that so often
was accompanied by his sword waving on to glory! Unappalled was he ever
in the whizzing and hissing fire--nor did his bold broad breast ever
shrink from the bayonet, that with the finished fencer's art he has
often turned aside when red with death. In many of the pitched battles
of the Spanish campaigns his plume was conspicuous over the dark green
lines, that, breaking asunder in fragments like those of the flowing
sea, only to re-advance over the bloody fields, cleared the ground that
was to be debated between the great armaments. Yet in all such desperate
service he never received one single wound. But on a mid-day march, as
he was gaily singing a love-song, the sun smote him to the very brain,
and from that moment his right hand grasped the sword no more.

Not on the face of all the earth--or of all the sea--is there a spot of
profounder peace than that isle that has long been his abode. But to him
all the scene is alive with the pomp of war. Every far-off precipice is
a fort, that has its own Spanish name--and the cloud above seems to his
eyes the tricolor, or the flag of his own victorious country. War, that
dread game that nations play at, is now to the poor insane soldier a
mere child's pastime, from which sometimes he himself will turn with a
sigh or a smile. For sense assails him in his delirium, for a moment and
no more; and he feels that he is far away, and for ever, from all his
companions in glory, in an asylum that must be left but for the grave!
Perhaps in such moments he may have remembered the night, when at
Badajos he led the forlorn hope; but even forlorn hope now hath he none,
and he sinks away back into his delusions, at which even his brother
sufferers smile--so foolish does the restless campaigner seem to these
men of peace!

Lo! a white ghost-like figure, slowly issuing from the trees, and
sitting herself down on a stone, with face fixed on the waters! Now she
is so perfectly still, that had we not seen her motion thither, she and
the rock would have seemed but one! Somewhat fantastically dressed, even
in her apparent despair. Were we close to her, we should see a face yet
beautiful, beneath hair white as snow. Her voice too, but seldom heard,
is still sweet and low; and sometimes, when all are asleep, or at least
silent, she begins at midnight to sing! She yet touches the guitar--an
instrument in fashion in Scotland when she led the fashion--with
infinite grace and delicacy--and