Sidebilder
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

He stepped between-"Nay, Douglas, nay,
Steal not my 'proselyte away!

The riddle 'tis my right to read,

That brought this happy chance to speed.—
Yes, Ellen, when disguised I stray 5
In life's more low but happier way,
"Tis under name which veils my power;
Nor falsely veils-for Stirling's tower
Of yore the name of Snowdoun claims,
And Normans call me James Fitz-James.
Thus watch I o'er insulted laws,
Thus learn to right the injured cause."
Then, in a tone apart and low:-

Ah, little traitress! none must know
What idle dream, what lighter thought,
What vanity full dearly bought,

Joined to thine eye's dark witchcraft, drew
My spell-bound steps to Ben-venue,
In dangerous hour, and all but gave
Thy Monarch's life to mountain glaive!"
Aloud he spoke :-"Thou still dost hold
That little talisman of gold,

Pledge of my faith, Fitz-James's ring-
What seeks fair Ellen of the King?"
Full well the conscious maiden guessed
He probed the weakness of her breast;
But, with that consciousness, there came
A lightening of her fears for Græme,
And more she deemed the Monarch's ire
Kindled 'gainst him who, for her sire,
•Rebellious broad-sword boldly drew;
And, to her generous feeling true,
She craved the grace of Roderick Dhu.—
"Forbear thy suit ;-the King of kings
Alone can stay life's parting wings.

I know his heart, I know his hand,

Have shared his cheer, and proved his brand ;— My fairest earldom would I give

To bid Clan-Alpine's Chieftain live !—

Hast thou no other boon to crave, No other captive friend to save ?”— Blushing, she turned her from the King, And to the Douglas gave the ring, As if she wished her sire to speak The suit that stained her glowing cheek."Nay, then, my pledge has lost its force, And stubborn Justice holds her course! Malcolm, come forth !"-And, at the word, Down kneeled the Græme to Scotland's Lord.

"For thee, rash youth, no suppliant sues;
From thee may Vengeance claim her dues,
Who, nurtured underneath our smile,
Hast paid our care by 'treacherous wile,
And sought, amid thy faithful clan,
A refuge for an outlawed man,
'Dishonouring thus thy loyal name-
Fetters and warder for the Græme!"
His chain of gold the King unstrung,
The links o'er Malcolm's neck he flung;
Then gently drew the glittering band,
And laid the clasp on Ellen's hand!

announcing, proclaim'ing. | indignities, in'sults.

bewil'dered, confused'. bul'wark, protect'or. captive, imprisoned. con'sciousness,knowledge. dishon'ouring, disgraç'ing. dismissed', driv'en away. in'cidents, occur'rences.

induced', prevailed' upon.
min'strelsy, recita'tion.
misbelieving, doubt'ful.
nurtured, nour'ished.
pros'elyte, con'vert.
rap'tures, trans'ports.
rebell'ious, sedi'tious.

'Might well.-Supply which before these words. Port, in the previous line, means bearing, presence.

SIR WALTER SCOTT. ()

slan'derous, calum'nious.
stubborn, inflex'ible.
sup pliant, beseech'ing.
tal'is
isman, charm.

throng'ing, crowd'ing.
treach'erous, faith'less.
va'cancy, emp'tiness.
witch'craft, sorcery.

5 When disguised I stray.-King James V. was fond of roaming in disguise amongst his peasantry, partly to gratify

2 Sheen, bright, sparkling. The word his love of adventure, partly to learn the comes from shine.

* Snowdoun, an old name for Stirling Castle, probably derived from the romantic legend which connected Stirling with King Arthur. The ring within which jousting used to be practised in the Castle Park of Stirling is still called the Round Table.

4 His rebel kinsmen.-Lord James Douglas of Bothwell is represented as uncle of the Earl of Angus, and of his brother George Douglas, who had kept King James a prisoner at Falkland Palace for two years, during which they governed the country in his name. When the King escaped, and assumed the reins of government, the Douglases were banished. The James Douglas of the poem is a purely fictitious personage; but the Earl of Angus had an uncle (Archibald Douglas of Kilspindie) who was to some extent the model of Scott's character.

actual condition of his people. His easy manners gained for him the title of "The King of the Commons." His favourite name, however, was the Gudeman (or farmer) of Ballangeich," from a steep pass so called leading up to the Castle of Stirling.

6 Fitz-James, son of James. Fitz was the prefix used by the Normans to express family or descent, as Mac is used by the Scottish and O' by the Irish Celts, and the suffix -sson by the Scandinavians, whence the English -son in Johnson, Wilson. Fitz is said to be the same word as the French fils, a son, which comes from Latin filius. These family names are called patronymics, a word of Greek origin meaning fathernames.

7

Grace, pardon; lit. favour, esteem; and usually attributed to him who grants it, not, as here, to him who receives it.

