Or echoes from the groaning ground
The warrior's measur'd tread?
Is it the lightning's quivering glance
That on the thicket streams?
Or do they flash on spear and lance,
The sun's retiring beams?
I see the dagger crest of Mar,
I see the Moray's silver star
Wave o'er the cloud of Saxon war,

That up the lake comes winding far.
To hero, boune for battle-strife,
Or bard of martial lay,

'T were worth ten years of peaceful life,
One glance at their array.

3. Their light-arm'd archers far and near,
Survey'd the tangled ground:

Their center ranks, with pike and spear,
A twilight forest frown'd;

Their barbed horsemen in the rear

The sterner +battalia crown'd.
No teymbal clash'd, no +clarion rang,
Still were the pipe and drum;
Save heavy tread and armor's clang,
The sullen march was dumb.

4. There breath'd no winds their crests to shake Or wave their flags aboard:

Scarce the frail +aspen seem'd to quake,
That shadow'd o'er their road;
Their tvanward scouts no tidings bring,

Can rouse no lurking foe,

Nor spy a trace of living thing,

Save when they stirr'd the roe;

The host moves like a deep sea wave,
Where rise no rocks, its pride to brave,
High-swelling, dark, and slow.

The lake is pass'd, and now they gain
A narrow and a broken plain,
Before the Trosach's rugged jaws :

And here, the horse and spearsmen pause,
While to explore a dangerous glen,
Dive through the pass the archer men.

5. At once there rose so wild a yell
Within that dark and narrow dell,

As all the fiends from heaven that fell,
Had peal'd the banner-cry of hell!
Forth from the pass, in tumult driven,
Like chaff before the wind of heaven,
The tarchery appear.

For life! for life! their flight they ply;
While shriek, and shout, and battle-cry,
And plaids and bonnets waving high,
And broad-swords flashing to the sky,
Are maddening in their rear.

6 Onward they drive in dreadful race,
Pursuers and pursued;

Before that tide of flight and chase,
How shall it keep its rooted place,

The spearmen's twilight wood?

"Down! down!" cried Mar, "your lances down!
Bear back both friend and foe !"

Like reeds before the tempest's frown,
That *serried grove of lances brown
At once lay level'd low;

And closely shouldering side to side,
The bristling ranks the onset bide.
"We'll quell the savage mountaineer,
As their Tinchel cows the game!
They come as fleet as mountain deer,
We'll drive them back as tame."

7. Bearing before them in their course
The relics of the archer force,

Like wave with crest of sparkling foam,
Right onward did Clan-Alpine come.
Above their tide, each broad-sword bright
Was +brandishing like gleam of light,
Each +targe was dark below;
And with the ocean's mighty swing,
When heaving to the tempest's wing,
They hurl'd them on the foe.
I heard the lance's shivering crash,
As when the whirlwind rends the ash;
I heard the broad-sword's deadly clang,
As if a hundred +anvils rang;

But Moray wheel'd his +rereward rank
Of horsemen, on Clan-Alpine's flank;
"My banner-man advance!

I see," he cried, "their columns shake:
Now, gallants! for your ladies' sake,
Upon them with the lance!”

8. The horsemen dash'd among the rout
As deer break through the broom;
Their steeds are stout, their swords are out,
They soon made +lightsome room.
Clan-Alpine's best are backward borne;
Where, where was Roderick then?
One blast upon his bugle-horn
Were worth a thousand men.
And trefluent through the pass of fear,
The battle's tide was pour'd;
Vanish'd the Saxon's struggling spear,
Vanish'd the mountain sword.
As Bracklinn's tchasm, so black and steep
Receives her roaring +linn,

As the dark caverns of the deep
Suck the wild whirlpool in,
So did the deep and darksome pass
Devour the battle's mingled mass;
None linger now upon the plain,
Save those who ne'er shall fight again.

CXXVII. THE BAPTISM.

FROM WILSON.

JOHN WILSON, late Professor in the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, is better known as the principal editor of Blackwood's Magazine, and its chief contributor, under the name of Christopher North. He has written numerous interesting tales, descriptive of Scotch life and manners.

