baron, in consequence of the freedom with which the former rebukes the latter for the licentiousness of his life, converts the castle of Avenel into a place, not of refuge, but of captivity, for both Halbert and his companion. Unable to make any bodily exertion in his own behalf, the old man submits, for the present, to his fate, but the ingenuity and strength of Halbert place escape within his reach.He receives, from Warden, letters of recommendation to the Regent Murray-and having swam the loch in which the castle is situated, sets out on his journey to the capital of Scot land. he has acquired over his pupil Edward, he at last, with great difficulty, prevails-and Shafton is guarded, during the night, by the brother and a strong party of his kinsmen and neighbours, all, like him, burning to revenge the death of Halbert. The widowed mother fills the tower with her lamentations while Mary of Avenel retires to her solitary chamber to devour her yet deeper grief in silence. The family at the tower, in the meantime, are waiting, hour after hour, in anxious suspense for the re turn of Halbert and their guest-of neither of whom any thing has been seen or heard during the whole space of the day. The reader already knows what has become of Halbert, but he will be surprised to hear that Sir Piercie Shafton is the first, after all, who returns to the tower. It is night fall ere he arrives-he comes in alone, sound in health to all appearance, save one scar on his breast, which has not the look of a new one, bet his clothes betray traces of blood, and the suspicion of the family is naturally excited that his quarrel of the evening before has terminated in combat, and that the young peasant has fallen by the hand of this accomplished swordsman. In vain does Shafton invoke all the powers of Heaven to witness that the only wound received in the combat had been that on his own breast. The appearance of the scar gives the lie to what he asserts, and Edward Glendinning assuming, in his turn, a character of unwonted ardour and determination, prepares to sacrifice the stranger to the manes of his murdered brother. Eustace, the sub-prior, however, has learned, as we have seen, to believe in the presence of some more than natural influences in the valley of Glendearg. Without be lieving the story of the Englishman, he cannot help thinking that it deserves, at least, to be examined into, and insists that Sir Piercie shall be kept in safe durance till morning, when the scene of strife may be examined, and the offender handed over to the arm of the Lord Abbot's jurisdiction. By the weight of influence It is now that the love of Mysie Happer is to show itself in all its force. While thoughts of grief or of vengeance fill all the rest, her gentle breast is penetrated with fears for the gallant Euphuist, for whose violence, even supposing it to have terminated in the death of Glendinning, she thinks there is much excuse to be made, on account of the rudeness with which that rash youth had provoked his temper on the evening preceding the duel. By some accident she has been shut up in an inner closet, communicating with the rest of the house only through the apartment in which the prisoner passes the night-her maidenly modesty and awkwardness prevent her from coming forth in proper time before the knight goes to bed; but being there, and knowing what is to be done on the morrow, she gradually begins to think that she ought, if possible, to convert her own casual confinement into a means of extricating Sir Piercie from his more serious and more dangerous durance. Having, at length, summoned up resolution to arouse him from his slumber, she communicates, in a whisper, the plan that has occurred to her, and being seconded by the dexterity of Shafton, contrives to have him shuffled out along with herself, after she has prevailed on the guards of the door to open and permit her exit from a place which she represents as pregnant with innumerable terrors to her modest imagination. Having once got him fairly out of his chamber, his escape from the tower itself is a matter of comparative ease. After a variety of skilful manoeuvres, she gains possession of the keys of the fortalice sets Sir Piercie free-locks and double locks the gates upon them that might pursue, so as to retard them, at least, some hours-and it ends by her mounting, en croupe, behind the Euphuist, whom she offers to con Her behaviour during this ride is admirably represented; but at last they must part-they have reached the open country on the Tweed, and Shafton may easily pursue his course without her aid. We regret that we have not room for this most animated and amusing picture, but we cannot think of destroying it by abridgment. The end of it is, that Sir Piercie, in spite of his high blood, begins to be in love with Mysie-she assumes the disguise of a peasant lad, and attends him on a borrowed nag on the road to Edinburgh, for within the walls of that capital the Englishman has now resolved to take his chance of safety. duct beyond the limits of immediate possessions-heresy spreading fast danger. and far among the lower orders of the people in his neighbourhood-and last not least, an English armament, about to levy war upon the Halidome. In the despair to which these entangled evils reduce him, he feels his own unfitness for wearing the mitre in such turbulent days, and with the approbation of his community, resigns in favour of the active, intrepid, and unwearied