hen we were at Glennaquoich; but
certainly the Baron is no great performer, and Shakspeare is worth
listening to.'

'Romeo and Juliet' was selected, and Edward read with taste, feeling, and
spirit several scenes from that play. All the company applauded with
their hands, and many with their tears. Flora, to whom the drama was well
known, was among the former; Rose, to whom it was altogether new,
belonged to the latter class of admirers. 'She has more feeling too,'
said Waverley, internally.

The conversation turning upon the incidents of the play and upon the
characters, Fergus declared that the only one worth naming, as a man of
fashion and spirit, was Mercutio. 'I could not,' he said, 'quite follow
all his old-fashioned wit, but he must have been a very pretty fellow,
according to the ideas of his time.'

'And it was a shame,' said Ensign Maccombich, who usually followed his
Colonel everywhere, 'for that Tibbert, or Taggart, or whatever was his
name, to stick him under the other gentleman's arm while he was redding
the fray.'

The ladies, of course, declared loudly in favour of Romeo, but this
opinion did not go undisputed. The mistress of the house and several
other ladies severely reprobated the levity with which the hero transfers
his affections from Rosalind to Juliet. Flora remained silent until her
opinion was repeatedly requested, and then answered, she thought the
circumstance objected to not only reconcilable to nature, but such as in
the highest degree evinced the art of the poet. 'Romeo is described,'
said she, 'as a young man peculiarly susceptible of the softer passions;
his love is at first fixed upon a woman who could afford it no return;
this he repeatedly tells you,--

From love's weak, childish bow she lives unharmed,

and again--

She hath forsworn to love.

Now, as it was impossible that Romeo's love, supposing him a reasonable
being, could continue to subsist without hope, the poet has, with great
art, seized the moment when he was reduced actually to despair to throw
in his way an object more accomplished than her by whom he had been
rejected, and who is disposed to repay his attachment. I can scarce
conceive a situation more calculated to enhance the ardour of Romeo's
affection for Juliet than his being at once raised by her from the state
of drooping melancholy in which he appears first upon the scene to the
ecstatic state in which he exclaims--

--come what sorrow