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Even in the visions of the night
I saw fell death wide sweeping;
And all the matrons of the land
And all the virgins weeping."
And now she heard the massy gates
Harsh on their hinges turning;
And now through all the castle heard
The woeful voice of mourning.

Aghast she started from her bed,
The fatal tidings dreading;

"O speak," she cried, "My father's slain! I see him bleeding!"

I

see,

"A pale corpse on the sullen shore,
At morn, fair maid, I left him;
Even at the threshold of his gate
The foe of life bereft him.

"Bold, in the battle's front he fell,
With many a wound deformed:
A braver knight, nor better man,
This fair isle ne'er adorned."

While thus he spake, the grief-struck maić
A deadly swoon invaded;

Lost was the lustre of her eyes,

And all her beauty faded.

Sad was the sight, and sad the news,
And sad was our complaining;
But oh! for thee, my native land,
What woes are still remaining!
But why complain? the hero's soul
Is high in heaven shining:
May Providence defend our isle
From all our foes designing.

ELLIOT, JEAN, or JANE, a Scottish poetess, was born at Minto House, Teviotdale, in 1727; and died, either there or at Mount Teviot, the residence of her brother, Admiral John Elliot, March 29, 1805. She was a daughter of Sir Gilbert Elliot, second baronet of Minto; and sister to Sir Gilbert the poet mentioned above. It is said that she early gave evidence of unusual penetration and sagacity, and that her father, Lord Justice Clerk of Scotland, took a pride in her criticisms on his law papers. Once, when she was about nineteen, she displayed much strength of character and presence of mind by entertaining with graceful courtesy a party of Jacobites in search of her father as an obnoxious Whig. He had had time to escape to the neighboring crags and conceal himself, and the behavior of his daughter completely outwitted his pursuers, who withdrew without accomplishing the object of their mission. Sir Gilbert was himself a man of literary tastes. It was Gilbert who is said to have suggested to Jane the subject of her exquisite ballad The Flowers of the Forest, her only known poem. On account of the quaint pathos and the touching allusions to the remote past, readers were long inclined to believe the Flowers of the Forest was a relic of antiquity. Burns was, however, one of the first to insist that this ballad was a modern (163)

VOL. IX.-II

composition, and when Sir Walter Scott wrote his Border Minstrelsy he inserted it (in 1803) as by a lady of family in Roxburghshire. Together with Scott, Ramsay of Ochtertyre and Dr. Somerville share the credit of discovering the authorship of the famous ballad.

THE FLOWERS OF THE FOREST.

I've heard the lilting at our yowe-milking,
Lasses a-lilting before the dawn of day;
But now they are moaning on ilka green loaning—
The Flowers of the Forest are a' wede away.

At buchts, in the morning, nae blithe lads are scorning,

The lasses are lonely, and dowie, and wae;
Nae daffin', nae gabbin', but sighing and sabbing,
Ilk ane lifts her leglin and hies her away.

In hairst, at the shearing, nae youths now are jeering,
The bandsters are lyart, and runkled, and gray;
At fair, or at preaching, nae wooing, nae fleeching—
The flowers of the Forest are a' wede away.

At e'en, at the gloaming, nae swankies are roaming,
'Bout stacks wi' the lasses at bogle to play,
But ilk ane sits drearie, lamenting her dearie-
The Flowers of the Forest are a' wede away.

Dule and wae for the order, sent our lads to the Border!

The English, for ance, by guile wan the day;

The Flowers of the Forest, that foucht aye the fore

most,

The prime o' our land, are cauld in the clay.

We hear nae mair lilting at our yowe-milking,
Women and bairns are heartless and wae;
Sighing and moaning on ilka green loaning-
The Flowers of the Forest are a' wede away.

ELLIOTT, CHARLES WYLLYS, an American miscellaneous writer, a lineal descendant of John Eliot, the "Apostle to the Indians," born at Guilford, Conn., May 27, 1817; died August 20, 1883. After engaging in mercantile business in New York, he became a pupil in landscape gardening of A. J. Downing, and in 1853 was appointed one of the commissioners for laying out the Central Park in New York. About 1872 he took up his residence at Cambridge, Mass., as manager of the Household Art Company of Boston. Besides being a frequent contributor to periodicals, he has written books on a great variety of subjects, some of them having been published anonymously. Among his acknowledged works are Cottages and Cottage Life (1848); Mysteries, or Glimpses of the Supernatural (1852); St. Domingo, its Revolution and Hero (1855); The New England History (1857); Wind and Whirlwind (1868); American Interiors (1875); Pottery and Porcelain (1878).

Speaking of Elliott's New England History, Professor Adams, of Cornell University, in his Manual of Historical Literature, says: "This work is not without real merits. The chapters on the discovery of the continent by the Northmen give a good view of the foundations on which a belief in the discovery rested at the time the work was written."

THE FIRST SPRING AT PLYMOUTH.

With the return of spring came the sailing of the Mayflower. They had struggled through the winter, and the ship had always been in sight, a place of refuge and relief in any desperate emergency. While she lay in the bay, the pilgrims had a hold upon friends, civilization, and Christianity; but let the ship once depart, and on the one hand there would be the broad, deep, tempestuous sea, and on the other, wide unknown forests, peopled by savages and wild beasts. Port Royal was the nearest point where they could find white men, and that was away some five hundred miles. The future was before them with all its uncertainties, which they must march forward to meet; yet not one of the number returned to the ship. The sailing of the Mayflower surpasses in dignity, though not in desperation, the burning of his ships by Cortés. This small band of men, women, and children were grouped on the shore, watching her as she slowly set her sails and crept out of the bay and from their sight. When the sun set in the western forest, she disappeared in the distant blue. A few Indians. might have been hovering on the neighboring heights, watching the departure of the great sea-bird; but the last eyes that bade farewell to the Mayflower were those of women.

But the sky was not inky, nor was their future desperate. The sun still shone gloriously, the moon still bathed the earth with light, and the stars kept their ceaseless vigils. Spring here, as of old, followed winter; the murmurings of the streams was heard, and the song of the turtle; birds builded their nests, the tender grass sprung up under their feet, and the trees budded and burst forth into wondrous beauty. God was over alltheir God, their friend, their protector here as in the Old World; why should he not be more their friend than ever before? Life had not been altogether lovely to them in the past; it had not been pleasant in England to be put into dungeons, or to have one's ears dug out, or to be plundered by low-bred policemen, or to be hunted like wild beasts into mountains and holes of the

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