“ Accept of me as true soldier under thee, and I will fight for thee in thy country's quarrel, to the death."
"Most willingly, brave De Longoville," said the Governor, as he raised him from the deck; "Scotland needs sorely the use of such swords as thine."
"And deem not her cause less holy," said the monk—for monk he was, the well-known Chaplain Blair—"deem not her cause less holy than that of the sepulchre itself; nor think that thou shalt eradicate the stain of past dishonour less surely in her battles. The cause of justice, De Longoville, is the cause of God, contend for it where we may." ”

“ I had left my mother's this evening for but an instant—'twas in quest of a tame fawn—when the monster from whose murderous fangs you delivered me, started up between me and my home; and I had to fly from instant destruction into the thick of the forest."
"And so your place of residence is quite at hand?" said Clelland. "In the course of a long day's journey, I have not met with a single human habitation."
"The hermitage," replied the maiden, "is but a short half-mile from my mother's—would that we were but safe there!" ”

“ I could see the dark shade of the land lying upon the gilded waters. All was still; my thoughts sought again the deep—the grave of George, the fancied condition of his body; and, as my ideas diverged to the calm scene around, it appeared to me as if all nature were dead, and that my own pulsations were the only living movements on earth. Lights now began to move along the shore, and then a fire blazed up into the firmament. The bodies of the savages flitted before it; I had seen the same appearances before; but I was now connected with these orgies in a more real manner than formerly. ”

“ The homage paid by Effie to Laird Cherrytrees was, as may easily be conceived, the respect, attention, and kindness of an open-hearted girl, filled with gratitude to the preserver of the lives of her and her parents. Every evening she offered up, at her bedside, prayers for the preservation and happiness of the man but for whose kindness starvation might have overtaken the helpless invalid, and not much less helpless wife and daughter. In their prayers the "amen" of David and his wife was the most heart-felt expression of love and gratitude that ever came from the lips of mortal. ”

“ He sat thoughtful for a few minutes, when Helen, to change the subject, inquired after her old nurse, Janet White.
"Poor body," said he, raising his head, "her spirits are clean gone. I understand she sits mourning for you by the fire, cowering thegither like a pigeon that's lost its mate, or a ewe whose lamb has been struck dead by its side. It would wring tears from a heart o' stane to hear her lamenting, morning, noon, and night, for her 'dear bairn,' as she aye ca'ed ye—rocking her head and chirming owre her sorrow, like a hen bird owre its rifled nest. ”

“ Mark me, cousin Crawford. His barge shoves off, and the men bend to their oars. He will be here in a twinkling. Do you stand by our good Ancient—would there were but wind enough to unfurl it!—and the instant he bids us strike, why, lower it to the deck; but be as sure you hoist it again when you see him fairly aboard. And you, dear Clelland, do you take your stand here on the deck beside me, and see to it, when I am dealing with the pirate, that you keep your long spear between us and his crew. It will be strange if he boast of his victory this bout. ”

“ I requested my dear master to fly, as many others had done; for blood had begun to flow like water in Paris and the provinces—not the blood of the guilty, but the blood of the noble and virtuous; for, alas! France had become the arena in the remorseless war of poverty against property. The whole fabric of social order had been dissolved, and men had returned to their original state of barbarism; like jackalls or wolves, only banding together when they scented plunder. To be rich or nobly born was a crime of the deepest dye, only to be atoned by blood. ”

“ We are a ruined and undone people since we lost our King. The great nation are a people without a head; and, when a house wants the head, all goes wrong."
"You and I are at one on this point," replied I. "But how comes it that you are as democratic as any one in the neighbourhood when politics is the subject of discourse? It is not so in Britain. Every man speaks his mind; yet we have a king and a kingly government. I was led to believe, before I left home, that in France alone there was liberty: for all men were equal—freedom and equality being the law of the land." ”

“ The Knight entered, and found the maiden in the embrace of her mother.
"That I still live," said Bertha, "I owe it to this brave and courtly knight. But for his generous daring, your daughter would have found strange burial in the ravenous maw of a wolf."
The mother turned round to Clelland, and grasped his mailed hand in both hers.
"The saints be your blessing and reward!" she exclaimed; "for I cannot repay you. God himself be your reward!—for earth bears no price adequate to the benefit. You have restored to the lonely and the broken in spirit her only stay and comfort." ”

