“ Now, to succeed, we must have an aim, and hold it in sight, whatever may befall; even should it often elude our grasp, we must not despair or relinquish it for another. My wish is an old age of independence. I may die this night, or I may live until old age has long impaired my energies. To obtain this, my wish, I have, from circumstances, chosen my present calling; nor have I allowed the most adverse fortune to shake my resolve, or change my method of recovering it; for perseverance is the only road that leads to success. Fortune placed you in America at your outset in life. ”

“ I have struggled with myself till the blood was sent back in my veins, and frightened nature saved the powerless victim of grief by the mantle of unconsciousness. What, Adam, shall I do? I feel I am unequal to the task of speaking a daughter's rebellion and a traitor's resolution."
"When everything is explained, Helen," replied the other, "the treachery disappears, and a father and mother's love will not die under the passing cloud of a little anger. Think of our bliss, love! Did hope never bring courage to your tongue, Helen? Ah, what would that bright goddess make Adam Fleming dare!" ”

“ She saw and felt beauties in the scenery of Kirconnel, which to her lover were but as the "sear leaf." Every object in nature—from the planet to the plant, from the shining levin of heaven to the phosphoric beam on the margin of the Kirtle—had some intelligence for her inquiring eye. Every power in operation around her—from the general sympathy of nature's highest elements, to the loves of the little forest birds that sung their love-song in her bower—had some charm to elevate her thoughts and sublime her sentiments. ”

“ We are no believers in what is termed love at first sight. Some romance-writers hold it up as an established doctrine, and love-sick boys and moping girls will make oath to the creed. But there never was love at first sight that a week's perseverance could not wear away. It holds no intercourse with the heart, but is a mere fancy of the eye; as a man would fancy a horse, a house, or a picture, which he desires to purchase. Love is not the offspring of an hour or a day, nor is it the ignis fatuus which plays about the brain, and disturbs the sleep of the youth and the maiden in their teens. ”

“ You only have I met with among the children of Adam, who persecuted me not with ridicule, or who insulted not my deformity with the vulgar gaze of curiosity. Who I am I know not—from whence I was brought amongst these hills I cannot tell; I am a thing which the world has laughed at, and of which my parents were ashamed. But my wants have been few. I have gold to purchase flattery, if I desired it—to buy tongues to tell me I am not deformed; but I despise them. My soul partakes not of my body's infirmities—it has sought a spirit to love, that would love it in return. Maria, has it found one? ”

“ We shall not enter upon his fortunes in the New World—he was still broken in spirit; and, after twelve years' residence, he was neither richer nor happier than when he left Scotland. Elizabeth was now a mother, and the smiles of her young son seemed to shorten the years of her exile; yet, ever as she returned his smile, the thought of the husband of her youth flashed back on her remembrance, and anguish and misery shot through her bosom as the eagle darteth on its prey. Her heart was not broken; but it fell like a proud citadel, burying the determined garrison. ”

“ The simple monument of love of "Mary of the Le'," that rose by their side, had often brought the tears to Helen's eyes; but Mary of the Lee was now forgotten. "There is a time and a place for all things" but love, whose rule is general over the flowery lee and the green grave, the mid-day hour and the dreary key-stone of night's black arch.
"What kept ye, sweet Helen, love?" whispered Kirkpatrick in her ear, as she lay entranced in love's dream on his bosom. ”

“ It is, however, when the two qualities have been found combined in a favoured daughter of Scotland, that an unhappy fate has called forth a sympathy which has left no harp to sound fitfully in the willow-tree, no heart in our true land untouched, no eye destitute of sympathetic tears. Such has truly been the effect produced by the fortune of Helen of Kirconnel—a fortune which came up on the revolving wheel of the mutable goddess, notwithstanding all the efforts of her father to make the course of her life happy, and its termination blessed. ”

“ They know little of the heart of woman who trust their happiness or their lives to the frail bark of such a fond and dangerous delusion. A woman will seldom put an end to the adulation that supports her pride; but the Maid of Kirconnel, who had no pride to gratify, acted as many a single-hearted female has done and will do, who receives without a frown that her nature detests, but without a satisfaction that her honesty will not allow her to assume, the fond speeches of an old friend, couched in terms of an admiration which is only her due. ”

“ Lame as he was, he had climbed the steep and the dripping precipice for the eggs of the water-ouzel, sought among the crags for the young of the gorgeous kingfisher, or climbed the tallest trees in quest of the crested wrens, which chirped and fluttered in invisible swarms among the branches. [A] The birds were to him companions; he wished to rear their young, that they might love him, for there was a lack of something in his heart—he knew not what it was—but it was the void of being beloved, of being regarded. It is said that nature abhors a vacuum, and so did the heart of Ebenezer. ”

