representative of a race who felt that the Ashtons were robbers and intruders, and who accordingly hated them. Sir William and Miss Ashton on their return home were attacked by a wild bull, from which they were rescued by a well-directed shot fired by this very Ravenswood, who was opportunely near. Miss Ashton fainted. Her deliverer was left to take her to a neighboring spring called the Mermaid's Fountain, —a place that bore peculiarly fatal associations with the fortunes of his family. And thus began the acquaintance between Edgar of Ravenswood and Lucy of Lammermoor, that grew to love celebrated with that of Romeo and Juliet, and that of Faust and Margaret, but far nobler than the German's passion. Sir William's thankful acknowledgments were hardly accepted by the rescuer of his daughter, who quickly ended this interview with her. From it he went to a rather distant roadside inn. There he met two Jacobites (with whose party he and his father were involved; for it was then not inactive). From this rendezvous he went, through a duel, and a very dark, gloomy country, to Wolf's Crag, accompanied by the Laird of Bucklaw, a rich neighbor, who, just then, for political reasons, was obliged to conceal himself.

The two arrived, as already narrated in the quotation from Scott descriptive of the castle. Thus we are introduced to the very quiet life at that retired residence, and to the various ingenious devices of the old butler, Caleb Balderstone, a life-long servant of the Ravenswoods, to maintain the family dignity, and supply the table by the scantiest of means. One day, however, the Master and his guest, to vary their monotonous existence, joined a hunt in the neighborhood, with which Sir William Ashton and his daughter were also engaged. A storm overtook them; and the two latter accompanied Ravenswood to Wolf's Crag for shelter. This accession of company put poor Caleb at his wits' end. Supplies for dinner were utterly wanting, and he was forced to desperate measures. He pretended that thunder and soot had invaded the kitchen through the chimney, and spoiled a delicious and abundant repast; and then, with a heavy heart and with serious misgivings, he set forth for Wolf's Hope. This was a little hamlet, a sort of forlorn hope, not far off, though it is not now perceptible from Fast Castle. On its inhabitants Caleb had, in dire emergencies, been accustomed to levy a sort of feudal tribute, under which the people had become very restless. To render his necessary exactions in this case as moderate, or rather as successful, as possible, he had judi

ciously limited the threatening inroad on his resources, by deliberately shutting out from the castle Bucklaw and others of the huntsmen, immensely to Bucklaw's rage, and by sending them to the village ale-house for entertainment. This bold effort produced an immediate challenge by Bucklaw of the innocent and unconscious Master of Ravenswood. The messenger who bore this challenge, one Captain Craigengelt (already introduced in the story), however, encountered Caleb, who returned from Wolf's Hope in time to exclude him from the tower. Caleb's strategy in securing provisions from a christening feast at the chief villager's house should be read as Scott has described it, — a housekeeping adventure that had a counterpart in fact. The dinner, necessarily long delayed, was served, and attended with results and incidents far more important than those caused by the butler in his struggles with adversity, for meanwhile Edgar of Ravenswood became reconciled to Sir William Ashton, and accepted the latter's invitation to return with him to Ravenswood Castle. The Master's decision was vehemently opposed by his faithful servant, who, among other dissuasive words, quoted an ancient prophecy.

"Thomas the Rhymer," said Caleb, "whose tongue couldna be fause, spoke the word of your house that will e'en prove ower true if you go to Ravenswood." And "with a quavering voice" he

repeated an old saying respecting the family,

"When the last Laird of Ravenswood to Ravenswood shall ride,

And woo a dead maiden to be his bride,

He shall stable his steed in the Kelpie's flow,

And his name shall be lost for evermoe !"

"I know the Kelpie's flow well enough," said the Master; "I suppose, at least, you mean the quicksand betwixt this tower and Wolf's Hope; but why any man in his senses should stable a steed there"

"Oh, never speer ony thing about that, sir," interposed Caleb. "God forbid we should ken what the prophecy means; but just bide you at hame."

But the Master did not bide there. With the strange rhyme ringing, he went to the ominous mansion. There he grew more and more enamoured with the daughter of its new lord; and, although again weirdly warned - then by the sibyl-like Alice Gray -to quit the Ashton family, he remained, and loved more ardently, and blindly perhaps, until at the Mermaid's Fountain- - that place

