eflection, as well as to the Muses, the morning, while it
dispelled the shades of night, had a composing and sedative effect upon
the stormy passions by which the Master of Ravenswood had been agitated
on the preceding day. He now felt himself able to analyse the different
feelings by which he was agitated, and much resolved to combat and
to subdue them. The morning, which had arisen calm and bright, gave a
pleasant effect even to the waste moorland view which was seen from the
castle on looking to the landward; and the glorious ocean, crisped with
a thousand rippling waves of silver, extended on the other side, in
awful yet complacent majesty, to the verge of the horizon. With such
scenes of calm sublimity the human heart sympathises even in its most
disturbed moods, and deeds of honour and virtue are inspired by their
majestic influence. To seek out Bucklaw in the retreat which he had
afforded him, was the first occupation of the Master, after he had
performed, with a scrutiny unusually severe, the important task of
self-examination. "How now, Bucklaw?" was his morning's salutation--"how
like you the couch in which the exiled Earl of Angus once slept
in security, when he was pursued by the full energy of a king's
resentment?"

"Umph!" returned the sleeper awakened; "I have little to complain of
where so great a man was quartered before me, only the mattress was of
the hardest, the vault somewhat damp, the rats rather more mutinous than
I would have expected from the state of Caleb's larder; and if there had
been shutters to that grated window, or a curtain to the bed, I should
think it, upon the whole, an improvement in your accommodations."

"It is, to be sure, forlorn enough," said the Master, looking around the
small vault; "but if you will rise and leave it, Caleb will endeavour to
find you a better breakfast than your supper of last night."

"Pray, let it be no better," said Bucklaw, getting up, and endeavouring
to dress himself as well as the obscurity of the place would
permit--"let it, I say, be no better, if you mean me to preserve in my
proposed reformation. The very recollection of Caleb's beverage has done
more to suppress my longing to open the day with a morning draught than
twenty sermons would have done. And you, master, have you been able to
give battle valiantly to your bosom-snake? You see I am in the way of
smothering my vipers one by one."

"I have commenced the battle, at least, Bucklaw, adn I