“ Many times already had Helen waited till her unconscious parents retired to the rest of the aged, and the moon threw her sheet of silver over Kirconnel Lee, and, wrapped up in a night-cloak, slipped out at the wicker-gate of the west enclosure, to seek, under the shades of the oaks, Death's Mailing, the appointed trysting-place of the ardent lovers. Again she was to see her beloved Heir of Kirkpatrick, and at last she had resolved to break to him the painful position in which she was placed by the still existing belief of her parents and Blacket House, that she was to be his wedded wife. ”

“ The sudden scream of the party aroused the Lady Helen from her real or affected fit. She beheld her son bleeding on the floor—she saw the vengeful knife in the hands of the cripple. She screamed more wildly than before—she wrung her hands!
"Monster!—murderer!" she exclaimed, "he has slain—he has slain his brother!"
"My brother!" shouted Ebenezer, still grasping the knife in his hand. "Woman—woman! mother—mother!—who am I? Answer me—who are you?" and he sprang forward, and held her by the arm. "Tell me," he continued, "what mean ye—what mean ye? My brother—do ye say my brother? ”

“ On the morning of Tuesday, as soon as the jail was opened, my brother, who had always thought hardly of me, and visited me only twice, rushed into my cell, and, weeping, fell upon my bosom. After a few minutes, he sobbed—
"'My brother! Simon, my brother! can you forgive me for thinking so hardly of you?'
"'My brother,' I replied, 'I have ever thought of you in grief and pity, never in anger. My heart blesses you for this kindness.'
"'You are innocent, my own Simon! You are cleared of this crime. All is made manifest. ”

“ There was not the vestige of a smile on her face. "Good kind soul! she does not join in the vulgar mirth of these unfeeling creatures!" thought the unhappy Silky. "She pities me, and pity is akin to love." It did not strike him that there might be another reason for her gravity. The spilled tea and greasy cheesecake had spoiled her white muslin dress irremediably, for that night at least—a circumstance calculated certainly to make any young lady melancholy enough; but this never entered the brain of Mr Simon Silky. Happy man!
"Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." ”

“ I say revolting; for, in an obscure corner, and under the shelter of a hazel-bush, lay a figure, emaciated with disease, and probably with dissipation and crime, groaning in agony, and regarded with no more sympathy by the great mass of the tribe than if he had been a strangled hare or a mangled horse. There was something indeed terrible in this sight. True, Helen Faa did all that she was permitted, but that was but little, to alleviate his sufferings; but death was in his eye and in his throat—he made one great effort to rise, grasped a branch convulsively, and ceased to live. ”

“ From that fatal night, poor Chatelard firmly believed that his love was returned—that he had inspired in the bosom of Mary a passion as ardent as his own. Into this unhappy error the poet's own heated and disturbed imagination had betrayed him, by representing in the light of special marks of favour, occurrences that were merely the emanations of a kind and gentle nature—thus fatally misled by a passion which, if notorious for occasioning groundless fears, is no less so for inspiring unfounded hopes. ”

“ The one can look an obstacle in the face; the other turns from it with terror, and flees. See you not that, by telling my parents I could not love my cousin, I would have been conjuring up a bad angel to cross, with his black wing, the secret but sweet path of our affection. The very possibility of being separated from you—too dear, Adam, as you are to this beating heart—made me tremble at the articulation of that charmed word which contains all my happiness on earth. You have stolen my heart from my father and mother, my sweet woods and bowers, my bright moon and Kirtle ”

“ She wept at every turn of a new difficulty, and Adam's eyes were also suffused with tears; he pressed her again to his breast, and bade her be of better heart, for that better days were coming on the wings of time.
"I confess," he said, "my dear love, that I am unable to understand the conduct of that dark-minded man; but what can he do, if my Helen should yet redeem her error, and make this necessary disclosure? That is alone the cure of our pain. Oh, Helen! what a load of evil might have been averted from our heads by the exercise of a little self-command!" ”

“ Such is the progress of pure, holy, and enduring love. It springs not from mere sight, but its radiance grows with esteem; it is the whisper of sympathy, unity of feeling, and mutual reverence, which increases with a knowledge of each other, until but one pulse seems to throb in two bosoms. The feelings which now swelled in the bosom of Ebenezer Baird were not the true and only love which springs from esteem, but they were akin to it. ”