ON THE SETTING SUN

'These lines, as well as the foregoing, were found wrapped in a paper with the inscription, by Dr. Adam, "Walter Scott, July, 1783."'

- Lockhart, Chapter iii.

THOSE evening clouds, that setting ray,
And beauteous tints, serve to display
Their great Creator's praise;

Then let the short-lived thing called man,
Whose life's comprised within a span,

To Him his homage raise.

We often praise the evening clouds,
And tints so gay and bold,
But seldom think upon our God,

Who tinged these clouds with gold.

II. MOTTOES FROM THE NOVELS

'The scraps of poetry, which have been in most cases tacked to the beginning of chap ters in these novels, are sometimes quoted either from reading or from memory, but, in the general case, are pure invention. I found it too troublesome to turn to the collection of the British Poets to discover apposite mottoes, and in the situation of the theatrical machinist, who, when the white paper which represented his shower of snow was exhausted, continued the shower by snowing brown, I drew on my memory as long as I could, and when that failed, eked it out with invention. I believe that in some cases, where actual names are af fixed to the supposed quotations, it would be to little purpose to seek them in the works of the authors referred to. In some cases I have been entertained when Dr. Watts and other graver authors have been ransacked in vain for stanzas for which the novelist alone was responsible.' Introduction to Chronicles of the Canongate.

'It may be worth noting that it was in correcting the proof-sheets of The Antiquary that Scott first took to equipping his characters with mottoes of his own fabrication. On one occasion he happened to ask John Ballantyne, who was sitting by him, to hunt for a particu

LET those go see who will --I like it not
For, say he was a slave to rank and pomp,
And all the nothings he is now divorced from
By the hard doom of stern necessity;
Yet is it sad to mark his altered brow,
Where Vanity adjusts her flimsy veil
O'er the deep wrinkles of repentant Anguish.
Old Play.

FORTUNE, you say, flies from us- She but circles,

Like the fleet sea-bird round the fowler's skiff, Lost in the mist one moment, and the next Brushing the white sail with her whiter wing, As if to court the aim. - Experience watches, And has her on the wheel.

Old Play.

From The Black Dwarf THE bleakest rock upon the loneliest heath Feels in its barrenness some touch of spring;

In the wide pile, by others heeded not,
Hers was one sacred solitary spot,
Whose gloomy aisles and bending shelves con-

tain