of fatal associations to his family — he plighted his troth with Lucy Ashton. She was indeed one for whom a less impulsive man than Edgar Ravenswood might cherish irresistible passion. She was, wrote Scott, one whose "exquisitely beautiful, yet somewhat girlish features, were formed to express peace of mind, serenity, and indifference to the tinsel of worldly pleasure. Her locks, which were of shadowy gold, divided on a brow of exquisite whiteness, like a gleam of broken and pallid sunshine upon a hill of snow. The expression of the countenance was in the last degree gentle, soft, timid, and feminine, and seemed rather to shrink from the most casual look of a stranger, than to court his admiration. Something there was of a Madonna cast, perhaps the result of delicate health, and of residence in a family where the dispositions of the inmates were fiercer, more active and energetic than her own." Loving legendary and romantic tales, she delighted to conjure around her their scenes of ardent affection or picturesque adventure. In these, she seemed living with her lover, one capable of inspiring most captivatingly her imagination. From this dream of delight, however, both were rudely awakened, by the appearance of Lady Ashton at the castle, from which she had been some time absent. Penetrating, proud, and determined, she soon realized the position of affairs, and how this conflicted with her own designs. Dismissing Ravenswood from the castle, she soon made her daughter aware that a suit of Bucklaw for her hand, and thus for alliance of his estates with those of the Ashtons, was to be pressed speedily to matrimonial consummation. At this juncture, the Marquis of A—, accompanied by a powerful friend, visited Wolf's Crag. Caleb's artifices were exhibited again there instead of much hospitality; but Ravenswood formed with these guests certain new arrangements that promised, in some good measure, restoration of his fortunes, and attainment of a position that could hardly be slightingly viewed by Lady Ashton herself. In furtherance of these arrangements he went to Edinburgh with the marquis, and thence to the continent on state affairs, one of the first developments of which was the removal of Sir William Ashton from the office of Lord Keeper of Scotland.

Meanwhile the unhappy Lucy grew ill, enduring all the misery of wounded love and of tyranny that was forcing her from a union that would be bliss to a doom that she regarded with horror. But her unrelenting mother urged forward the ambitious plans by which

increase of estate should be obtained, until the catastrophe came. In presence of the family, the distressed young lady was obliged to sign a marriage contract with Bucklaw. But while her hand was tracing the signature, "the hasty tramp of a horse was heard at the gate, succeeded by a step in the outer gallery, and a voice, which, in a commanding tone, bore down the opposition of the menials. The pen dropped from Lucy's fingers, as she exclaimed, with a faint shriek, He is come! he is come!'" and Edgar of Ravenswood entered.

Let one when in the quaint rooms at Wintoun House, with their great fireplaces and heavy mouldings, or at Dunglass or some other impressive mansion of the seventeenth century, imagine the meeting of these lovers, and the outburst of impassioned feeling with which the injured lord encountered the cruel wrong done him and her who was dearest to him; imagine the atrocious ambition of the proud mother, the fatally false positions into which she forced her distracted daughter and the deceived suitor; and, finally, the parting of the lovers, separated in mutual misunderstanding by these odious means. "I am still Edgar Ravenswood," he had said to Miss Ashton; "that Edgar Ravenswood, who, for your affection, renounced the dear ties by which injured honor bound him to seek vengeance. I am that Ravenswood, who, for your sake, forgave, nay, clasped hands in friendship with, the oppressor and pillager of his house the traducer and murderer of his father; . . . that Ravenswood to whom you granted the solemn engagement, which you now desire to retract and cancel." Lucy's bloodless lips could only falter out the words, "It was my mother." The fierce will and cold heart of Lady Ashton soon accomplished her purpose. She, and an attending clergyman, declared that the new contract was Miss Ashton's free act. Immediately the lovers returned to each other signed papers and the halves of a broken coin, evidences of their engagement. Edgar of Ravenswood, wronged, deceived, desperate, left the Ashtons, feeling the agony of love betrayed, and, keener than ever before, his sacrifices so worse than unavailingly made; "the honor of an ancient family, the urgent advice of" his "best friends" all "in vain used to sway" his "resolution. Neither the arguments of reason, nor the portents of superstition have shaken my fidelity," he said to her whom he had lost. dead have arisen to warn me, and their warning has been despised." Still he had been faithful to her and to the promise he had

"The very

made her; but then, beguiled while he left her, to final words upbraiding her for breaking as he, most sadly mistaken, believed -the vow she had made, praying God that she might "not become a world's wonder for this act of wilful and deliberate perjury."

While we remain - as we may be supposed yet to remain - by the crumbling walls of Fast Castle, we can imagine the last Ravenswood, with the portentous words of the Rhymer's prophecy haunting him, closing the tragic story of the romantic and intense affection that, even to her sad death, bound Lucy Ashton to him. And there, too, we can imagine, mingled with the wild, deep bass of the rolling surge below, the sorrowful tones of those plaintive harmonies that Donizetti has given to her in "Presso alla tomba io sono;" and Edgar's words, "Tomba degli avi miei, l' ultimo avanzo d' un stirpe infelice, deh! raccogliete voi ;" and those thrilling notes expressing his strong, true passion,

-

"Tu, che a Dio spiegasti l' ali,

O bell' alma innamorata."

Nor can we there refuse to remember the aged and faithful steward, who, when his master had gone for ever, lingered around the deserted castle "with a fidelity sometimes displayed by the canine race, but seldom by human beings," and wore out the short remnant of his life sorrowing over the fate of the race for which he had lived.

And ever where the winds sweep resounding across the great hills of East Lothian, or the broader expanse of the German Sea; where they rustle through the upland heather, or fan the grass on the cliffs under the walls of Fast Castle, will they tell the mournful and touching story, and breathe the plaintive requiem, of "The Bride of Lammermoor."

THO

XXXVII.

FROM SCOTLAND TO ENGLAND.

HOSE who follow the route sketched on these pages are supposed to leave Scotland now, after visits to nearly all the scenery and objects in that country associated with the creations of Sir Walter Scott, or celebrated for remains of its ancient art, or