Sub-prior Father Eustace. The new Abbot loses no time in making what preparations he can for the defence of his possessions-the Vassals of the Monastery are all summoned, and Julian of Avenel is hired by him to take the command of a force, not unequal to that which Sir John Foster is expected to lead over the Border. Sir Piercie Shafton having been overtaken by the Abbot's emissaries, as a fugitive from justice, is now in the Monastery-and offers his aid, which the churchmen do not think it prudent to refuse in this day of danger, whereof he himself has been the chief cause. The news of these active preparations on both sides being brought to young Glendinning's master, the Regent is anxious to hurry on and prevent effusion of blood between the Scots, and the subjects of his own ally, the English Queen. They make a forced march-but ere they reach the territories of the Monastery, they meet numbers of Scottish kinsmen flying visibly from a yet unfinished field; and unable to push on his main body, the Regent despatches Halbert with a score of horse to visit the scene of slaughter, and if possible, arrest the fury of the combatants. Halbert Glendinning, meantime, has joined the train of the Regent, and attended him in an expedition against some feudal disturbers of the public peace in Galloway. The company he keeps here the sense of his obliga tions to Warden-and his remembrance of the black-letter Bible of the mother of Mary Avenel-gradually make him in heart a Protestant-and there is good prospect of his gaining some preferment in the employment of the Lord James. One morning, while he is waiting in the Regent's anti-chamber, Lord Morton arrives with news which deeply interest his master-and no less deeply interest him. A variety of events have been taking place in the southern part of Scotland, which loudly call for the Regent's personal presence in that quarter-and the seat of disturbance is no other than the Halidome of Melrose-the native scene of young Glendinning. The protection afforded by the Monks of Melrose to Sir Piercie Shafton, having reached the ears of Sir John Foster the English Warden, he resolves, in compliance with the strict commands of his queen, to make an inroad upon the Scottish border, and obtain the body of the fugitive, dead or alive, vi et armis. The Monks are thrown into the utmost alarm by the news of his preparations. The abbot, in particular, a good natured man, designed only for quiet days, is utterly confounded by the accumulation of troubles which are now gathering around him-a Protestant count on one side, watching only for an opportunity to rob his Monastery of its He arrives not in the field till the battle is over, and it is strewed with its bloody relics. Among these, he discovers upon the heath, Julian of Avenel, dying in the arms of a woman whose honour he had abused, and whom he had thrown from him in scorn, but who, like the Clare of Marmion, is the only attendant of his last moments of agony. While he is witnessing this terrible scene, the whole of which is in the author's very grandest manner, a party of English horsemen surround him, and he is conducted into the presence of Sir John Foster-whom he informs, to his confu sion, of the near approach of the Regent. That wary statesman, however, although much offended with the pro ceedings of the English captain, has no inclination to carry the feud farther, reserving the whole affair to be arranged between himself and the English queen hereafter. The whole party then proceed to the Abbey of Kennaquhair, where the Abbot Eustace proposes to meet them, not with any demonstration of resistance, but with the true weapons of his order, precibus et lacrymis. For the time he and his Abbey are spared, in spite of the indignation manifested by the more violent Protestant lords and ministers in the train of the Regent. The Novel concludes with the marriage of Halbert Glendinning and Mary Avenel, who has now, in consequence of the death of Julian, been replaced in her rightful inheritance, and whom the indulgence of Murray enables to please herself in the disposal of her hand. Sir Piercie Shafton, we are sorry we must tell this part of the story so briefly-enters at the same time into the same blessed state. His pride has in various ways been sorely humbled, and he is contented in his humbler mood to make the Maid of the Mill Lady Shafton, and to settle with her on the soil which has afforded him protection amongst many dangers. Edward Glendinning, the brother of Halbert, buries the disappointment of his love in the cloister of Kennaquhair, while the reformer Warden, who had fallen into the hands of Abbot Eustace, and been gently treated by him, on account of old friendship at college, regains his liberty, and sets off for Edinburgh in the company of Moray. Such is the conclusion of the present tale, but there are various circumstances which lead us to suspect that we shall hear more of some of its most important personages. The Abbot Eustace, and the fate of his community-the future progress of Warden, and the work of the Reformation these, and many other things, on which the imagination of the reader is compelled to dwell at the very close of the narrative, are destined, we would hope, to be taken up again in the next Novel of the series-whose title, we already hear it whispered, is to be THE ABBOT. The troubles of the Catholic churchmen, are as yet only opened upon our view. In the beginning of the Monastery, we find them as