gloom and death, while her wretched, wavering husband was miserably dallying with Elizabeth.

Amy Robsart's tragic story was like an actual occurrence to me, to which I could not be reconciled; nor did I fail to tax Scott with needless cruelty in bringing so much treasure of mind and person to such a fate.*

In the "Bride of Lammermoor" I passed alternately from pathos to passionate indignation. The Lord of Ravenswood, without altogether pleasing, fascinated me. I was impatient to have him seize Lucy Ashton right out of the feudal midst, and be off with her, though I secretly owned her not quite worth the pains; for again, in childish balance, I had weighed her with Juliet of the Capulets, and found her wanting.

But I did long to see Lady Ashton properly defeated and confounded, and, in place of the real and ghastly sequel, loved to fancy Lord Edgar snatching his bride in the face of her arrogant mother's frowns, and bearing her away in triumph, under the shadow of that sable plume that afterward told the mournful story of the quicksand.

The character of the Earl of Leicester is a feebler type, of which we have a modern masterpiece. The cruelty of weakness, the selfish sensitiveness, which shrinks not from giving, but from receiving pain, which drifts away from all that is courageous, generous, just, and toward all that is indolence and ease, have vivid existence in the character of Tito as drawn by the pen which wrote "Romola."

A sense of the chivalrous, tender, romantic, and imaginative in human nature, of the beautiful and picturesque in external nature, and a tinge of the gloomy superstitions and seeming fatalities of life-these are what I retain of the enchantments of Waverley.

I do not attempt to associate any idea of criticism with these childish recollections of an author who, if popularity determined greatness, would be one of the greatest the world has known. I have thought the sum of their influence upon me (being such as any child, similarly circumstanced, might have felt) might have a certain significance and value for those who recognize the purity, astuteness, and simplicity in the crude conceptions of a child's mind, and who know that these early appreciations, with all their incompleteness, foreshadow unerringly the nature, if not the degree, of all later understandings.

Through either experience or observation, life brings to most a knowledge of many kinds of love. Love that is loyal, like that of Jeanie Deans; love that is as gently trustful and as basely requited as Amy Robsart's; that is as worthless as the Earl of Leicester's, and love that is wrecked pathetically, in its own weakness, as in the "Bride of Lammermoor."

Over a lapse of twenty years the tender pathos of that story-not in its ghastlier features, but in its broken love-charm-returns to me, and glides after the shadowy fashion of memories into the rhythm and melody of the Lyric

of the Lilies.

The deer are in the woodlands;
The birds are on the wing;
The June hath clad in roses
The moss-green robes of spring.
Fair is young Lucy Ashton,
Waiting by the spring;
Fair are the marble lilies;
Fair is every thing.

Blue are the eyes of Lucy,

Blue as the summer sea,

And full of the changing charm of the sea;
As suddenly shy, as purely bold,
Afoam with fancies too fine to be told;
Fancies so delicate, pure, and free,
They seem revealing, above disguise,
Her very heart in her lovely eyes;

When over them swift, in fold on fold,

The baffling waves of reserve are rolled;
And in them lies,

In place of the sparkle and beam and flash,
A weary sweep of the silken lash,

And vague surprise,

That slowly glides into thought as deep

As the deep, dark wave, whose shadows keep The sea's sad mysteries in sleep,

Whence secrets never rise.

Eyes ever and always like the sea;

Most like when the sea, in lulls or blows,
In a countless glory of glimpses, shows
How lovely heaven may be.

Fresh breezes, waft
Faint fragrance to her;
Beat, beat his face
To a blush apace
Who comes to sue her.
Bold Love, stir his heart

Till its throbs are blows;
Shy Love, try thine art

Till it paints the rose, Of a thousand glows, On a cheek that was pale. Blow, breeze, to a gale With frolicsome ways; Fan, fan to a blaze

The sweet cheek that was pale;

Else Love will disclose

That she knows-that she knows

Who is coming to woo her.

Tis, then, thy wish-thy deed! Alas
That heart so false could beat
Within a breast so fair! I thought
Not heaven could be more sweet.
And canst thou really wish it so?
But, ah! thy silence bids me go.
O treacherous, fatal loveliness!
So tender still thy spell,

Love can not speak its deep reproach.
Farewell, dear love, farewell!

He rode, unheeding, in the storm: the night
Infolded him in ever-deep'ning gloom.

