ve given you the trouble of walking to this spot, Captain Waverley,
both because I thought the scenery would interest you, and because a
Highland song would suffer still more from my imperfect translation,
were I to introduce it without its own wild and appropriate
accompaniments. To speak in the poetical language of my country, the
seat of the Celtic muse is in the mist of the secret and solitary hill,
and her voice in the murmur of the mountain stream. He who wooes her
must love the barren rock more than the fertile valley, and the solitude
of the desert better than the festivity of the hall.'

Few could have heard this lovely woman make this declaration, with a
voice where harmony was exalted by pathos, without exclaiming that
the muse whom she invoked could never find a more appropriate
representative. But Waverley, though the thought rushed on his mind,
found no courage to utter it. Indeed, the wild feeling of romantic
delight with which he heard the first few notes she drew from her
instrument, amounted almost to a sense of pain. He would not for worlds
have quitted his place by her side; yet he almost longed for solitude,
that he might decipher and examine at leisure the complication of
emotions which now agitated his bosom.

Flora had exchanged the measured and monotonous recitative of the bard
for a lofty and uncommon Highland air, which had been a battle-song in
former ages. A few irregular strains introduced a prelude of a wild and
peculiar tone, which harmonized well with the distant waterfall, and the
soft sigh of the evening breeze in the rustling leaves of an aspen which
overhung the seat of the fair harpress. The following verses convey but
little idea of the feelings with which, so sung and accompanied, they
were heard by Waverley:--

There is mist on the mountain, and night on the vale,
But more dark is the sleep of the sons of the Gael.
A stranger commanded--it sunk on the land;
It has frozen each heart, and benumbed every hand!

The dirk and the target lie sordid with dust;
The bloodless claymore is but reddened with rust;
On the hill or the glen if a gun should appear,
It is only to war with the heath-cock or deer.

The deeds of our sires if our bards should rehearse,
Let a blush or a blow be the meed of their verse!
Be mute every string, and be hushed every tone,
That shall bid us remember the fame that is flown!

But the dark