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FITZ-JAMES AND RODERICK DHU.

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT.

(From "The Lady of the Lake.")

[SIR WALTER SCOTT: The great Scotch novelist and poet; born August 15, 1771, in Edinburgh, where he attended the university. He practiced as an advocate for a while, then withdrew from the bar and devoted his attention largely to literature. "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" (1805) brought him into prominence as an author; and in 1814 he published anonymously "Waverley," the first of the "Waverley Novels." He became a partner in Constable's publishing house and the Ballantynes' printing house, in order to realize all sides of the profit from his works; but bad management, and his immense overdrafts on their resources to build up a great feudal estate at Abbotsford, left them so weak that the panic of 1825 ruined both. He wore out his life in the effort to pay up in full the liabilities of £120,000, and the royalties on his books achieved this after his death. His other great poems are "Marmion" and "The Lady of the Lake," and lesser ones in merit are "Rokeby," "The Lord of the Isles," "Harold the Dauntless," "The Bridal of Triermain," and "The Vision of Don Roderick." Among the "Waverleys" may be cited "Guy Mannering,” “The Antiquary," "The Heart of Midlothian," "Old Mortality," "Rob Roy," 996 The Bride of Lammermoor," "Ivanhoe," "Kenilworth," "The Abbot," " Quentin Durward," "The Pirate," and "The Talisman."]

HE COUCHED him in a thicket hoar,
And thought his toils and perils o'er:

"Of all my rash adventures past,

This frantic feat must prove the last! . .

If farther through the wilds I go,

I only fall upon the foe;

I'll couch me here till evening gray,

Then darkling try my dangerous way."

The shades of eve come slowly down,
The woods are wrapt in deeper brown,
The owl awakens from her dell,

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