Sunk brand, and spear, and bended bow,
In osiers pale and copses low;

It seemed as if their mother Earth
Had swallowed up her warlike birth.
The wind's last breath had tossed in air
Pennon, and plaid, and plumage fair—
The next but swept a lone hillside,
Where heath and fern were waving wide:
The sun's last glance was glinted back,
From spear and glaive, from targe and jack—
The next, all unreflected, shone

On bracken green, and cold gray stone.

3. Fitz-James looked round-yet scarce believed
The witness that his sight received;
Such apparition well might seem
Delusion of a dreadful dream.
Sir Roderick in suspense he eyed,
And to his look the Chief replied:
'Fear nought-nay, that I need not say;
But-doubt not aught from mine array.
Thou art my guest; I pledged my word
As far as Coilantogle ford:

Nor would I call a clansman's brand
For aid against one valiant hand,
Though on our strife lay every vale
Rent by the Saxon from the Gael.
So move we on;-I only meant
To show the reed on which you leant,
Deeming this path you might pursue
Without a pass from Roderick Dhu.'

4. They moved. I said Fitz-James was brave As ever knight that belted glaive;

Yet dare not say, that now his blood
Kept on its wont and tempered flood,
As, following Roderick's stride, he drew
That seeming lonesome pathway through,
Which yet, by fearful proof, was rife
With lances that, to take his life,
Waited but signal from a guide
So late dishonoured and defied.

5. Ever, by stealth, his eye sought round
The vanished guardians of the ground,
And still, from copse and heather deep,
Fancy saw spear and broadsword peep,
And in the plover's shrilly strain,
The signal whistle heard again.
Nor breathed he free till far behind
The pass was left; for then they wind
Along a wide and level green,

Where neither tree nor tuft was seen,
Nor rush nor bush of broom was near,

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
In osiers pale and copses low.'

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