with cheek pressed to
cheek. They talked of a thousand things most interesting to persons
in their situation--for they were to be married on the morrow--but,
perhaps, not so interesting to our readers, many of whom may have
performed in the same scenes.

Elliot's mother was recovered; and he himself was happy, or, at least,
he put on all the trappings of happiness; for, in a huge deer-skin
Esquimaux dress, which he had brought from Greenland, he danced at his
sister's wedding until the great bear had set in the sea, and the autumn
sun began to peer through the shutters of the drawing-room of his
ancient hall.

PHILIPS GREY.

"Death takes a thousand shapes:
Borne on the wings of sullen slow disease,
Or hovering o'er the field of bloody fight,
In calm, in tempest, in the dead of night,
Or in the lightning of the summer moon;
In all how terrible!"

Among the many scenes of savage sublimity which the lowlands of Scotland
display, there is none more impressive in its solitary grandeur, than
that in the neighbourhood of Loch Skene, on the borders of Moffatdale.
At a considerable elevation above the sea, and surrounded by the
loftiest mountains in the south of Scotland, the loch has collected
its dark mass of waters, astonishing the lovers of nature by its great
height above the valley which he has just ascended, and, by its still
and terrible beauty, overpowering his mind with sentiments of melancholy
and awe. Down the cliffs which girdle in the shores of the loch, and
seem to support the lofty piles of mountains above them, a hundred
mountain torrents leap from rock to rock, flashing and roaring, until
they reach the dark reservoir beneath. A canopy of grey mist almost
continually shrouds from the sight the summits of the hills, leaving the
imagination to guess at those immense heights which seem to pierce the
very clouds of heaven. Occasionally, however, this veil is withdrawn,
and then you may see the sovereign brow of Palmoodie encircled with his
diadem of snow, and the green summits of many less lofty hills arranged
round him, like courtiers uncovered before their monarch. Amid this
scene, consecrated to solitude and the most sombre melancholy, no sound
comes upon the mountain breeze, save the wail of the plover, or the
whir of the heathcock's wing, or, haply, the sullen plunge of a trout
leaping up in the loch.

At times, indeed, the solitary wanderer may be startled by t