8. Below, were cliffs, chasms, blocks of stone, and the +skeletons of old trees-far-far down-and +dwindled into specks, and a thousand creatures of her own kind, stationary, or running to and fro! Was that the sound of the waterfall, or the faint roar of voices? Is that her native strath? and that tuft of trees, does it contain the hut, in which stands the cradle of her child? Never more shall it be rocked by her foot! Here must she die; and when her breast is exhausted, her baby, too! And those horrid beaks, and eyes, and talons, and wings, will return, and her child will be devoured at last, even within the dead bosom, that can protect it no more.

CIX. THE EAGLE'S NEST-CONCLUDED.

SCREES; precipices. MAUN; must. CLAES; clothes.

1. WHERE, all this time, was Mark Steuart, the sailor? Half way up the cliffs. But his eye had got dim, and his heart sick; and he, who had so often reefed the top-gallant sail, when, at midnight, the coming of the gale was heard afar, covered his face with his hands, and dared look no longer on the swimming heights. "And who will take care of my poor, bed-ridden mother?" thought Hannah, whose soul, through the exhaustion of so many passions, could no more retain in its grasp that hope, which it had clutched in despair. A voice whispered "God." She looked around expecting to see an angel, but nothing moved, except a rotten branch, that, under its own weight, broke off from the crumbling rock. Her eye, by some secret *sympathy of her soul with the inanimate object, watched its fall; and it seemed to stop not far off, on a small platform.

2. Her child was bound within her bosom-she remembered not how or when,—but it was safe—and, scarcely daring to open her eyes, she slid down the shelving rocks, and found herself on a small piece of firm, root-bound soil, with the tops of bushes appearing below. With fingers suddenly strengthened into the power of iron, she swung herself down, by briar, and broom, and theather, and dwarf birch. Here, a loosened stone leaped over a ledge, and no sound was heard,

so profound was its fall. There, the shingle rattled down the screes, and she hesitated not to follow. Her feet bounded against the huge stone that stopped them, but she felt no pain. Her body was callous as the cliff. Steep, as the upright wall of a house; was now the side of the precipice. But it was matted with ivy, centuries old, long ago dead, and without a single green leaf, but with thousands of armthick stems, petrified into the rock, and covering it, as with a trellis. She bound her baby to her neck, and, with hands and feet, clung to the fearful ladder.

3. Turning round her head and looking down, lo! the whole population of the parish-so great was the multitudeon their knees! and, hush! the voice of psalms! a hymn, breathing the spirit of one united prayer! Sad and solemn was the strain, but nothing dirge-like, breathing not of death, but deliverance. Often had she sung that tune, perhaps the very words,—but them she heard not-in her own hut, she and her mother; or, in the kirk, along with the congregation. An unseen hand seemed fastening her fingers to the ribs of ivy, and, in sudden inspiration, believing that her life was to be saved, she became almost as fearless as if she had been changed into a winged creature. Again her feet touched stones and earth, the psalm was hushed, but a *tremulous, sobbing voice was close beside her, and lo! a shegoat, with two little kids, at her feet! "Wild heights," thought she," do these creatures climb, but the dam will lead down her kid by the easiest paths; for, oh! even in the brute creatures, what is the holy power of a mother's love!" and turning round her head, she kissed her sleeping baby, and, for the first time, she wept.

4. Overhead, frowned the front of the precipice, never before touched by human hand or foot. No one had ever dreamed of scaling it, and the golden eagles knew that well, in their instinct, as, before they built their aerie, they had brushed it with their wings. But all the rest of this part of the mountain side, though scarred, and seamed, and +chasmed, was yet accessible; and more than one person in the parish had reached the bottom of the Glead's Cliff. Many were now attempting it; and, ere the cautious mother had followed her dumb guides a hundred yards, though among

dangers, that, although enough to terrify the stoutest heart, were traversed by her without a shudder, the head of one man appeared, and then the head of another; and she knew that God had delivered her and her child, in safety, into the care of their fellow-creatures.

5. Not a word was spoken, eyes said enough, she hushed her friends with her hands, and, with uplifted eyes, pointed to the guides lent to her by Heaven. Small, green *plats, where those creatures nibble the wild flowers, became now more frequent; trodden lines, almost as easy as sheep-paths, showed that the dam had not led her young into danger; and now, the brush-wood dwindled away into straggling shrubs, and the party stood on a little *eminence above the stream, and forming part of the strath.