in Ivanhoe, living in all luxury-their eating especially, is inordinate-and the Abbot, as we have seen, carries his sentiments of cloister piety so far as to consider it a sin and an abusing of the bounties of Providence to taste any thing ill dressed, or a whit out of season. But as the tale goes forward, we behold these scenes of tranquil enjoyment grievously disturbed by the rising storms of the Reformation, whose first champions and preachers must no doubt have been regarded by the Monks as dreadful opponents, not only in their quality of controversialists, but on account of their Spartan severity and simplicity in living. The specimen of the manners of these new adversaries, given us in Warden, is probably a very favourable one. His character is such, as to impress us with the utmost respect-but, perhaps, the author has had this effect too exclusively in his view-and, as it is the gospeller, leaves by no means so vivid an image on the mind as was done by some of the covenanting Puritans of "Old Mortality." In the hour when the last heir male of the house of Avenel dies, the White Lady terminates her mysterious existence. A girdle which she wears, originally of thick and twisted gold, has now, in the course of ages, been worn to a single gossamer thread-and that snaps in twain at the moment when Julian breathes his last upon the field of combat; and every obstacle is thereby removed from before that union of Halbert and Mary Avenel, for which her own early counsels had paved the way. The whole conduct and language of this strange creature are most beautifully conceived; and surely the termination of her career is no less so; yet we know not whether, after all, her agency is perfectly in harmony, either with the scene or the time of the Novel. She seems to be of nature somewhat similar to the fairy order of beings, or rather, she is like the fountain nymphs of the ancients, who attached themselves to some particular spring; but then she is the solitary spirit of her spring and hollytree, and thus the idea is more solemn and romantic than that of the Naiads, who were supposed to dwell together in groups among the watery pools, and could scarcely therefore be conceived of, as residing, like a spiritual presence, in the physical objects to which they attached themselves. It is probable, that the author might have done well to engraft this idea of such a personage more closely upon some of the native superstitions of Scotland, for wherever the præternatural is made use of, it is an object of great importance to draw it from some popular idea, generally recognised, and well established in common association. But certainly the idea of an unknown spirit attaching itself to a solitary fountain, is one so natural and so fine, that it can never be felt as remote from the taste of any people where the natural beauties of the earth have not been changed by any human cultivation, and where the gentle characteristics of virgin nature are impressed with the fervour of passion on the young imaginations of dwellers in the wilderness. Critics may dispute-but the fancy of him that reads to be delighted, will often return with a pensive awfulness to the ethereal vision which watched over the deep blue waters of the well of Corri-nan-shian. THE WARDER. HE THAT SOWETH INIQUITY SHALL REAP VANITY; AND THE ROD OF HIS ANGER SHALL FAIL. DISCOMFITURE and misfortune seem to be the unfailing portion of our modern Whigs. They cannot venture upon a few pages of speculation but there instantly arrives some untoward event to rend the goodly fabric to pieces; they must not dare to prophesy, for there seems to be an invariable sequence established betwixt their prediction and the most mortifying refutation: An eternal war prevails betwixt the train of their thoughts and the actual course of affairs; and the very breath of their maledictions against government seems to waft to it some new element of strength and of triumph. The Whigs will never do as practical statesmen, till they can either obliterate every trace of their parole and written wisdom for the last thirty years, or cancel from the volume of history the memorable transactions of that bold and busy period. The text and the comment-the argument and the illustration-the prediction and the event-stand in such uniform and merciless hostility to each other, that nothing short of the magnanimity of the Whigs themselves could witness the collision with composure. Not to go back upon the countless struggles of this kind of an earlier date, which-like the pigmy skirmishes of the Saxon barbarians, that baffled the grasp of Milton-defy even all intelligible enumeration, we shall confine ourselves for the present to a very fresh and notable example of the Whiggish fatality to which we allude, given in the number of the Edinburgh Review just published which contains an elaborate piece of mockery of" the recent alarms;" PROVERBS XXII. 8. manufactured, no doubt with infinite toil, just when the London conspirators were preparing for the work of blood, and felicitously coeval in the date of publication with the discovery of the most hideous plot that has been hatched for centuries past in the bosom of England. The near approach of a general election, in which the Whigs have already descried the indications of their further and rapid decline, has no doubt inspired this act of fatal temerity. They feel that they are de scending fast in public opinion. In their despair this unhappy writer rushes