Page:The Royal Lady's Magazine (Volume 1, 1831).djvu/126

so lovely, that I wept when she left me.' Poor fellow! I can never, never forget the expression that lighted up his pale features, and the vacant brilliancy of his large dark eyes, as he gazed at me while he spoke, and with a cold smile upon his wan lips repeated Yes-she will come again at night-so beautiful, and so happy!' I thought my heart would break!-and yet, what consolation there was to hear him speak at all; and to know that he was emerging from that state of stupor, of benumbed and voiceless sorrow, which had something in it more awful and afflicting than even the delirious ramblings of confirmed insanity."

Here the general ceased; and in the mute attention of his auditors, no less than in the various emotions which betrayed themselves, he might have gathered the thrilling interest that had been excited by his recital.

This volume is the production of an author of acknowledged, but unequal talent; of a man who can sometimes write admirably, but at others, infinitely below mediocrity. The fact is, our Ettrick Shepherd has been taught to believe he has only to put pen to paper, and behold—a miracle! Now this is not exactly the case; and were there no other evidence that it is not, than the volume before us, we should there find enough to vindicate what we have asserted. But our present business is, not to show wherein he has failed, but to gratify our readers with specimens which may show wherein he has succeeded. The following extracts are among the best which the volume affords.

I place this song the first, not on account of any intrinsic merit that it possesses—for there it ranks rather low—but merely because it was my first song, and exceedingly popular when it first appeared. I wrote it when a barefooted lad herding lambs on the Blackhouse Heights, in utter indignation at the threatened invasion from France. But after it had run through the Three Kingdoms, like fire set to heather, for ten or twelve years, no one ever knew or inquired who was the author.—It is set to the old air, "Woo'd an' married an' a'."