“ The young, tender, and devoted female, who, for the love she bears to her parents, consents to intermarry with rich age, to embrace dry bones, to extend her sympathies to churlishness, caprice, and ill-nature, or, what is worse, to the asthmatic giggle of a superannuated love, while all the while her heart, cheated of its tribute and swelling with indignation, requires to be watched by her with vigilance and firmness, the cruelty of which she herself feels—presents a form of self-sacrifice possessing claims on the pity of mankind beyond those of the boasted self-immolation of ancient devotees. ”

“ It was the first full look he had taken of him, and it discovered to him a countenance open and pleasing in its expression, but marked with deep melancholy, and telling, in language not to be misunderstood, a tale of heart-sickness of the most racking and depressing kind.
"Has your lot been ill cast, young man, that ye envy the bits o' burds o' the air the freedom and the liberty that God has gien them?" said the old man, eyeing the stranger scrutinizingly, with a keen, penetrating grey eye, that had not even yet lost all its fire. ”

“ The years passed, and desperate and dishonoured men like myself came flocking to me as their leader, till not Philip himself, or my old enemy Charles, had more kingly authority on land than De Longoville on the sea. But let no man again deceive himself as I have done. I had reasoned on the lax morality and doubtful honour of kings, and asked myself why I might not, as the admiral and prince of my fleet, achieve a less guilty, though not less splendid glory than the bastard William of Normandy, or Edward of England, or my old enemy Charles of Anjou. ”

“ Kreutz and Crawley were in communication.
'There is more than chance in that frightful appearance,' I heard Crawley say. 'And this calm too—it will never end. God have mercy on us! Is there no man that will undertake to sink the body? I cannot stand the gaze of these white balls. See! the face is directed towards me; and yet I did not do the deed, though I authorized it. Will no one save me from the glare of the grim avenger? I will give twenty gold pieces to the man who will remove it to the deep. ”

“ She had never been married, and lived in a small lonely cottage, with no companions but her cat and cricket, which chirped occasionally from beneath the hudstone, against which her peat-fire was built. There sat old, and now nearly blind, Isbel Kirk, spinning or carding wool, crooning occasionally an old Scotch song, or, it might be, one of David's psalms, and enjoying at intervals her pipe, a visit from her next neighbour, Nancy Nivison, or her champit-potatoes—a luxury which the west country, and that alone, has hitherto enjoyed. ”

“ But, oh, to think that the pride and stay of Scotland should fall into the merciless hands of a pirate dog! Would that my own life, and the lives of all my crew, could but purchase his safety!"
"Take heart, old man," said Clelland, with dignity. "Heaven watches over the fortunes of the Governor of Scotland; nor will it suffer him to fall obscurely by the hands of a mere plunderer of merchants and seamen.—Rax me my long spear."
As he spoke, the Governor himself stepped forward from the door in the poop, enveloped from head to foot in complete armour. ”

“ Experience, sir, is a world merely to those who live in it—it exists not—its laws cannot be communicated to the heart of youth; the transfusion of the blood of the aged into the veins of the young to produce wisdom, is not more vain than the displacing of the hopes of the young mind by the cold maxims of what man has felt, trembled to feel, and wished he could have anticipated, that he might have been prepared for it. ”

“ In the little town of Maybole there lived, some fifty years ago or more, an old man of the name of George Rorieson, more commonly called Laird Rorieson. He had been a kind of general merchant, or trafficker in any kind of commodities which he thought would yield him a profit; and, by dint of great sagacity, had made some very fortunate hits, and realised a large sum of money. Having begun the world with a penny, he was emphatically the maker of his own fortunes—a circumstance he was very proud of, and loved to sound in the ears of certain individuals who envied him his riches. ”

“ The Laird had been scarcely out of the house, when David had a communing with his wife, in absence of Effie, on the extraordinary intimation made by the old lover. Betty was agreeable to the match; but the tear came into her eye as she thought of the sacrifice poor Effie was to be called upon to make. Neither of them could answer for the consent of Effie, whose melancholy, though somewhat ameliorated, was little diminished, and whose recollections of Lewis Campbell were as vivid as they were on the day of his departure. ”