KIRK; Scotch for Church. KITTLE; dangerous, ticklish.

1. THE rite of baptism had not been performed for several months in the kirk of Lanark. It was now the hottest time of persecution; and the inhabitants of that parish found other places in which to worship God, and celebrate the tordinances of religion. It was now the Sabbath day, and a small congregation of about a hundred souls, had met for divine service, in a place more magnificent than any temple

that human hands had ever built to Deity. The congregation had not assembled to the toll of the bell, but each heart knew the hour and observed it; for there are a hundred sundials among the hills, woods, moors, and fields; and the shepherd and the peasant see the hours passing by them, in sunshine and shadow.

2. The church in which they were assembled was hewn by God's hand, out of the eternal rock. A river rolled its way through a mighty chasm of cliffs, several hundred feet high, of which the one side presented enormous masses, and the other, corresponding recesses, as if the great stone girdle had been rent by a convulsion. The channel was overspread with prodigious fragments of rocks or large loose. stones, some of them smooth and bare, others containing soil and verdure in their rents and fissures, and here and there, crowned with shrubs and trees. The eye could at once command a long-stretching vista, seemingly closed and shut up at both extremities by the coalescing cliffs. This majestic reach of river contained pools, streams, and waterfalls innumerable; and when the water was low-which was now the case, in the common drought-it was easy to walk up this scene with the calm, blue sky overhead, an utter and sublime solitude.

3. On looking up, the soul was bowed down by the feeling of that prodigious hight of unscalable, and often overhanging cliff. Between the channel and the summit of the far extended precipices, were perpetually flying rooks and wood pigeons, and now and then a hawk, filling the profound abyss with their wild cawing, deep murmur, or shrilly shriek. Sometimes a heron would stand erect and still, on some little stone island, or rise up like a white cloud along the black walls of the chasm, and disappear. Winged creatures alone could inhabit this region. The fox and wild-cat chose more accessible haunts. Yet, here came the persecuted Christians and worshiped God, whose hand hung over their head those magnificent pillars and arches, scooped out those galleries from the solid rock, and laid at their feet the calm water, in its transparent beauty, in which they could see themselves sitting in reflected groups, with their bibles in their hands. 4. Here, upon a semi-circular ledge of rocks, over a narrow

chasm of which the tiny stream played in a murmuring waterfall, and divided the congregation into two equal parts, sat about a hundred persons, all devoutly listening to their minister, who stood before them on what might be called a small, natural pulpit of living stone. Up to it there led a short flight of steps, and over it waved the canopy of a tall, graceful birch-tree. The pulpit stood in the middle of the channel, directly facing the congregation, and separated from them by the clear, deep, sparkling pool, into which the scarce heard water poured over the blackened rock. The water, as it left the pool, separated into two streams, and flowed on each side of that altar, thus placing it in an island, whose large mossy stones were richly embowered under the golden blossoms and green tresses of the broom.

5. Divine service was closed, and a row of maidens, all clothed in purest white, came gliding off from the congregation, and crossing the stream on some stepping stones, arranged themselves at the foot of the pulpit, with the infants about to be baptized. The fathers of the infants, just as if they had been in their own kirk, had been sitting there during worship, and now stood up before the minister. The +baptismal water, taken from that pellucid pool, was lying, consecrated, in a small hollow of one of the upright stones that formed one side or pillar of the pulpit, and the holy rite proceeded.

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6. Some of the younger ones in that semicircle, kept gazing down into the pool, in which the whole scene was flected; and now and then, in spite of the grave looks and *admonishing whispers of their elders, letting fall a pebble into the water, that they might judge of its depth, from the length of time that elapsed before the clear air-bells lay sparkling on the agitated surface. The rite was over, and the religious service of the day closed by a psalm. The mighty rocks hemmed in the holy sound, and sent it in a more compact volume, clear, sweet, and strong, up to heaven. When the psalm ceased, an echo, like a spirit's voice was heard dying away, high up among the magnificent architecture of the cliffs; and once more might be noticed in the silence, the reviving voice of the waterfall.

7. Just then, a large stone fell from the top of the cliff