RHETORICAL PASSAGES.

PART I.

THE following pieces have been selected as examples of modern parliamentary, pulpit, and platform eloquence. It is recommended that these passages should be used alternately with the poetical extracts in the volume, as pieces for rhetorical reading and recitation.

'PANEGYRIC ON MARIE ANTOINETTE.

Ir is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France then the Dauphiness1at Versailles;2 and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, 'decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in-glittering like the morning star, full of life, and 'splendour, and joy.

Oh, what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation, and that fall! Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should live to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of 'cavaliers. I thought ten thousand ords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge e en a look that threatened her with insult.

[ocr errors]

But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is 'extinguished for ever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex-that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that 'subordination of the heart-which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic 'enterprise is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound; which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity; which ennobled whatever it touched;

and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its

[blocks in formation]

1 The Dauphiness, the wife of the Dau- | October 1793, ten months after her husband phin; the title borne by the heir-apparent had met the same fate.

chiefly by Louis XIV. between 1661 and 1687. Marie Antoinette and her husband were seized there by the mob on 6th October 1789, and were led in triumph to Paris.

to the French crown prior to 1830. Marie 2 Versailles, a town near Paris, faAntoinette (Ma'-re An'-twoi-net), the Dau-mous for its magnificent palace, built phiness here referred to, was a daughter of Maria Theresa of Germany. Her marriage with the Dauphin (in 1770) was the result of a compact between France and Germany against England. In 1774 she ascended the French throne, with her husband, Louis XVI. When the Revolution broke out in 1789, she was a special object of popular fury; which explains Burke's allusions to the disasters and insults that befell her. But she bore her trials with singular fortitude and dignity. She endured the hardships of imprisonment for four years, and was guillotined at Paris in

3 Edmund Burke, a great writer, orator, and statesman. He was born at Dublin in 1730, and died in 1797. He was one of the accusers of Warren Hastings, who was tried for acts of oppression and injustice while Governor-General of India. His chief works are Reflections on the Revolution in France, and an Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful.

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS.

MAN is the direct agent of a wide and continual distress to the lower animals; and the question is, "Can any method be devised for its alleviation ?" On this subject that scriptural image is strikingly realized: "the whole [inferior] creation1 groaning and travailing together in pain" because of him. It signifies naught to the substantive amount of the suffering, whether it be prompted by the hardness of his heart, or only permitted through the heedlessness of his mind. In either way it holds true, not only that the arch-devourer Man stands 'preeminent over the fiercest children of the wilderness as an animal of prey, but that for his lordly and luxurious appetite, as well as for his service or merest curiosity and amusement, Nature must be 'ransacked throughout all her elements. Rather than forego the veriest gratifications of vanity, he will wring them from the anguish of wretched and ill-fated creatures; and whether for the indulgence of his barbaric sensuality or his barbaric splen

dour, he can stalk 'paramount over the sufferings of that 'prostrate creation which has been placed beneath his feet.

These sufferings are really felt. The beasts of the field are not so many automata2 without sensation, so 'constructed as to assume all the natural expressions of it. Nature hath not practised this universal deception upon our species. These poor animals just look, and tremble, and give forth the very indications of suffering that we do. Theirs is the distinct cry of pain. Theirs is the unequivocal physiognomy of pain. They put on the same aspect of terror on the demonstrations of a menaced blow. They exhibit the same distortions of agony after the infliction of it. The bruise, or the burn, or the fracture, or the deep incision, or the fierce encounter with one of equal or of superior strength, affects them similarly to ourselves. Their blood circulates as ours. They have pulsations in various parts of the body as we have. They sicken, and they grow feeble with age, and, finally, they die, just as we do.

They possess the same feelings; and, what exposes them to like sufferings from another quarter, they possess the same 'instincts with our own species. The lioness robbed of her whelps causes the wilderness to ring aloud with the proclamation of her wrongs; or the bird whose little household has been stolen fills and saddens all the grove with melodies of deepest pathos. All this is palpable even to the general and unlearned eye; and when the physiologist lays open the recesses of their system, by means of that scalpel under whose operation they just shrink and are convulsed as any living subject of our own species, there stands forth to view the same sentient apparatus, and furnished with the same conductors for the transmission of feeling from every minutest pore upon the surface.

Theirs is unmixed and unmitigated pain, the agonies of martyrdom without the alleviation of the hopes and the sentiments whereof men are capable. When they lay them down to die, their only fellowship is with suffering; for in the prison-house of their beset and bounded faculties, no relief can be afforded by communion with other interests or other things. The attention does not lighten their distress, as it does that of man, by carrying off his spirit from that existing pungency and pressure which might else be overwhelming. There is but room in their 'mysterious economy for one inmate; and that is, the absorbing sense of their own single and 'concentrated anguish. And so on that bed of torment whereon the wounded

4

« ForrigeFortsett »