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Wizard. LOCHIEL, Lochiel, beware of the day
When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle array;
For a field of the dead rushes red on my sight,
And the clans of Culloden are scattered in fight.
They rally, they bleed, for their kingdom and crown;
Woe, woe to the riders that trample them down.
Proud Cumberland prances, insulting the slain,
And their hoof-beaten bosoms are trod to the plain.
But hark! through the fast-flashing lightning of war,
What steed to the desert flies frantic and far?
'Tis thine, O Glenullin, whose bride shall await,
Like a love-lighted watch-fire, all night at the gate.
A steed comes at morning: no rider is there;
But its bridle is red with the sign of despair.
Weep, Albin, to death and captivity led — ·
O, weep; but thy tears cannot number the dead;
For a merciless sword on Culloden shall wave
Culloden, that reeks with the blood of the brave.

Lochiel. Go, preach to the coward, thou death-telling seer;
Or, if gory Culloden so dreadful appear,

Draw, dotard, around thy old, wavering sight

This mantle, to cover the phantoms of fright.

Wiz. Ha! laugh'st thou, Lochiel, my vision to scorn?
Proud bird of the mountain, thy plume shall be torn.

Say, rushed the bold eagle exultingly forth

From his home in the dark-rolling clouds of the north?
Lo, the death-shot of foemen outspeeding, he rode

Companionless, bearing destruction abroad;
But down let him stoop from his havoc on high,
Ah, home let him speed; for the spoiler is nigh.
Why flames the far summit? Why shoot to the blast
Those embers, like stars from the firmament cast?
'Tis the fire-shower of ruin, all dreadfully driven
From his eyrie, that beacons the darkness of heaven.
O, crested Lochiel, the peerless in might,
Whose banners arise on the battlements' height,
Heaven's fire is around thee, to blast and to burn.
Return to thy dwelling, all lonely return;

For the blackness of ashes shall mark where it stood,
And a wild mother scream o'er her famishing brood.

Loc. False wizard, avaunt! I have marshalled my clan ;
Their swords are a thousand, their bosoms are one;
They are true to the last of their blood and their breath,
And, like reapers, descend to the harvest of death.
Then, welcome be Cumberland's steed to the shock;
Let him dash his proud foam like a wave on the rock;
But woe to his kindred, and woe to his cause,
When Albin her claymore indignantly draws;
When her bonneted chieftains to victory crowd-
Clanronald the dauntless, and Moray the proud,
All plaided and plumed in their tartan array.

-

Wiz. Lochiel, Lochiel, beware of the day;
For, dark and despairing, my sight I may seal,
But man cannot cover what God would reveal.
'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before.
I tell thee Culloden's dread echoes shall ring
With the bloodhounds that bark for thy fugitive king.
Lo, anointed by Heaven with the vials of wrath,
Behold where he flies on his desolate path.

Now, in darkness and billows, he sweeps from my sight;
Rise, rise, ye wild tempests, and cover his flight.

'Tis finished. Their thunders are hushed on the moors; Culloden is lost, and my country deplores.

But where is the iron-bound prisoner? where?

For the red eye of battle is shut in despair.

Say, mounts he the ocean wave, banished, forlorn,
Like a limb from his country cast bleeding and torn?
Ah, no; for a darker departure is near :

The war-drum is muffled, and black is the bier ;
His death-bell is tolling. O, mercy! dispel

Yon sight that it freezes my spirit to tell.
Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs,
And his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims.
Accursed be the fagots that blaze at his feet,
Where his heart shall be thrown ere it ceases to beat,
With the smoke of its ashes to poison the gale —

Loc. Down, soothless insulter! I trust not the tale;
For never shall Albin a destiny meet

So black with dishonor, so foul with retreat.

Though my perishing ranks should be strewed in their gore, Like ocean-weeds heaped on the surf-beaten shore,

Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains,

While the kindling of life in his bosom remains,

Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low,

With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe,

And, leaving in battle no blot on his name,

Look proudly to Heaven from the death-bed of fame.

THE SOLDIER'S DREAM.

OUR bugles sang truce, for the night-cloud had lowered, And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky; And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered, The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.

When reposing, that night, on my pallet of straw,
By the wolf-scaring fagot that guarded the slain,
At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw,
And thrice, ere the morning, I dreamt it again.