“ In a pause of the storm, the frightful howlings of a flock of wolves were heard rising from over the hermitage, as if hundreds had assembled on its roof of rock. Clelland sprung from his seat, and, grasping his spear, stood in the doorway.
"We shall have to bide siege," he said to his companion. "I knew not that these fierce creatures mustered so thickly here."
"Heaven be our protection!" said the maiden. "They fill every recess of the forest. ”

“ Every time the Laird came to the cottage, he extended the period of his stay, and, latterly, he did not stir till a servant from Burnbank, sent by Lucy, came to take him home. It seemed as if he could not get enough of "glowrin;" for, latterly, all his occupation, which at first consisted of rational conversation, merged in that mute eloquence of the eye, or rather in that inebriation of the orb, "drinking of light," which lovers of sights, especially female countenances, are so fond of. ”

“ There must be vivid pictures of the workings of a system of misrule placed before the mind's eye, so that a deep and a human interest may be felt in the picture. The reader must open the doors of our suffering peasantry, and witness their family and fireside bereavements. He must become their companion under the snow-wreath and the damp cave—he must mount the scaffold with them, and even listen to their last act and testimony. How vast is the impression which a painter can, in this way, make upon the spirit of the spectator! ”

“ Life on board of an Indiaman has been a thousand times described; and, would to heaven I had nothing to detail but the ordinary conduct of civilized men! Our chief officer was one Crawley, and our second a person of the name of Buist—the only individual my husband had no confidence in being Hans Kreutz, the steward, a German, who was whispered to have been engaged as a maritime venatic, or pirate, in the West Indies: and, if any man's character might be detected in his countenance, this foreigner's disposition might have been read in lineaments marked by the graver of passion. ”

“ Walter Cherrytrees, the Laird of Burnbank, a man approaching seventy years of age, had a daughter, Lucy, about the same age as Effie Mearns. He had lost his wife about fifteen years before; and—though a feeling of anxiousness often found its way to his heart, suggesting to his vacant mind, as the cure of his listlessness and the balm of his bereavement, another wife—he had for a long time been nearly equally poised between the hope of Lucy becoming his comfort in his old age, and the wish for a tender partner of pleasures which, without participation, lose their relish. ”

“ There are such creatures, who disgrace both the soul and the shape of man, who are mere shreds and patches of debauchery—sweepings from the shops of the tailor, the milliner, and the hair-dresser—who live upon the plunder obtained under false pretences from the industrious—who giggle, ogle, pat a snuff-box, or affect to nod in a church, to be thought sceptics or fine gentlemen. One of such was young Norton; and he was sent down to Scotland to destroy the only proof which Henry Blackett, in the event of his being pardoned, could bring forward in support of his legitimacy. ”

“ The unmanning feeling of fear, that had not touched a single heart in the extremity of our danger from the storm, was now strongly marked in every face, exaggerated by a horror of we knew not what. Fear is contagious—we huddled together, and peered fearfully around, expecting every moment to see some appalling vision or hear some dreadful sound. ”

“ Everything had been done that skill and resolution could accomplish, to save the vessel, but in vain. We had nothing before our eyes but instant death. The sea ran so high that no boat could live for a moment in the broken water between us and the shore. The French peasantry were making no effort for our safety, but running about and looking on our deplorable situation, with apparently no other feeling than that of curiosity. At this time, James Paterson, an Edinburgh lad, volunteered to make the attempt to swim to the shore with a log-line, and fearlessly let himself over the side. ”

“ Ah, France! beautiful France! these cursed Democrats have dimmed your glory, and ruined you! We have lost our fleet in Egypt, and we fly before the Germans. What can we have but defeat, while the best blood in France either has been shed by her sons, or languishes in obscurity. Could we be freed from the ruffians that tyrannize over us in any way but this? We have suffered much, and must suffer more, before we see the glories of France shine as they once shone in the courts of her kings. Ha! Elder, your sailors are the devils that humble France ”