Sunk brand, and spear, and bended bow, It seemed as if their mother Earth On bracken green, and cold gray stone. 3. Fitz-James looked round-yet scarce believed Nor would I call a clansman's brand 4. They moved. I said Fitz-James was brave As ever knight that belted glaive; Yet dare not say, that now his blood 5. Ever, by stealth, his eye sought round Where neither tree nor tuft was seen, To hide a bonnet or a spear. Sir Walter Scott. EXERCISES.-1. The Saxon prefix out- means beyond; as outlive, to live beyond; outgrow, to grow beyond; outlaw, to place beyond the law, that is, to deprive of the benefit of the law. 2. Analyse and parse the following: 'Each warrior vanished where he stood, In broom or bracken, heath or wood; Sunk brand, and spear, and bended bow 3. Make sentences of your own, and use in each one or more of the following words: Guest, ford, vanish, outlaw. THE STRANGERS' NOOK. [This lesson is from the miscellaneous writings of Dr Robert Chambers, author of the Traditions of Edinburgh and many other works, and one of the founders of Chambers's Journal.] 1. In country churchyards in Scotland, and perhaps in other countries also, there is always a corner near the gateway which is devoted to the reception of strangers, and is distinguished from the rest of the area by its total want of monuments. When you inquire of the passing peasant respecting this part of the burial-ground, he tells you that it is the corner for strangers, but never, of course, thinks that there is or can sentiment in the matter. To me, I must confess, this spot is always more interesting than any other. 2. As you wander over the rest of the ground, you see humble memorials of humbler worth, mixed perhaps with the monuments of rank and wealth. But these tell always a definite tale. It is either the lord or the tenant of some of the neighbouring fields, or a trading burgher, or perhaps a clergyman; and there is an end of it. These men performed their parts on earth, like the generality of their fellows, and, after figuring for a space on the limited arena of the parish or the district, were here gathered to their fathers. But the graves of the strangers! what tales are told by every undistinguished heap-what eloquence in this utter absence of epitaphs! 3. There can be no doubt that the individuals who rest in this nook belonged, with hardly the possibility of an exception, to the humbler orders of the community. But who will say that the final sufferings and death of any individual whatsoever are without their pathos? To me, who have never been able to despise any fellow-creature, the silent stories related by these little heaps, possess an interest above all real eloquence. 4. Here we may suppose, rests the weary old man, to whom, after many bitter shifts, all bitterly disappointed, wandering and mendicancy had become a last trade. His snow-white head, which had suffered the inclemency of many winters, was here at last laid low for ever. Here also the homeless youth, who had trusted himself to the wide world in search of fortune, was arrested in his wanderings; and whether his heart was as light as his purse, or weighed down with many privations and disappointments, the end was the same—only in the one case a blight; in the other, a bliss. 5. The prodigal, who had wandered far, and fared still worse and worse, at length returning, was here cut short in his better purpose, far from those friends to whom he looked forward as a consolation for all his wretchedness. Perhaps, when stretched in mortal sickness in a homely lodging in the neighbouring village, where, though kindness was rendered, it was still the kindness of strangers, his mind wandered in repentant fondness to that mother whom he had parted with in scorn, but for whose hand to present his cup, and whose eye to melt him with its tenderness, he would now gladly give the miserable remains of his life. 6. Perhaps he thought of a brother, also parted with in rage and distrust, but who, in their early years, had played with him, a fond and innocent child, over the summer leas, and to whom that recollection forgave everything. No one of these friends to soothe the last moments of his wayward and unhappy life-scarcely even to hear of his death when it had taken place. Far from every remembered scene, every remembered face, he was doomed here to take his place amidst the noteless dead, and be as if he had never been. 7. Perhaps one of these graves contains the shipwrecked mariner, hither transferred from the neighbouring beach. A cry was heard by night through the storm which dashed the waves upon the rocky coast; deliverance was impossible; and next morning the only memorial of what had taken place was the lifeless body of a sailor stretched on the sand. No trace of name or kin, not even the name of the vessel, was learned; but, no doubt, as the villagers would remark in conveying him to the Strangers' Nook, he left some heart to pine for his absence, some eyes to mourn for |