But I said to him, "Excuse freedoms, James, and be so good as resume your discourse." Then wishing to smooth him down, I added, by way of compliment--"Do go on; for you really are a prime reader.

Nature surely intended ye for a minister." "Dinna flatter me," said James; looking, however, rather proudishly at what I had said, and replacing his glasses on the brig of his nose, he then read us a screed of metre to the following effect; part of which, I am free to confess, is rather above my comprehension.

But, never mind.
ELEGIAC STANZAS.
I.
'Tis midnight deep; the full round moon, As 'twere a spectre, walks the sky; The balmy breath of gentlest June Just stirs the stream that murmurs by; Above me frowns the solemn wood; Nature, methinks, seems Solitude Embodied to the eye.
II.
Yes, 'tis a season and a scene, Inez, to think on thee; the day, With stir and strife, may come between Affection and thy beauty's ray, But feeling here assumes control, And mourns my desolated soul That thou are rapt away! III.
Thou wert a rainbow to my sight, The storms of life before thee fled; The glory and the guiding light, That onward cheer'd and upward led; From boyhood to this very hour, For me, and only me, thy flower Its fragrance seem'd to shed.
IV.
Dark though the world for me might show Its sordid faith and selfish gloom, Yet 'mid life's wilderness to know For me that sweet flower shed its bloom, Was joy, was solace:--thou art gone-- And hope forsook me, when the stone Sank darkly o'er thy tomb.
V.
And art thou dead?
I dare not think That thus the solemn truth can be; And broken is the only link That chain'd youth's pleasant thoughts to me! Alas! that thou couldst know decay, That, sighing, I should live to say 'The cold grave holdeth thee!' VI.
For me thou shon'st, as shines a star, Lonely, in clouds when Heaven is lost; Thou wert my guiding light afar, When on misfortune's billows tost: Now darkness hath obscured that light, And I am left in rayless night, On Sorrow's lowering coast.
VII.
And art thou gone?
I deem'd thee some Immortal essence--art thou gone ?-- I saw thee laid within the tomb, And turn'd away to mourn alone: Once to have loved, is to have loved Enough; and, what with thee I proved, Again I'll seek in none.
VIII.
Earth in thy sight grew faery land;-- Life was Elysium--thought was love,-- When, long ago, hand clasp'd in hand, We roam'd through Autumn's twilight grove; Or watch'd the broad uprising moon Shed, as it were, a wizard noon, The blasted heath above.
IX.
Farewell!--and must I say farewell ?-- No--thou wilt ever be to me A present thought; thy form shall dwell In love's most holy sanctuary; Thy voice shall mingle with my dreams, And haunt me, when the shot-star gleams Above the rippling sea.
X.
Never revives the past again; But still thou art, in lonely hours, To me earth's heaven,--the azure main,-- Soft music,--and the breath of flowers; My heart shall gain from thee its hues: And Memory give, though Truth refuse, The bliss that once was ours! After this, Mr Batter read over to us a great many other curiosities, about foreign things wonderful to hear, and foreign places wonderful to behold.

Moreover, also, of divers adventures by sea and land.

But the time wearing late, and Tammie Bodkin having brought ben the shop-key, after putting on the window-shutters, Nanse and I, out of good-fellowship, thought we could not do less than ask the honest man, whose cleverality had diverted us so much, to sit still and take a chack of supper;--James being up in the air, from having been allowed to ride on his hobby so briskly, made only a show of objection; so, after a rizzard haddo, we had a jug of toddy, and sat round the fire with our feet on the fender--Benjie having fallen asleep with his clothes on, and been carried away to his bed.