has preserved just as much of the ballad, metre as was requisite to give it what

may be termed a rustic air, without the least approach to vulgarity, or to that ruggedness of pauses and accentuation by which the old English ballad is often distinguished.

The story opens with an idea of strict poetical authority, that the primroses growing on Carron's side, where Owen lies interred, are tinged with a purple hue in memory of his fall; and with an allusion to a dirge sung at the annual return of spring, in honour of the youth, by the nymphs of Marlivale. The date

of the events recorded is assigned to the days of William the Lion, king of Scotland, when the earl of Moray is stated to have been a powerful chieftain:

"In fortune rich, in offspring poor,

An only daughter crown'd his bed:"

fair Ellen, the heroine, being his only child. This circumstance, and the lady's

worth, are touched on in a stanza of considerable force:

"Oh! write not poor ;-the wealth that flows In waves of gold round India's throne,

All in her shining breast that glows,

To Ellen's charms were earth and stone."

She is addressed by many suitors of high rank without effect, and is des

tined, according to the prediction of a "wayward sister," to yield her heart to Nithisdale; whom she has not seen, but is doomed to behold in a vision, while sleeping near the banks of the river in a bower constructed with the rapidity of lightning by the "sprite of dreams," and beautifully decorated by magic hands.

This is all conceived and expressed

with a poet's fire, and many of the

stanzas flow with peculiar ease: these for instance;

"In vain by foreign arts assail'd,

No foreign loves her breast beguile;
And England's honest valour fail'd,
Paid with a cold but courteous smile.

"Ah! woe to thee, young Nithisdale,
That o'er thy cheeks those roses stray'd;
Thy breath, the violet of the vale,

Thy voice, the music of the shade:

"Ah! woe to thee, that Ellen's love
Alone to thy soft tale would yield;
For soon those gentle arms shall prove
The conflict of a ruder field!'

"Twas thus a wayward sister spoke,
And cast a rueful glance behind,
As from her dim-wood glen she broke,
And mounted on the moaning wind."

The lines descriptive of Ellen's re

tiring to slumber, and of the accompanying scenery, have always appeared to me of almost unparalleled beauty, and as conveying to the fancy a painting worthy of the best Italian

master:

" "Twas when, on summer's softest eve,
Of clouds that wander'd west away,
Twilight with gentle hand did weave
Her fairy robe of night and day:

"When all the mountain-gales were still,

And the wave slept against the shore;

And the sun, sunk beneath the hill,

Left his last smile on Lemmormore."

The allusion to the power presiding

over dreams, and its wonder-working in

fluence, is very striking: