commanding attention; and his tones rose into wild and impassioned notes, accompanied with appropriate gestures." He seemed to Waverley to lament the dead, apostrophize the absent, exhort, and entreat, and animate those who were present. "The ardour of the poet appeared to communicate itself to the audience; their wild and sun-burnt countenances assumed a fiercer and more animated expression; all bent forward towards the reciter, many sprung up and waved their arms in ecstasy, and some laid their hands upon their swords."*

This moment of action, of excitation, of enthusiasm, the artist has chosen for illustration: the motion and life, given to each character in the novelist's animated description, he has endeavoured to express by the different, but hardly less powerful, means that belong to his art. The hall seems crowded, without confusion; the "long perspective" introduces to the spectator the chieftain's distant relations, who reel, and set, and cross, upon the sunny green. And in the lighting up of such a countenance as the bardic enthusiast's may be supposed to have been, perhaps the painter has the advantage of either romance-writer or poet.

EDINBURGH.+-MARCH OF THE HIGHLANDERS.

"Edina! Scotia's darling seat,

All hail thy palaces and towers!

"When Waverley had surmounted a small craggy eminence, called St. Leonard's Hill, the King's Park, or the hollow between the mountain of Arthur's Seat and the rising grounds on which the southern part of Edinburgh is now built, lay beneath him, and displayed a singular and animating prospect. It was occupied by the army of Highlanders preparing for their march. The rocks which formed the back-ground of the scene, and the very sky itself, rang with the clang of the bagpipers, summoning forth, each with his appropriate pibroch, his chieftain and clan. The mountaineers, rousing themselves from their couch under the canopy of heaven, with the hum‡ and bustle of a

+ Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, is situated 377 miles N. from London. Here Sir Walter Scott was born on the 15th of August, 1771; but his death occurred at Abbotsford, on the 21st of August, 1832. See page 8.

"From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night,

The hum of either army stilly sounds."

SHAKSPEARE Henry V.

confused and irregular multitude, like bees* alarmed and arming in their hives, seemed to possess all the pliability of movement fitted to execute military manoeuvres; their motions appeared spontaneous and confused, but the result was order and regularity: a general must have praised the conclusion, though a martinet might have ridiculed the method by which it was attained. While getting into order, they exhibited a changing, fluctuating, confused appearance of waving tartans and floating plumes, and of banners displaying the proud gathering-word of each clan. At length the mixed and wavering multitude arranged themselves into a narrow and dusky column of great length, stretching through the whole extent of the vale." The leading men of each clan were armed with broadsword, target, and fusee, to which all added the dirk, and most the steel pistol; but while the leaders, and the van in general, were well armed, the rear resembled actual banditti:-"here was a pole-axe; there, a sword without a scabbard: here, a gun without a lock; there, a scythe set straight upon a pole: some had only their dirks and bludgeons, or stakes pulled out of hedges."

While the column remained stationary in the streets of Edinburgh, glittering in arms and thirsting for the Saxons' blood, an iron gun, the only piece of artillery possessed by an army that meditated such an important revolution, was discharged as the signal of march. The voice of "Musket's-Mother," as the Highlanders uniformly called a great gun, was instantly obeyed, and communicated motion to the entire line. A wild cry of joy from the advancing battalions rent the air, and was then lost in the shrill clangour of the bagpipes, as the sound of these in their turn was partially drowned by the heavy tread of so many men put at once into motion. The banners glittered and shook as they

moved forward

"Each leader now his scattered force conjoins

In close array, and forms the deepening lines."

"The horse hastened to occupy their station as the advanced guard, and push on reconnoitring parties, to ascertain and report the motions of the enemy. They vanished from Waverley's eye as they wheeled round the base of Arthur's Seat, under the remarkable ridge of basaltic rocks which fronts the little village of Duddington."

No drawing can be more correct, no filling-up more perfect, no colouring more warm or deep: the calm scene of nature is exquisitely touched; the continuous motion of the legions advancing solemnly towards the field of battle powerfully narrated; the sound of the departing feet seems to vibrate on the ear. The painter, finding his art incompetent to convey ideas of sound, has devoted his attention to those of sight with greater assiduity, borrowing the prudent practice from the deaf and blind. Whatever