"De Bruce! I rose with purpose dread Who stood on Zophim, heaven-controul'd, I bless thee, and thou shalt be bless'd!". XXXII. Again that light has fired his eye, Shall tell thy tale of freedom won, Enough Enough my short-lived strength decays, Heaven hath our destined purpose broke, Our task discharged. Unmoor, unmoor!- The train refused all longer stay, Embark d, raised sail, and bore away." P. 75. With this magnificent description, the canto concludes. In the beginning of the third, the Lord of Loru demands his daughter back from Ronald, and utters a vow that she shall never marry the friend of Bruce. She is no where to be found—but intelligence is given that she had escaped in the bark of the Abbot. The Lord of Lorn, after dispatching Cormac Doil, a notorious pirate, in pursuit of the fugitive, departs-In the middle of the night, Bruce and his brother Edward are suddenly awakened by the appearance of their host and the chieftain of Dunvegan, who swear fealty to him as monarch of Scotland. Some portion at least of this devotion to the cause of Bruce on the part of Ronald, appears to flow from his attachment to Isabel, the monarch's sister, whom he had seen before in the Holy Land. They agree to leave the castle, and to retreat for a while to Ireland, to muster their allies, and to arrange their plans for future action. As they pass the island of Skye; Ronald proposes to Bruce that they should land for the purpose of hunting a mountain deer. They disembark with Allan, the page of Ronald. As they proceed, they meet unexpectedly with five men, two of whom are of a superior cast, and the remaining three serfs; on being questioned, they state themselves to have been shipwrecked upon the coast; they invite Bruce and Ronald to their hut to partake of a fallow deer which they had just killed; and give them the unwelcome information that their galley, which was moored off the shore, upon the appearance of a southern vessel, bad set sail and fled. Though fearful of treachery, they agree to follow these rough and suspicious strangers. His garb was such as minstrels wear, "Whence this poor boy?"-As Ronald spoke, As if awaked from ghastly dream, He raised his head with start and scream, Then to the wall his face he turn'd, XXIII. "Whose is the boy?" again he said. And on the rote and viol play, "Hath he, then, sense of spoken sound?"- A crone in our late shipwreck drown'd, Sit to your But why waste time in idle words? And well the Chief the signal took," P. 108. After their meal, they agree to watch by turns. The various thoughts which agitate the bosoms of Ronald and Bruce during their watch, are well described. Young Allan's turn comes last, which gives the poet the opportunity of marking in the most natural and happy manner, that insensible transition from the reality of waking thought, to the fanciful visions of slumber, and that delusive power of the imagination which so blends the confines of these separate states, as to deceive and sport with the efforts even of determined vigilance. "He -Hark! hears he not the sea-nymph speak ... Murmurs his master's name, .and dies!" P. 11% ... Bruce is awakened by the sound, and with Ronald succeeds in dispatching all his assailants, the chief of whom proves to be the pirate Cormac Doil: who knowing him well, had forged the tale of the boat's departure to detain the monarch in the island, and to seize his opportunity of dispatching him. After a very sweet and Virgilian lamentation over the body of Allan, the Euryalus of our poet, they retreat from the island, accompanied by the dumb page whom they have discovered in Cormac's hut. At the commencement of the fourth Canto, they regain their bark, where Bruce is informed that during his absence tidings had been received of the death of the English monarch, and of the accession of many powerful chieftains to the standard of their native king. Upon this intelligence they shape their course towards Arran. The scenery of the different islands, by whose shores they sail, is delineated with our poet's usual accuracy and spirit; nor are the various tales attached to the several objects as they pass in review before our eyes, omitted. The cruelty of the jealous chieftain of Canna, who immured his wife in a lonely castle, and the suffocation of the inhabitants of the isle of Egg, who with their families had taken refuge within a cavern, by the Macleods, are both most poetically described. During the voyage, Lord Ronald declares to Bruce his affection for Isabel, the monarch's sister, considering himself released from his engagement to Edith, by her sudden flight. To his proposal, Bruce returns no definite answer; but the dumb page, who had witnessed the the scene, appears so sensibly affected as to draw the attention of the chieftains. They land at the convent of St. Bride's, in which Isabel had taken refuge; Bruce, attended by the page, repairs to his sister's cell, and reveals to her the love which Ronald entertained towards her; she, however, refuses to hear his suit, till he shall lay at her feet both, his ring and the acquittal of his oath to the maid of Lorn.' The fifth Canto opens with the description of Isabel at her devotions, after rising from which she discovers upon the pavement a ring with a scroll attached to it, restoring the promise of Ronald to Edith. She wonders from whence it could arrive. No one, it appeared, had approached the convent that morning, except the page of her brother, whom her attendant had observed passing rapidly from the chapel, with tears bursting from his eyes. "The truth at once on Isabel, As darted by a sun-beam, fell. "Tis Edith's self!-her speechless woe, With that mute page he loves so well.". By their bold Lord, their ranks array'd; Like deer, that, rousing from their lair, Just shake the dew-drops from their hair, Such matins theirs!" P. 177. Isabel dispatches Augustine, the chaplain of the convent, to Bruce, to demand the page at his hands. Upon Bruce's declaration to the friar that he had sent the boy to St. Bride, there to remain unmolested, Edward, the monarch's brother, professes that he had dispatched him with the royal mandate to Cuthbert, on the shore of Carrick the friar returns from his unsuccessful mission, and bears a request from Ronald to Isabel, that she would send her knight some token of her favour to wear on his crest, and promises that the page shall be his peculiar charge. XII. "Now on the darkening main afloat, Ready and mann'd rocks every boat; 7 Beneath |