of painting. The minutest details are depicted so vividly and with such truth that one seems, while reading, to be an actual eye-witness of that which is related.

The student will not fail to read the entire poem. The passages most deserving of special study are the following: The description of the castle and of Marmion. Canto I., 1-11.

The immuring of Constance. Canto II., 20–33.
Fitz-Eustace's song. Canto III., 9, 10.

Young Lochinvar. Canto V., 12.

The Parting of Marmion and Douglas. Canto VI., 13-15. The Battle of Flodden. Canto VI., 19-35.

The Lady of the Lake, the third of Scott's great poetical romances, appeared in 1809. Although the critics have almost unanimously awarded the palm of excellence to Marmion, to the Lady of the Lake has been accorded the greater meed of popular favor. It has been quite generally acknowledged as the "most interesting, romantic, and picturesque" of all Scott's poems. As the other two had excelled, the one in elegance and variety of style, the other in vividness of narration,-so this surpasses in characterization and in dramatic incident. Nowhere can we find a finer painting than that which is here given of Ellen Douglas, "so brave, so innocent, so simple-hearted and true, the very type of a high-spirited and high-born maiden, bold with the fearlessness of innocence. Never, while Benvenue stands and Loch Katrine holds up to him her silver mirror, shall that light skiff and lighter form forsake the silver strand, or cease to throw a charm over those lovely islets. The picture is so clear, so sweeet, so fresh, that, as we say of Raphael, it might have been made yesterday. It is no profound study of an ideal woman, but it is a true Highland girl, frankest, most courageous, and most stainless of human creatures, capable of all and every exertion which love requires of her-facing all perils, like Una herself, with an unfaltering brow when those who are dear to her require her help. None of Sir Walter's heroines are

so perfect."* The scene of the poem is in the neighborhood of Loch Katrine, and the time of the action is six days, a single canto being devoted to the events of each day. The incidents narrated are supposed to have occurred in the time of James V., of Scotland. The episode of the stag-hunt, with which the first canto begins, is one of the most beautiful passages in the poem; but the finest and most impressive is the description of the battle of Beal' an Duine and of the death of Roderick Dhu. The student, after reading the entire poem, should make special study of the following passages:

The stag-hunt. Canto I., 1-10.

Description of the glen. Canto I., 11-13.

Boat song. Canto II., 19.

Coronach. Canto III., 16.

"The rose is fairest." Canto IV., 1.

The sunrise. Canto VI., 1.

The minstrel's visit to Roderick Dhu.

Canto VI., 12.

Battle of Beal' an Duine. Canto VI., 15-22.

The last of Scott's great poetical romances, The Lord of the Isles, is far inferior in merit to either of the preceding. It is a story of the time of Bruce, 1307, and the materials were derived from Barbour's Gestes of King Bruce and Dalrymple's Scottish Annals. The half-mythical remoteness of the events described and the half-historical character of the hero are calculated to lend increased interest to the romantic element of the poem. But whether the audience had grown tired of the oft-repeated strain, or whether the author had begun to feel the consciousness of his power as a novelist, and had thus been drawn away from "the old harp which lent him so much grace and sweetness," the new poem failed to make a favorable impression upon the public. Nevertheless, there are many passages in it which equal, if they do not excel, the finest strains in Marmion or the Lady of the Lake. The picturesque scene in the

* Blackwood's Magazine, 1871.

castle of Artornish, the voyage of the hero-king among the isles, the cruel desolation of the western highlands, the surprise of Arran, the battle-scene of Bannockburn, are excellent examples of the author's wonderful powers of delineation.

Lord Byron, following in the footsteps of Sir Walter Scott, produced a number of poetical romances. The best of these are The Giaour, The Siege of Corinth, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, and Lara. The stories are based on Oriental legends, and the scenes are laid in Greece and the Grecian archipelago. The Giaour is, as the author tells us in the sub-title, "a fragment. The story, when entire, contained the adventures of a female slave, who was thrown, in the Mussulman manner, into the sea for infidelity, and avenged by a young Venetian, her lover, at the time the Seven Islands were possessed by the republic of Venice." It contains some striking passages and beautiful descriptions, as, for instance, the following comparison of enslaved Greece to a corpse:

He who hath bent him o'er the dead,
Ere the first day of death has fled,
The first dark day of nothingness,

The last of danger and distress,
(Before decay's effacing fingers

Have swept the lines where beauty lingers),
And mark'd the mild angelic air,

The rapture of repose that's there,

The fix'd, yet tender traits that streak

The languor of the placid cheek,
And, but for that sad, shrouded eye,

That fires not, wins not, weeps not now,
And but for that chill, changeless brow,
Where cold obstruction's apathy

Appalls the gazing mourner's heart,
As if to him it could impart

The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon;

Yes, but for these and these alone,

Some moments, ay, one treacherous hour,
He still might doubt the tyrant's power;
So fair, so calm, so softly sealed

The first, last look by death revealed!
Such is the aspect of this shore;
'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more!
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,

We start, for soul is wanting there.

In The Siege of Corinth, founded upon an historical incident which occurred in 1715, there is more variety of description than in any other of Byron's romances. And it is in description that Byron excels. "His manner is indeed peculiar and almost unequaled," says Macaulay; "it is rapid, sketchy, full of vigor; the selection is happy; the strokes few and bold." Take, for example, his description of the night before the storming of the city:

"Tis midnight; on the mountain's brown,
The cold, round moon shines deeply down,
Blue roll the waters, blue the sky
Spreads like an ocean hung on high,
Bespangled with those isles of light,
So wildly, spiritually bright;
Who ever gazed upon them shining,
And turned to earth without repining,
Nor wished for wings to flee away,
And mix with their eternal ray?
The waves on either shore lay there,
Calm, clear, and azure as the air;
And scarce their foam the pebbles shook,
But murmured meekly as the brook.
The winds were pillowed on the waves;
The banners drooped along their staves,
And, as they fell around them furling,
Above them shone the crescent curling;
And that deep silence was unbroke,
Save where the watch his signal spoke,
Save where the steed neighed oft and shrill,

And echo answered from the hill,
And the wide hum of that wild host
Rustled like leaves from coast to coast,
As rose the Muezzin's voice in air
In midnight call to wonted prayer;
It rose, that chanted, mournful strain,
Like some lone spirit's o'er the plain;
'Twas musical, but sadly sweet,

Such as when winds and harp-strings meet,
And take a long unmeasured tone,
To mortal minstrelsy unknown.
It seemed to those within the wall
A cry prophetic of their fall;
It struck even the besieger's ear
With something ominous and dreaf,
An undefined and sudden thrill,
Which makes the heart a moment still,
Then beat with quicker pulse, ashamed
Of that strange sense its silence framed;
Such as a sudden passing bell

Wakes, though but for a stranger's knell.*

The Bride of Abydos is a beautiful Turkish tale, opening with the following stanza, imitated from Goethe:

Know

ye the land where the cypress and myrtle

Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime? Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime?

Know ye the land of the cedar and vine,

Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine;

Where the light wings of Zephyr oppressed with perfume

Wax faint o'er the gardens of Gul in her bloom;
Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit,

And the voice of the nightingale never is mute;

Where the tints of the earth and the hues of the sky,
In color though varied, in beauty may vie,

And the purple of ocean is deepest in dye;

*The Siege of Corinth, XI.