Walter Scott

“ Douse the glim!" alarmed those who were on shore, and the lights instantly disappeared.
It was one hour after midnight, and the prospect around was lovely. The grey old towers of the ruin, partly entire, partly broken, here bearing the rusty weather-stains of ages, and there partially mantled with ivy, stretched along the verge of the dark rock which rose on Mannering's right hand. In his front was the quiet bay, whose little waves, crisping and sparkling to the moon-beams, rolled successively along its surface, and dashed with a soft and murmuring ripple against the silvery beach. ”

“ A retires old soldier is always a graceful and respected character. He grumbles a little now and then, but then his is licensed murmuring-were a lawyer, or a physician, or a clergyman, to breathe a complaint of hard luck or want of preferment, a hundred tongues would blame his own incapacity as the cause. But the most stupid veteran that ever faltered out the thrice-told tale of a siege and a battle, and a cock and a bottle, is listened to with sympathy and reverence, when he shakes his thin locks, and talks with indignation of the boys that are put over his head. ”

“ Mr Dinmont had probably made a visit there either of business or pleasure. "I wish," thought Brown, "the good farmer had staid till I came up; I should not have been sorry to ask him a few questions about the road, which seems to grow wilder and wilder."
In truth, nature, as if she had designed this track of country to be the barrier between two hostile nations, has stamped upon it a character of wildness and desolation. The hills are neither high nor rocky, but the land is all heath and morass; the huts poor and mean, and at a great distance from each other. ”

“ It was long since Mannering had been in the street of a crowded metropolis, which, with its noise and clamour, its sounds of trade, of revelry and of licence, its variety of lights, and the eternally changing bustle of its hundred groups, offers, by night especially, a spectacle, which, though composed of the most vulgar materials when they are separately considered, has, when they are combined, a striking and powerful effect on the imagination. ”

“ Bertram at this instant entered the room. "Yes, look at him well—he is your father's living image; and as God has deprived you of your dear parents—O my children, love one another!"
"It is indeed my father's face and form," said Lucy, turning very pale; Bertram ran to support her—the Dominie to fetch water to throw upon her face— (which in his haste he took from the boiling tea-urn) when fortunately her colour returning rapidly, saved her from the application of his ill-judged remedy. "I conjure you to tell me, Mr Sampson," she said, in an interrupted yet solemn voice, "is this my brother?" ”

“ Now Lucy Bertram has nothing of this kindly sympathy—nothing at all, my dearest Matilda. Were I sick of a fever, she would sit up night after night to nurse me with the most unrepining patience; but with the fever of the heart, which my Matilda has soothed so often, she has no more sympathy than her old tutor. And yet what provokes me is, that the demure monkey actually has a lover of her own, and that their mutual affection (for mutual I take it to be) has a great deal of complicated and romantic interest. ”

“ After a deep and awful pause, the company began to talk aside—under their breaths, however, and as if in the chamber of a dying person. "Our poor friend," said one grave gentleman, scarcely opening his mouth, for fear of deranging the necessary solemnity of his features features, and sliding his whisper from between his lips, which were as little unclosed as possible,—"Our poor friend has died well to pass in the world."
"Nae doubt," answered the person addressed, with half-closed eyes; "poor Mrs Margaret was aye careful of the gear."
"Any news to-day, Colonel Mannering?" ”

“ Mac-Guffog, when they entered the court-yard, suffered Bertram to pause for a minute, and look upon his companions in affliction. When he had cast his eye around on faces on which guilt, and despondence, and low excess, had fixed their stigma; upon the spendthrift, and the swindler, and the thief, the bankrupt debtor, the "moping idiot, and the madman gay," whom a paltry spirit of economy assigned to share this dismal habitation, he felt his heart recoil with inexpressible loathing from enduring the contamination of their society even for a moment. ”

“ Bertram turned to his terrified companions. "Excuse me for a moment, I am engaged by a promise to follow this woman."
"Good heavens! engaged to a mad woman!" said Julia.
"Or to a gypsey, who has her band in the wood ready to murder you," said Lucy.
"That was not spoke like a bairn of Ellangowan," said Meg, frowning upon Miss Bertram. "It is the ill-doers are ill-dreaders."
"In short, I must go," said Bertram, "it is absolutely necessary—wait for me five minutes on this spot." ”

“ Ellangowan broke through the throng which had already assembled at the fatal spot, and beheld the object of their terror. It was the dead body of Kennedy. At first sight he seemed to have perished by a fall from the rocks, which rose above the spot on which he lay, in a perpendicular precipice of a hundred feet above the beach. The corpse was lying half in, half out of the water; the advancing tide, raising the arm and stirring the clothes, had given it at some distance the appearance of motion, so that those who first discovered the body thought that life remained. ”

