling shriek ?
No! all too late, with Allan's dream,
Mingled the captive's warning scream.
As from the ground he tries to start,
A ruffian's dagger finds his heart
Upwards he casts his dizzy eyes,

Murmurs his master's name... and dies!'

Not so awoke the king!' he springs upon his legs, and seizing a 'knotted brand' from the flame, with one blow lays the ruffian who had murdered Allan dead upon the floor. Ronald in like manner dispatches another, and he is upon the point of doing the same to a third, when the father ruffian,' getting behind the island lord,' raises his hand in the attitude of striking; at that moment the captive springs upon his arm, and clings to it till the assassin is seized and felled by Bruce. The ruffian then confesses, what we dare say most of our readers have already anticipated, that he is a follower of Lorn, his name Cormac Doil;

but

but of the stranger-boy he professes to know no more than what he had already declared. Bruce then turns to the stripling, and after promising to be to him a father and protector, he laments the unhappy fate of Allan, and afterwards proceeds to the shore for the purpose of ascertaining whether his bark had really set sail, or whether the story was fabricated by Cormac Doil.

This canto is full of beauties: the first part of it, containing the conference of the chiefs in Bruce's chamber, might perhaps have been abridged, because the discussion of a mere matter of business is unsuited for poetry; but the remainder of the canto is unobjectionable; the scenery in which it is laid excites the imagination; and the cave scene affords many opportunities for the poet, of which Mr Scott has very successfully availed himself. The description, which we have extracted, of Allan's watch is particularly pleasing; indeed, the manner in which he is made to fall asleep, mingling the scenes of which he was thinking, with the scene around him, and then mingling with his dreams the captive's sudden scream, is, we think, among the most happy passages of the whole poem.

Stranger, if e'er thine ardent step hath traced

The northern realms of ancient Caledon,

Where the proud Queen of Wilderness hath placed,
By lake and cataract, her lonely throne;'

Sublime but sad delight thy soul hath known,
Gazing on pathless glen and mountain high,
Listing where from the cliffs the torrents thrown,
Mingle their echoes with the eagle's cry,

And with the sounding lake, and with the moaning, sky.
Yes! 'twas sublime but sad.-The loneliness
Loaded thy heart, the desert tired thine eye;
And strange and awful fears began to press
Thy bosom with a stern solemnity.

Then hast thou wish'd some woodman's cottage nigh,
Something that shew'd of life, though low and mean
Glad sight, its curling wreath of smoke to spy,

Glad sound its cock's blithe carol would have been,
Or children whooping wild beneath the willows green.'

It is with these exquisite lines expressive of the desolate grandeur which marks the scenery of the northern Highlands, that the fourth canto commences. Bruce and Ronald proceed to the shore; on a sudden a bugle is heard, and immediately after they perceive Lord Edward darting towards them from rock to rock; as soon as he arrives within hearing, he greets them with the welcome news, that Edward the First has breathed his last, and that the partisans of Bruce, encouraged by so unexpected an event, had already taken up arms in various parts of Scotland. Unaccustomed,

as