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Now Gondoline, with fearful steps,

Drew nearer to the flame,
For much she dreaded now to hear

Her happless lover's name.

The hag related then the sports

Of that eventful day,
When on the well-contested field

Full fifteen thousand lay. ..

She said, that she in human gore,

Above the knees did wade,
And that no tongue could truly tell

| The tricks she there had play’d.

There was a gallant featur'd youth,

Who like a hero fought;
He kiss'd a bracelet on his wrist,

And ev'ry danger sought...

And in a vassal's garb disguis'd .

Unto the knight she suės, And tells him she from Britain comes,

And brings unwelcome news.

That three days ere she had embark'd,

His love had given her hand Unto a wealthy Thane:---and thought.

· Him dead in holy land. .

And to have seen how he did writhe

When this her tale she told,
It would have made a wizard's blood

Within his heart run cold.

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Then fierce he spurr'd his warrior steed,

And sought the battle's bed:
And soon, all mangled o'er with wounds,

He on the cold turf bled.

And from his smoking corse she tore

betore His head, half clove in two. She ceas'd, and from beneath her garb

The bloody trophy drew.

The eyes were starting from their socks,

The mouth it ghastly grinn'd, And there was a gash across the brow,

The scalp was nearly skinn'd. 'Twas Bertrand's Head!! With a horrible scream,

The maiden gave a spring, And from her fearful hiding-place

She fell into the ring.

The lights they fled, — the cauldron sunk,

Deep thunders shook the dome, And hollow peals of laughter came

Resounding through the gloom.

Insensible, the maiden lay

Upon the hellish ground;
And still mysterious sounds were heard

At intervals around.

She woke,- she half arose,--and wild,

She cast a horrid glare,
The sounds had ceas'd, the lights had fled,

And all was stillness there.

And through an awning in the rock,

The moon it sweetly shone, And show'd a river in the cave

Which dismally did moan.

The stream was black, it sounded deep

As it rush'd the rocks between, It offer'd well, for madness fir’d • The breast of Gondoline.

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The maid was seen no more. But oft

Her ghost is known to glide, At midnight's silent, solemn hour,

Along the ocean's side.


“ Behold the mountains less’ning as they rise,

Lose the low vales, and steal into the skies.” Pope. In order to catch the most prominent features of so various and vast an object as the Highlands of Scotland, we must take our stand at a distance, we must lose sight of particular parts, and yield up our minds to the general impression that results from the whole. In so wild a field, he who should attempt to describe every thing, would in fact describe nothing.

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An endless repetition of hills, glens, rivers, bays, creeks, and other minutiæ would divert the attention from the main object. Vistas must be cut through the wood, lest we lose ourselves amidst its endless recesses, and the multitude of its shrubs and trees. And as such vistas open new prospects beyond the forest in which we wander, so, in viewing the face of a country, we rise by abstraction to a point of elevation, from whence we look down on mountains, vales, and seas, as component parts of one magnificent object. We have a glimmering prospect of the highways, if I may be allowed the metaphor, by which nature carries on, and unites her operations.

In the more broken and rugged parts of the Highlands, it looks as if hundreds of mountains had been dashed into thousands of fragınents, scattered about a vast plain. Rocks after rocks, which recal to the mind the fabulous wars of the giants, exhibited indisputable traces of some great convulsion of nature, which has certainly happened, although in ages so remote as to be recorded only in those marks, which we every where find, of violence and destruction. Here and there, amidst solitary and precipitous crags, a miserable hut is seen, and frequent pools of water. In such of the intervening spaces as are impervious to the plough, the poor native digs the soil with his mattock, that he may raise a few potatoes and some other vegetables, or gamers the short and scanty grass with his sickle or hook. But in compensation for this sterility, the land, far indented at frequent and almost regular intervals, offers to the industry of the fisherman, and the amusement of the sportsman, great abundance and variety of fish: -while

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both the sea and frequent lakes and pools of water, breed wild fowl of various kinds in the greatest plenty.

To the botanist Scotland affords a field equally rich as to the sportsman. Its indigenous plants are chiefly moss, heath, fern; a species of liquorice called currymaul, berry-bearing shrubs, the black thorn, the oak, the hazel, the aller or arne, the elder, and above all, the birch, and the fir. Moss is found in every part of Scotland, and at all heights in the atmosphere: heath, fern, and currymauls not so far above the level of the sea; the shrubs bearing herries, on plains and the lower parts of the mountains; the black thorn, the oak, the hazel and the elder, in the valleys, and on the inferior parts of mountains and the lower hills; the aller or'arne, which is also found in marshy places in the valleys, thrives at a greater height than those in the atmosphere; the fir, which spreads itself, when unopposed, and domineers, as it were, over all the shrubs and trees of the plain, and which also triumphs over hills and the sides of lofty mountains, does not however possess so wide a domain as the fragrant birch, which is found in those northerly latitudes and elevated regions in the atmosphere, where almost all vegetation seems to sicken and die, and to leave the indisputed soil to be occupied by the humble and untrodden moss. Birch enjoys a solitary reign on the western and bleak shores of Ross-shire; birch also predominates in Sutherland and Caithness. Birch is the prevailing tree in the frozen regions of Siberia, and prevails over the whole vegetable kingdom in Iceland; some sprigs of birch are even discovered in Greenland. The same congeniality between certain climates and certain na

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