“ Well, Matilda, Hazlewood heard this same half-audible sigh, and instantly repented his temporary attentions to such an unworthy object as your Julia, and, with a very comical expression of consciousness, drew near to Lucy's work-table. He made some trifling observation, and her reply was one in which nothing but an ear as acute as that of a lover, or a curious observer, like myself, could have distinguished any thing more cold and dry than usual. ”

“ It was in a hollow way, near the top of a steep ascent, upon the verge of the Ellangowan estate, that Mr. Bertram met the gipsy procession. Four or five men formed the advanced guard, wrapped in long loose greatcoats that hid their tall slender figures, as the large slouched hats, drawn over their brows, concealed their wild features, dark eyes, and swarthy faces. Two of them carried long fowling-pieces, one wore a broadsword without a sheath, and all had the Highland dirk, though they did not wear that weapon openly or ostentatiously. ”

“ In future ages, when the science of war shall have changed, how few traces will exist of the labours of Vauban and Coehorn, while this wonderful people's remains will even then continue to interest and astonish posterity! Their fortifications, their aqueducts, their theatres, their fountains, all their public works, bear the grave, solid, and majestic character of their language; and our modern labours, like our modern tongues, seem but constructed out of their fragments. ”

“ Julia laughed, coloured, and disengaged herself. "I beg a thousand pardons," said the lawyer, with a bow which was not at all professionally awkward; "age and old fashions give privileges, and I can hardly say whether I am most sorry just now at being too well entitled to claim them at all, or happy in having such an opportunity to exercise them so agreeably."
"Upon my word, sir," said Miss Mannering, laughing, "if you make such flattering apologies, we will begin to doubt whether we can admit you to shelter yourself under your alleged qualifications." ”

“ No, Colonel, I shall never forget the misery of the house of Ellangowan that morning!—the father half-distracted—the mother dead in premature travail—the helpless infant, with scarce any one to attend it, coming wawling and crying into this miserable world at such a moment of unutterable misery. We lawyers are not of iron, sir, or of brass, any more than you soldiers are of steel. ”

“ A stone dropped from the projecting balcony plunges into water deep enough to float a skiff. I had left my window partly unbarred, that, before I went to bed, I might, according to my custom, look out and see the moon-light shining upon the lake. I was deeply engaged with that beautiful scene in the merchant of Venice, where two lovers, describing the stillness of a summer night, enhance upon each other its charms, and was lost in the associations of story and of feeling which it awakens, when I heard upon the lake the sound of a flageolet. I have told you it was Brown's favourite instrument. ”

“ Lucy felt proud of her brother, as well from the bold and manly turn of his sentiments, as from the dangers he had encountered, and the spirit with which he had surmounted them. And Julia, while she pondered on her father's words, could not help entertaining hopes, that the independent spirit which had seemed to her father presumption in the humble and plebeian Brown, would have the grace of courage, noble bearing, and high blood, in the far-descended heir of Ellangowan. ”

“ Julia, you are incorrigible;—but remember, I expect your mirth on this subject to be under such restraint, that it shall neither offend this worthy man's feelings nor those of Miss Bertram, who may be more apt to feel upon his account than he on his own. And so good-night, my dear; and recollect, that though Mr. Sampson has certainly not sacrificed to the graces, there are many things in this world more truly deserving of ridicule than either awkwardness of manners or simplicity of character. ”

“ Twice was the Dominie chased by a cross-grained cow, once he fell into the brook crossing at the stepping-stones, and another time was bogged up to the middle in the slough of Lochend, in attempting to gather a water-lily for the young Laird. It was the opinion of the village matrons who relieved Sampson on the latter occasion, that the Laird might as well trust the care of his child to a "potatoe-bogle;" but the good Dominie bore all his disasters with gravity and serenity equally imperturbable. "Prodi-gi-ous!" was the only ejaculation they ever extorted from the much-enduring man. ”

“ Nay, sir, take them all with you—I am far from desiring any to be left here, sir. We, sir, can protect ourselves, sir. But you will have the goodness to observe, sir, that you are acting on your own proper risk, sir, and peril, sir, and responsibility, sir, if anything shall happen or befall to Hazlewood House, sir, or the inhabitants, sir, or to the furniture and paintings, sir."
"I am acting to the best of my judgment and information, Sir Robert," said Mac-Morlan, "and I must pray of you to believe so, and to pardon me accordingly. ”

“ Mac-Guffog, the officer by whom Bertram had at first been apprehended, and who was now in attendance upon him, was keeper of this palace of little-ease. He caused the carriage to be drawn close up to the outer gate, and got out himself to summon the warders. The noise of his rap alarmed some twenty or thirty ragged boys, who left off sailing their mimic sloops and frigates in the little pools of salt-water left by the receding tide, and hastily crowded round the carriage to see what luckless being was to be delivered to the prison-house out of "Glossin's braw new carriage." ”