lowed and romantic character (the Kirtle is still there) not
exhibited by other burying-grounds in Scotland.

In those retreats, the members of the family of Kirconnel passed the
greater part of their time. Helen, though a lover of home, was fond of
gratifying a fancy pregnant of beautiful images, and a taste for what is
lovely in nature, by sitting by the banks of the Kirtle, and supplying
her mind with the pabulum of the old Scottish romances. "Raf Coilyear
and his Cross-bow," and "Gilbert with the White Hand," though soon
superseded by the continental romances, were then the legitimate
fountains of amusement to the fair maids of Scotland; and those who
aimed at sublimer flights, might have had recourse to "Fyn Maccowl," or
"Gret Gow Macmorne;" but there was in none of the works as yet
circulated in Scotland, what might gratify the intense yearnings of the
female heart for those poetical images which subsequently sprang up with
the more mature growth of chivalry. The loves of warriors are not the
loves of everyday life, far less the loves of the inspired poet; and
Helen, as she read these old legendary romances, might find in them the
amusement that afforded a relaxing alternative to her own poetical
communings with the oldest bard of all--Nature; but for the inspiration
of love itself she required the talisman--man--in that high aspect she
had prefigured of the noblest of God's creatures, to rouse her heart
from nature to the lover's dream.

As yet the Maid of Kirconnel had not seen any one that realised the idea
she had formed, by the banks of the Kirtle, of the individual who could
call up in her young bosom those extraordinary emotions which constitute
"love's young dream." The secluded mode of life adopted by her parents
was unfavourable to a choice of the talismanic objects; and it even
appeared to be her father and mother's wish that such choice should be
excluded, that her heart might, in the absence of many forms, learn to
be pleased with the man whom their love or policy might point out to her
adoption. A second cousin of her own, Walter Bell of Blacket House, had
a free passport to the hall of Kirconnel, as well as to the bowers that
were enshrined in Kirconnel woods. The laird saw in the young man his
nearest heir, in the event of his Helen being taken from him by fate;
and the lady could detect, as she thought, in Bell's quiet and sombre
manner, some assimilation to her own love of retirement and ease, an