highest festival of the Goths. There was metal yet more attractive, and younger hearts, whose welcome, if less loud, was as sincere as that of the jolly udaller. But it is matter which ought not to be discussed at the conclusion of a chapter.

CHAPTER III.

66 O, Bessy Bell and Mary Gray,
They were twa bonnie lasses;

They bigged a house on yon burn-brae,
And theekit it ower wi' rashes.

Fair Bessie Bell I loo'ed yestreen,
And thought I ne'er could alter,
But Mary Gray's twa pawky een

Have garr'd my courage faulter."
Scots Song.

WE have already mentioned Minna and Brenda, the daughters of Magnus Troil. The mother had been dead for many years, and they were now two beautiful girls, the eldest only eighteen, which might be a year or two younger than Mordaunt Mertoun, the second about seventeen.— They were the joy of their father's heart, and the light of his old eyes; and although indulged to a degree which might have endangered his comfort and their own, they repaid his affection with a love, into which even blind indulgence had not introduced slight regard, or feminine caprice.

The difference of their tempers and of their complexions was singularly striking, although combined, as is usual, with a certain degree of family resemblance.

The mother of these maidens had been a Scottish lady from the Highlands of Sutherland, the orphan of a noble chief, who, driven from his own country during the feuds of the seventeenth century, had found shelter in those peaceful islands, which, amidst poverty and seclusion, were thus far happy, that they remained unvexed by discord, and unstained by civil broil. The father (his name was Saint Clair,) pined for his native glen, his feudal tower, his clansmen, and his fallen authority, and died not long after his arrival in Zetland. The beauty of his orphan daughter, despite her Scottish lineage, melted the stout heart of Magnus Troil. He sued and was listened to, and she became his bride; but dying in the fifth year of their union, left him to mourn his brief period of domestic happiness.

From her mother, Minna inherited the stately form and dark eyes, the raven locks and finelypencilled brows, which shewed she was, on one

side at least, a stranger to the blood of Thule. Her cheek,

O call it fair, not pale,

was so slightly and delicately tinged with the rose, that many thought the lily had an undue proportion in her complexion. Butin that predominance of the paler flower, there was nothing sickly or languid; it was the true natural complexion of health, and corresponded in a peculiar degree with features which seemed calculated to express a contemplative and high-minded character. When Minna Troil heard a tale of woe or of injustice, it was then her blood rushed to her cheeks, and shewed plainly how warm it beat, notwithstanding the generally serious, composed, and retiring disposition, which her countenance and demeanour seemed to exhibit. If strangers sometimes conceived that these fine features were clouded by melancholy, for which her age and situation could scarce have given occasion, they were soon satisfied, upon further acquaintance, that the placid, mild quietude of her disposition, and the mental energy of a character which was but little interested in or

dinary and trivial occurrences, was the real cause of her gravity, and most men, when they knew that her melancholy had no ground in real sorrow, and was only the aspiration of a soul bent on more important objects, than those by which she was surrounded, might have wished her whatever could add to her happiness, but could scarce have desired that, graceful as she was in her natural and unaffected seriousness, she should change that deportment for one more gay. In short, notwithstanding our wish to have avoided that hackneyed simile of an angel, we cannot avoid saying there was something in the serious beauty of her aspect, in the measured, yet graceful ease of her motions, in the music of her voice, and the serene purity of her eye, that seemed as if Minna Troil belonged naturally to some higher and better sphere, and was only the chance visitant of a world that was scarce worthy of her.

The scarce less beautiful, equally lovely, and equally innocent Brenda, was of a complexion as differing from her sister, as they differed in character, taste, and expression. Her profuse locks were of that paly brown which receives from the passing sun-beam a tinge of gold, but darkens