His noble head drooped on his struggling breast,
Where broken trust and wounded love's unrest
Wrought in his faithful heart their mournful blight;
Thus grief and night prepared his lonely doom.

For Edgar, Lord of Ravenswood,
All day in vain they sought;
When sun was set in hue of blood,
A stranger tidings brought.
On yonder quicksand's dizzy maze,
Found by his favorite groom,
Only the young lord's velvet cap
And matted sable plume.

THE LILIES-ALONE.

On earth beneath, in heaven above,

Is aught more dear, more pure than love?
Can aught so perfect have an end?
Ask where the slender lilies bend.
No more, by yon deserted spring,
Close-clasping hands, eyes glistening,
Fond, hurried vows, fond listening;
Warm lips, love-thrilled,
Young kearts, hope-filled,
All trust and truth,
That is so new,

Yet seems not strange.

O heart of youth,

What loves like you,
Defying ruth,

Unfearing change?

Can aught so perfect have an end?
Ask where the pallid lilies bend.

Year after year, o'er yonder spring, The wild bird floats on tinted wing, The sky still drops its curtain blue, The sun its morning cup of dew Sips slowly, with a golden smile, That rifts the quiet forest aisle.

The path where shine and shadow meet,
Once lightly pressed by little feet,
Is tenderly o'erlaid with flowers.
A fading rainbow in the mist
With silence keeps the lovers' tryst
Through slowly flitting summer hours.

A sunny beauty reigneth here;
Its ripe perfections, far and near,
In forms and hues and perfumes blend.
But, oh! more perfect, pure, and dear,
The beauty of the young hearts' truth
That kept the tryst one little year-

The sweet, sweet love of early youth.
Alas! can aught so perfect end?
Alone the empty lilies bend.

"THEY COULD NOT BUT SAY I HAD THE CROWN."

WALTER SCOTT.

One hundred years ago this 15th of August Sir Walter Scott was born, and in view of the centennial anniversary, preparations have been made for the appropriate commemoration of the event in his native city of Edinburgh. Great interest attaches to celebrations of this character, and in proportion to the genius and popular ascendency of the subjects of them, the intelligent sympathy of the world participates. At a time, then, when the world-at least the world of book-lovers-is looking over its shoulder with friendly eyes upon Sir Walter Scott once more, it seems fitting to make a book-lover's modest contribution to his memory.

Very few great men have been, or may hope to be, so fortunate as Scott has been in the biographical services of Mr. J. G. Lockhart, with whose admirable and voluminous memoirs the world is long since familiar.

To the task Mr. Lockhart brought not only his admitted talents and culture, but a love, knowledge, care, and labor worthy the subject; and the result was eminently satisfactory to Scott's time and to our own.

From this biography it is evident that Scott's life-written with the latitude of romancewould, as a romance, rank with any of his own writing. It teems with steady interest, and is crowded with richly suggestive incident.

But perhaps as weighty and condensed a consideration of Sir Walter Scott and his works as literature contains is the estimate of Mr. Carlyle, which appeared in the London and Westminster Review at the time of Lockhart's publication of the life of Scott.

In 1838, when Dickens was being spoken of as a writer whose surprising popularity was of too great moment to literature to excuse the slight notice usually awarded to anonymous merit, and while the fame and popularity of Scott, enhanced by posthumous interest, were still the theme and wonder of literary circles. Carlyle gave expression to a counterpoise of appreciation. It was an utterance differing boldly and keenly from the general voice-Carlylic in every respect-which, in its disdain of mere compliment, and in its generous discrimination of Sir Walter's merits, both of authorship and personal character-revealing a study which Carlyle would never have given to second-rate excellence of its kind-may well be considered as vital a leaf as any among the poet's laurels.

It would seem (offered merely as an opinion, and not as a fiat of judgment) that the man who is to write or work in any way so as to move the world to the seeing and doing of better things than it has yet known is he who shall feel from his first incipience of conscious thought an inward impelling to such work; a determination not destructible by circumstance; an inspiration, however modest and hidden, that shall be his unceasing stimulus and abiding encouragement, and which shall, of a necessity, in some degree advance the world.

"Literature is the thought of thinking souls." What is sown in that field has immortal life, and he who hopes to work therein must work indeed, wrestling patiently and invincibly every step of the difficult, glorious way. He must