Yet still the female bosom lent,
And loved to borrow, ornament;

Still was its inner world a place

Reached by the dews of heavenly grace;
Still pity to this last retreat

Clove fondly; to his favourite seat
Love wound his way by soft approach,
Beneath a massier Highland Broach.

When alternations came of rage

Yet fiercer, in a darker age;

And feuds, where, clan encountering clan,

The weaker perished to a man;

For maid and mother, when despair

Might else have triumphed, baffling prayer,
One small possession lacked not power,
Provided in a calmer hour,

To meet such need as might befall
Roof, raiment, bread, or burial :

For woman, even of tears bereft,

The hidden silver Broach was left.

As generations come and go,

Their arts, their customs, ebb and flow;

Fate, fortune, sweep strong powers away,
And feeble, of themselves, decay;
What poor abodes the heir-loom hide,
In which the castle once took pride!
Tokens, once kept as boasted wealth,
If saved at all, are saved by stealth.
Lo! ships, from seas by nature barred,
Mount along ways by man prepared;
And in far-stretching vales, whose streams
Seek other seas, their canvass gleams.
Lo! busy towns spring up, on coasts
Thronged yesterday by airy ghosts;
Soon, like a lingering star forlorn
Among the novelties of morn,

While young delights on old encroach,
Will vanish the last Highland Broach.

But when, from out their viewless bed,
Like vapours, years have rolled and spread;
And this poor verse, and worthier lays,
Shall yield no light of love or praise,
Then, by the spade, or cleaving plough,
Or torrent from the mountain's brow,

Or whirlwind, reckless what his might
Entombs, or forces into light,

Blind Chance, a volunteer ally,
That oft befriends Antiquity,

And clears Oblivion from reproach,
May render back the Highland Broach.

The exact resemblance which the old Broach (still in use. though rarely met with, among the Highlanders) bears to the Roman Fibula must strike every one, and concurs with the plaid and kilt to recall to mind the communication which the ancient Romans had with this remote country. How much the Broach is sometimes prized by persons in humble stations may be gathered from an occurrence mentioned to me by a female friend. She had had an opportunity of benefiting a poor old woman in her own hut, who, wishing to make a return, said to her daughter, in Erse, in a tone of plaintive earnestness, “ I would give any thing I have, but I hope she does not wish for my Broach!" and, uttering these words, she put her hand upon the Broach which fastened her kerchief, and which, she imagined, had attracted the eye of her benefactress.

NOTES.

Highland Hut. Page 21.

THIS Sonnet describes the exterior of a Highland hut, as often seen under morning or evening sunshine. The reader may not be displeased with the following extract from the journal of a Lady, my fellow-traveller in Scotland, in the autumn of 1803, which accurately describes, under particular circumstances, the beautiful appearance of the interior of one of these rude habitations.

"On our return from the Trossachs the evening began to darken, and it rained so heavily that we were completely wet before we had come two miles, and it was dark when we landed with our boatman, at his hut upon the banks of Loch Katrine. I was faint from cold: the good woman had provided, according to her promise, a better fire than we had found in the morning; and, indeed, when I sat down in the chimney corner of her smoky biggin, I thought I had never felt more comfortable in my life: a pan of coffee was boiling for us, and, having put our clothes in the way of drying, we all sat down thankful for a shelter. We could not prevail upon our boatman, the master of the house, to draw near the fire, though he was cold and wet, or to suffer his wife to get him dry clothes till she had served us, which she did most willingly, though not very expeditiously.

"A Cumberland man of the same rank would not have had such a notion of what was fit and right in his own house, or, if he had, one would have accused him of servility; but in the Highlander it only seemed like politeness (however erroneous

and painful to us), naturally growing out of the dependence of the inferiors of the clan upon their laird: he did not, however, refuse to let his wife bring out the whisky bottle for his refreshment, at our request. "She keeps a dram," as the phrase is indeed, I believe there is scarcely a lonely house by the wayside, in Scotland, where travellers may not be accommodated with a dram. We asked for sugar, butter, barleybread, and milk; and, with a smile and a stare more of kindness than wonder, she replied, "Ye'll get that," bringing each article separately. We caroused our cups of coffee, laughing like children at the strange atmosphere in which we were: the smoke came in gusts, and spread along the walls; and above our heads in the chimney (where the hens were roosting) like clouds in the sky. We laughed and laughed again, in spite of the smarting of our eyes, yet had a quieter pleasure in observing the beauty of the beams and rafters gleaming between the clouds of smoke: they had been crusted over, and varnished by many winters, till, where the firelight fell upon them, they had become as glossy as black rocks, on a sunny day, cased in ice. When we had eaten our supper we sat about half an hour, and I think I never felt so deeply the blessing of a hospitable welcome and a warm fire. The man of the house repeated from time to time that we should often tell of this night when we got to our homes, and interposed praises of his own lake, which he had more than once, when we were returning in the boat, ventured to say was "bonnier than Loch Lomond." Our companion from the Trossachs, who, it appeared, was an Edinburgh drawing master going, during the vacation, on a pedestrian tour to John o' Groat's house, was to sleep in the barn with my fellowtravellers, where the man said he had plenty of dry hay. I do not believe that the hay of the Highlands is ever very dry, but this year it had a better chance than usual: wet or dry, however, the next morning they said they had slept comfortgo ably. When I went to bed, the mistress, desiring me to " ben," attended me with a candle, and assured me that the bed was dry, though not "sic as I had been used to." It was of