Zachary, according to his own account, could have slept on a cannon; so the dame advised him to take the stairs for his resting-place, and use the threshold of the door, at their top, for a pillow, in order that he might be near enough to hear her call in case she wanted him. He would have preferred going down into the grotto, but the dame would be obeyed; and in a very few minutes his snoring informed her, that, he did not sleep the worse for her having selected his restingplace. Rosalind slept as little as it can be supposed she could do in her present novelty of situation, and with her mind thus ill at ease; as soon as the first streaks of returning day beamed through the casement, she left her couch. She wandered about her apartment, till the light of day became sufficiently pow erful to invite her to the window. first objects which struck her sight, were The above a cluster of trees that grew at their base, and just tinged with the yellow gleam of the rising sun; beyond them rose majestic hills, cloathed with oak and beech, which retired into a long perspective, and ultimately seemed to mix themselves with the clouds. Immediately before the window at which she stood, lay a flat country, of which the verdure was scanty, and the vegetation barren; it extended almost as far as her eye could accompany it, and at length seemed to terminate at the foot of some craggy steeps. Having gazed some time on the scene which this casement afforded her, she went to the other, which, on the foregoing evening, she had imagined to have been obscured by some outward ob'ject, and she found that a bush of holly had been courted to twine its spreading branches before it, so as almost to deprive it of the power of giving light to the apartment it was in. The ground imme diately diately before the cottage was marked by no track which bespoke its door to have been lately in use; unchecked weeds were growing thickly around it, and the swallows flew to its roof with a security that seemed to bespeak that they had never met with any interruption from its inhabitants. Dame Edith, who had slept but indifferently during the night, was endeavouring to make herself amends in the morn ing, and therefore Rosalind moved about unnoticed by her; as for Zachary, he was already at breakfast in the grotto below. When Rosalind retired from the window, several papers fastened upon the walls attracted her attention; she went up to them, and found that they contained different pieces of poetry; some of them she perused, they pleased her fancy, and she sought for others. In pursuing her amusement, to her surprise, she encountered some lines which were perfectly familiar to her. They had been given to her by her her lost Edward; he had informed her, that they had been written by the old man who had brought him up, and at the supplication of whom, when on his deathbed, Lord William de Mowbray had taken him under his protection. These were not only the same lines, but in the same hand-writing of those which Edward had given to her as the composition of old Matthews. Rosalind eagerly examined, in turn, each separate piece contained on the walls of the cottage, and found the characters of them all to have been evidently traced by the same hand. The lines with which she was already acquainted were the following THE SEA SIDE. When evening's balmy breezes mildly blow, Where billows foam, or gently rolls the tide. Sooth'd Sooth'd by the scene, discordant passions cease, Who can the starr'd expanse unmov'd behold, - Of life, an emblem is th' incessant change From high to low, through which the billows range! Yon distant sail, an image too appears, Thus in the noon-tide of our early days, Ah! happy moments, sources of delight! VOL. III. Less |