And then, he said, he would full fain
He could recall an ancient strain
He never thought to sing again.

And much he wished, yet feared, to try
The long-forgotten melody.

Amid the strings his fingers strayed,
And an uncertain warbling made;

And oft he shook his hoary head;
But, when he caught the measure wild,
The old man raised his face, and smiled;
And lightened up his faded eye,
With all a poet's ecstasy!

In varying cadence, soft or strong,
He swept the sounding chords along;
The present scene, the future lot,
His toil, his wants, were all forgot;
Cold diffidence, and age's frost,
In the full tide of soul were lost;
Each blank in faithless memory's void
The poet's glowing thought supplied;
And while his harp responsive rang,
"Twas thus the latest minstrel sang:

"Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said,

'This is my own, my native land!' Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned From wandering on a foreign strand?

"If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell:
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth, as wish can claim,-

Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung!

"O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet muse for a poetic child!

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood —
Land of the mountain and the flood-
Land of my sires!- what mortal hand
Can e'er untie the filial band

That knits me to thy rugged strand?

"Still, as I view each well-known scene, Think what is now, and what hath been,

Seems as to me, of all bereft,

Sole friends, thy woods and streams, were left;

And thus I love them better still,

Even in extremity of ill.

"By Yarrow's stream still let me stray,
Though none should guide my feeble way;
Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break,
Although it chill my withered cheek;
Still lay my head on Teviot Stone,
Though there, forgotten and alone,
The bard may draw his parting groan.

"Sweet Teviot! on thy silver tide,

The glaring bale-fires blaze no more; No longer steel-clad warriors ride

Along thy wild and willowed shore; Where'er thou wind'st, by dale or hill, All, all is peaceful, all is still,

As if thy waves, since time was born,
Since first they rolled upon the Tweed,
Had only heard the shepherd's reed,
Nor started at the bugle-horn;
Unlike the tide of human time,

Which, though it change, in ceaseless flow,
Retains each grief, retains each crime,
Its earliest course was doomed to know;
And, darker as it downward veers,

Is stained with past and present tears."

WALTER SCOTT.

MINSTREL; a name given to an order of men in the middle ages, who subsisted by the arts of poetry and music, and sang to the harp verses composed by themselves or others. BARD; a poet and singer among the ancient Celts; one whose occupation was to compose and sing verses in honor of the heroic achievements of princes and brave men; in modern usage, a poet.

THE QUARREL OF SQUIRE BULL AND HIS SON JONATHAN.

FELLOW; long o. GENERALLY; jen'êr-al-ly. GETTING; gět, not git. BROKEN; long o; sound br. WORST; or like er in her; sound rst. ARGUMENT; long u; sound r; do not call ent, unt.

JOHN BULL was a choleric old fellow, who held a good manor in the middle of a great mill-pond, and which, by reason of its being quite surrounded by water, was generally called Bullock Island. Bull was an ingenious man, an exceedingly good blacksmith, a dexterous cutler, and a notable weaver besides. He also brewed capital porter, ale, and small beer, and was, in fact, a sort of Jack of all trades, and good at each.

In addition to these, he was a hearty fellow, a jolly companion, and passably honest, as the times go. But what

tarnished all these qualities, was an exceedingly quarrelsome, overbearing disposition, which was always getting him into some scrape or other. The truth is, he never heard of a quarrel going on among his neighbors, but his fingers itched to take a part in it; so that he was hardly ever seen without a broken head, a black eye, or a bloody nose.

Such was Squire Bull, as he was commonly called by the country people, his neighbors-one of those odd, testy, grumbling, boasting old codgers, that never get credit for what they are, because they are always pretending to be what they are not. The squire was as tight a hand to deal with in doors as out; sometimes treating his family as if they were not the same flesh and blood, when they happened to differ with him in certain matters.

One day he got into a dispute with his youngest son, Jonathan, who was familiarly called BROTHER JONATHAN, whether churches ought to be called churches or meetinghouses; and whether steeples were not an abomination. The squire, either having the worst of the argument, or being naturally impatient of contradiction, I can't tell which, fell into a great passion, and declared he would physic such notions out of the boy's noddle.

So he went to some of his doctors, and got them to draw up a prescription, made up of thirty-nine different articles, many of them bitter enough to some palates. This he tried to make Jonathan swallow; and, finding he made wry faces, and would not do it, fell upon him and beat him soundly. After this, he made the house so disagreeable to him, that Jonathan, though as hard as a pine knot, and as tough as leather, could bear it no longer.

Taking his gun and his axe, he put himself into a boat and paddled over the mill pond to some new lands, to which the squire pretended to have some sort of claim. Jonathan intended to settle the lands, and build a meeting-house, without a steeple, as soon as he grew rich enough. When he yg 98.

d 204.

got over, he found that the land was quite in a state of nature, covered with wood, and inhabited only by wild beasts.

But, being a lad of spirit, he took his axe on one shoulder and his gun on the other, marched into the thickest of the wood, and, clearing a place, built a log hut. Pursuing his labors, and handling his axe like a notable woodman, he in a few years cleared the land, which he laid out into thirteen good farms, and, building himself a large house, which he partly finished, began to be quite snug and comfortable.

But Squire Bull, who was getting old and stingy, and, besides, was in great want of money, on account of his having lately been made to pay heavy damages for assaulting his neighbors and breaking their heads the squire, I say, finding Jonathan was getting well to do in the world, began to be very much troubled about his welfare; so he demanded that Jonathan should pay him a good rent for the land which he had cleared and made good for something.

He made up I know not what claim against him, and under different pretences managed to pocket all Jonathan's honest gains. In fact, the poor lad had not a shilling left for holiday occasions; and had it not been for the filial respect he felt for the old man, he would certainly have refused to submit to such impositions. But for all this, in a little time, Jonathan grew up to be very large of his age, and became a tall, stout, double-jointed, broad-footed cub of a fellow, awkward in his gait and simple in his appearance, but having a lively, shrewd look, and giving the promise of great strength when he should get his growth.

He was rather an odd-looking chap, in truth, and had many queer ways; but every body who had seen John Bull saw a great likeness between them, and declared he was John's own boy, a true chip of the old block. Like the old squire, he was apt to be blustering and saucy, but, in the main, was a peaceable sort of careless fellow, that would quarrel with nobody if you only let him alone. He used to