6. There had been trouble and agitation, much sobbing, and many tears, among the multitude, while the mother was scaling the cliffs; sublime was the shout that echoed afar, the moment she reached the aerie; then, had succeeded a silence, deep as death; in a little while, arose that hymning prayer, succeeded by mute supplication; the wildness of thankful and congratulatory joy, had next its sway; and now, that her salvation was sure, the great crowd rustled like a wind-swept wood. And for whose sake was all this alternation of agony? A poor, humble creature, unknown to many, even by name; one who had but few friends, nor wished for more; contented to work all day, here, there, anywhere, that she might be able to support her aged mother, and her little child; and who, on sabbath, took her seat in an obscure pew, set apart for *paupers, in the kirk !

7. "Fall back, and give her fresh air!" said the old minister of the parish; and the circle of close faces widened around her, lying as in death. "Give me the bonnie bit bairn into my arms," cried first one mother, and then another; and it was tenderly handed around the circle of kisses, many of the snooded maidens bathing its face in tears. "There's na a scratch about the puir innocent, for the eagle, you see, maun hae stuck its talons into the lang claes, and the shawl. Blin', blin', maun they be, who see not the finger o' God in this thing!"

8. Hannah started up from her swoon, and, looking

wildly around, cried, "Oh! the bird! the bird! the eagle! the eagle has carried off my bonnie wee Walter! is there nane to pursue?" A neighbor put her baby to her breast, and, shutting her eyes, and smiting her forehead, the sorely bewildered creature said, in a low voice, "Am I wauken? oh tell me if I am wauken? or if a' this be the wark o' a fever, and the delirium o' a dream!"

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CX. THE DEAD EAGLE

IT is a desolate eve;

Dim, cheerless is the scene my path around;
+Patters the rain; the breeze-stirred forests grieve;
And wails the scene with melancholy sound,

While at my feet, behold,

With vigorous talons *clinched, and bright eyes shut,
With proud, curved beak, and wiry *plumage bold,
Thou liest, dead eagle of the desert; but

Preserving yet, in look, thy tameless mood,

As if, though stilled by death, thy heart were unsubdued.

How cam'st thou to thy death?

Did lapsing years o'ercome, and leave thee weak,
Or whirlwinds, on thy heaven-descending path,

Dash thee against the precipice's peak?

'Mid rack and floating cloud,

Did scythe-winged lightning flash 'athwart thy brain.
And drive thee from thy elevation proud,

Down whirling, lifeless, to the dim-seen plain?
I know not, may not guess; but here alone

Lifeless thou liest, outstretched beside the desert stone.

A proud life hath been thine:

High on the herbless rock, thou 'wok'st to birth,
And, gazing down, saw far beneath thee shine

Outstretched, horizon-girt, the map-like earth.
What rapture must have gushed

Warm round thy heart, when first thy wings essayed,
+Adventurously, their heavenward flight, and rushed
Up toward day's blazing eye-star, undismayed,
Above thee, space's vacancy unfurled,

And, far receding down, the dim, material world!

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7.

How fast, how far, how long,

Thine hath it been, from cloud-veiled *aerie high,
To swoop, and still the wood-lark's lyric song,
The leveret's gambols, and the lambkin's cry?
The terror-stricken dove

+Cowered down amid the oak-wood's central shade,
While ferny glens below, and cliffs above,
To thy fierce shriek, tresponsive echo made,
Carrying the wild alarm from vale to vale,
That thou, the forest king, wert out upon the gale!

When wooded glens were dark,

And o'er moist earth, glowed morning's rosy star, High o'er the scarce tinged clouds, 't was thine to mark The orient chariot of the sun afar:

And oh! how grand to soar

Beneath the full moon, on full pinion driven; To pierce the regions of gray cloud-land o'er, And drift amid the star-isled seas of heaven! Even like a courier, sent from earth to hold With space-dissevered worlds, unawed, communion bold.

Dead king bird of the waste!

And is thy curbless span of freedom o'er? No more shall thine ascending form be traced? And shall the hunter of the hills no more

Hark to thy regal cry,

While soaring o'er the *stream-girt vales, thy form,
Lessening, commingles with the azure sky,

Glimpsed 'mid the masses of the gathering storm,
As if it were thy proud resolve to see,

Betwixt thee and dim earth, the zigzag lightnings flee?

A child of freedom thou,

Thy birthright the tall cliff and sky beyond:

Thy feet were fetterless; thy fearless brow,
Ne'er quailing, tyrant man's dominion owned.
But nature's general law

The slave and freeman must alike obey:
Pride reels; and Power, that kept a world in awe,

The dreadful summons hears; and where are they?
Vanished, like night-dreams, from the sleeper's mind,
Dust, 'mid dissolving day, or clouds before the wind!