CHAPTER V.

Thither he hied, enamoured of the scene: For rocks on rocks, piled, as by magic spell, Here scorched with lightning, there with ivy green, Fenced from the north and east this savage dell; Southward a mountain rose with easy swell, Whose long, long groves eternal murmur made; And toward the western sun a streamlet fell, Where, through the cliffs, the eye, remote surveyed Blue hills, and glittering waves, and skies in gold arrayed.

Along this narrow valley you might see

The wild deer sporting on the meadow ground,
And here and there a solitary tree

Or mossy stone, or rock with woodbine crowned:
Oft did the cliffs reverberate the sound

Of parted fragments tumbling from on high; And from the summit of that craggy mound The perching eagle oft was heard to cry, Or on resounding wings to shoot athwart the sky. BEATTIE'S MINSTREL.

THIS session at college glided away both agreeably and profitably to St. Clyde and Levingstone, and when they were about to separate, to go each to

the bosom of his family, their regret was alleviated by the reciprocal determination and avowal of mutual epistolary correspondence; for they both fancied they had yet two more sessions to be together at the university of Edinburgh. And whilst St. Clyde descanted on the necromantic art of writing, Levingstone observed there was one circumstance which very much depreciated its value; for "letters are records, and those who, like me, have had great packages of them by accident or carelessness submitted to their eye, will be diffident of committing to paper their hasty opinions, undigested sentiments, and careless effusions; most of all will they fear to chronicle the existing circumstances of their friends or of themselves, lest some unconcerned spectator should deride what he wants understanding or feeling to compre hend."

"Well, then, my dear Levingstone, to put our letters on the footing with our conversations, let them, by mutual agreement, faithfully performed, be burned as soon as their intended end of communication is answered. We have much to be thankful for in the privilege in its ordinary state of security; and, perhaps, it is pride alone that thus shrinks from the possibility of an exposure of imperfections."

"That is not necessary either, my dear St. Clyde: we have had unsuspect→ ing confidence in each other hitherto; and if I can keep my own secrets, those of my friend, whom I value as myself, can surely be preserved with the firmest inviolability."

"It is a bargain, Levingstone; and let this pledge of my acquiescence in your opinion be the guarantee of the same fidelity on my part.

In the same week they left Edin

burgh in company with Augustus, who intended to go to Bute. They left the seat of learning with their minds all alive to the anticipation of future increased friendship; and, taking a retrospective view of the advantages each had derived from the other, they looked back with satisfaction and regret, and they thought of the succeeding session with eager and lively hope.

From Glasgow, whither they had come from Edinburgh, Levingstone conducted St. Clyde and Augustus to his father's at Kelvin (for that was the name of the family-house of the Levingstone's). Kelvin lodge was situated on the acclivity of a hill that was washed by a rivulet of the same name; and this hill in its turn was covered by an immense mountain, which, rising in a beautiful pyramidical form, was covered for three-fourths of its

height upwards by alternate portions of copse, heath, wood, grass and moss. -"And," said St. Clyde, "its nodding plumes of pines bring to one's mind the days when the plaids of our forefathers rushed down its sides with thirsty claymores, to drink the "life-blood of the red-hair'd Dane."-" Or," said Levingstone," its waving pines, moaning and creaking in the wind, resemble the frailty of man in the storm of passion and affliction."-" But I," said Augustus," am not so heroic nor so sage. Do you know, they put me in mind of the merry looks of the miller's daughter, whom I met in my herbalizing walk last year."

The lodge itself was an antique building, the description of which, to those who have seen it or others of the same date, would not be interesting; it was even of the age of Bethlem Hospital in Moorfields. Anne Bullen