to their aid; but so rude and clumsy is his grasp, that instead of raising, he only pushes them farther into the abyss. The fatal fondness and destructive co-operation of some sorts of friendship, was never more strikingly exemplified than in this instance. Just when all the thoughtful and truly able men of the party were ruminating in repentant seriousness over the errors committed by them during the last Session of the Parliament now dissolved-errors which have planted a deep distrust of them in every patriotic bosom, and severed from their confederacy some of its most vigorous and noble limbs ;—just when the rebuked and drooping genius of opposition was meditating some shew of atonement for the past, and preparing some plausible explanation to meet the frowning aspect of its of fended constituents-out comes this well-timed and judicious manifesto, in which the entire policy of the very wildest of the party, during the last Session of Parliament, is indiscri 1 minately vindicated, and the alarms which shook the universal loyalty and patriotism of the country are treated with coarse and characteristic derision. The unstained purity-the blameless innocence of motive and of action on the part of the radical reformers, are boldly assumed, in this elaborate tissue of Whiggism, at the very moment that their daggers were beginning to bristle through its apertures, and were just about to be buried in the heart of the commonwealth. Next to the manner in which the Whigs treat their country in its great est perils, the most revolting feature in their character is, the coarse and insolent way in which they are accustomed to demean themselves towards such of their friends as, in obedience to the call of patriotism, dare, in some great emergency, to abandon their unholy alliance. How Lord Grenville should have ever become a Whig, is, we confess, past our comprehension, except upon the hypothesis now daily verify ing, that the name is without meaning, and that, in enduring the appellation, you are neither required to adopt a principle nor to change an opinion. That must be a generic term of very wide and indiscriminate comprehension indeed, which could include at once Lord Grenville and Mr Brougham-or Mr Waithman-or Sir Robert Wilson. What community of sentiment or of aim can subsist betwixt the high-spirited and accomplished baron, and the bustling third-rate commoner -or the stirring and loquacious citizen, pure alike in his elocution and his patriotism-or the radical chevalier, full of that beautiful equality presented to his supernumerary speculation in the Guerilla bands or Cossack hordes with which his genius has been so deeply conversant? Lord Grenville must indeed have felt strange in the trammels of so unnatural a connexion. could not forget the distinguished part which he had formerly acted, or the mighty spirits with whom he had consulted for the safety and the glory of his country; and while he found himself surrounded with the vanity and the vulgarity of the underlings of opposition, the disciple of Burke, and the honoured coadjutor of Pitt, must have felt an inward shrinking from the profane contact, and sighed for the hour which was to rescue him from the intolerable bondage. VOL. VI. He In revenge of this defection, the Edinburgh Reviewer exhausts his illsuppressed rage against the conduct and character of the noble Lord. He draws a melancholy picture of the present state of Lord Grenville's understanding, which, he insinuates, has been utterly wrecked and overthrown by the influence of the most groundless and womanish terrors. With what sensations must the proud baron listen to the plaint of this semi-jacobin critic over the imaginary ruins! With what indignation and remorse must he learn, that the laborious advocate of the Whiggish cause, which he recently honoured with the sanction of his name, has dared to make the free exercise of his judgment upon a great crisis of his country's affairs, the pretence for an imputation against him of insanity, springing from the most ignoble of all causes, the immeasurable and helpless imbecility of fear! Lord Grenville has thus been enthroned, by the zeal of his Whig friends, as the prince of alarmists, the hoary monarch of all that is antiquated, credu lous, and doting, in the land. He must be more or less than man ever to forget this, the more especially as the unenviable distinction has been the reward of his firm adherence to principles which formed the very pith of the earliest shoots of his political genius, and belonged to the essence of his system, in the freshest and most vigorous period of his career. It is honourable to this distinguished Statesman, that, in the great and leading articles of his political creed, there has been no change or relaxation; for the most severe and unanswerable censor of the Mr Grenville of other times, would have been the Lord Grenville of this day, leagued with the opposition in their patronage of the radical reformers. Then, indeed, might the Pitt and Grenville bills have been denounced as measures of the most unblushing tyranny, upon the evidence of their only surviving author,the terrors of Jacobinism might have been ridiculed as a mere pretext,and the long and deadly war of principle would have been waged in vain. For if he who was at that troubled season foremost to descry and to avert the danger-who saw deepest into its nature, and made the largest demands upon the national vigour for repelling it had been also 4 U |