Methought from the battle-field's dreadful array
Far, far I had roamed on a desolate track.
'Twas autumn, and sunshine arose on the way

To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back.

I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft

In life's morning march, when my bosom was young; I heard my own mountain goats bleating aloft,

And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung.

Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore
From my home and my weeping friends never to part;
My little ones kissed me a thousand times o'er,

And my wife sobbed aloud, in her fullness of heart.

Stay, stay with us. Rest; thou art weary and worn!
And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay;
But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn,
And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.

VALEDICTORY STANZAS TO J. P. KEMBLE, ESQ.
COMPOSED FOr a public meeting held JUNE, 1817.

PRIDE of the British stage,
A long and last adieu !
Whose image brought the heroic age
Revived to Fancy's view.
Like fields refreshed with dewy light
When the sun smiles his last,
Thy parting presence makes more
bright

Our memory of the past;
And memory conjures feelings up
That wine or music need not swell,
As high we lift the festal cup
To Kemble-fare thee well.

His was the spell o'er hearts
Which only Acting lends-
The youngest of the sister arts,
Where all their beauty blends;
For ill can Poetry express

Full many a tone of thought sublime,
And Painting, mute and motionless,
Steals but a glance of time.
But, by the mighty actor brought,
Illusion's perfect triumphs come—
Verse ceases to be airy thought,
And Sculpture to be dumb.

Time may again revive,

But ne'er eclipse, the charm
When Cato spoke in him alive,

Or Hotspur kindled warm.
What soul was not resigned entire
To the deep sorrows of the Moor?
What English heart was not on fire
With him at Agincourt?

And yet a majesty possessed

His transport's most impetuous tone,
And to each passion of the breast

The Graces give their zone.

High were the task - too high,
Ye conscious bosoms here,
In words to paint your memory
Of Kemble and of Lear;

But who forgets that white, discrowned head,
Those bursts of Reason's half-distinguished

glare,

Those tears upon Cordelia's bosom shed,

In doubt more touching than despair,

If 'twas reality he felt?

Had Shakespeare's self amidst you been, Friends, he had seen you melt,

And triumphed to have seen.

WILLIAM HAZLITT.

William Hazlitt was born in Shropshire in 1778, the son of a Unitarian clergyman. He first attempted painting, but afterwards turned his attention to literary and artistic criticism, and lived by his contributions to journals and reviews. His style is forcible and often picturesque; but he frequently fails to carry conviction, from his want of moderation and judgment. The first specimen here printed furnishes a case in point. The doctrine has a certain truth, but is not wholly true; the lesson of the article is a useful one, but the statements must be received with grains of allowance. His best known works are Table Talk, in two volumes, and The Round Table. He wrote also an elaborate Life of Napoleon, in four volumes; A View of the English Stage; Lectures on the English Poets, and on the Elizabethan Age; Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, and many other treatises. They are all distinguished by great critical ability, and have been collected in a series of volumes, edited by his son. He died in 1830. An edition of his miscellaneous essays, &c., was published in five volumes, Philadelphia, 1848.

ON THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED.

[From Table Talk.]

You might as well as the paralytic to leap from his chair and throw away his crutch, or, without a miracle, "to take up his bed and walk," as expect the learned reader to lay down his book and think for himself. He clings to it for his intellectual support; and his dread of being left to himself is like the horror of a vacuum. He can only breathe a learned atmosphere, as other men breathe common air. He is a borrower of sense. He has no ideas of his own, and must live on those of other people. The habit of supplying our ideas from foreign sources "enfeebles all internal strength of thought," as a course of dram-drinking destroys the tone of the stomach. The faculties of the mind, when not exerted, or when cramped by custom and authority, become listless, torpid, and unfit for the purposes of thought or action. Can we wonder at the languor and lassitude which is thus produced by a life of learned sloth and ignorance, by poring over lines and syllables that excite little more idea or interest than if they were the characters of an unknown tongue, till the eye closes on vacancy, and the book drops from the feeble hand? I would rather be a wood-cutter, or the meanest hind, that all day "sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and at night sleeps in Elysium," than wear out my life so, 'twixt dreaming and awake. The learned author differs from the learned student in this that the one transcribes what the other reads. The learned are mere literary drudges. If you set them upon original composition, their heads turn, they know not where they are. The indefatigable readers of books are like the everlasting copiers of pictures, who, when they attempt to

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