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best commentators; and the mode, indeed, in which it is executed, the sensibility and deep interest with which it seems to have been touched into beauty and effect, almost necessarily lead to such a conclusion. It is a picture also, which cannot but be dear to every great and benevolent mind, as it places before us, one of the most soothing and consolitary of all spectacles,-genius, under adversity, fostered and protected by the sympathy of a whole people; and as it includes the further belief, that the poet had sustained his calamity in a manner that added to the pity which his talents and his privations had called forth, the highest possible admiration of his fortitude and resignation.

No. XIII.

Th' embattled tower, o'ergrown with bearded

moss,

And by the melancholy skill of time,

Moulded to beauty, charms my bosom more
Than all the palaces of princes,

BUCKE.

No sooner had the party re-assembled in the book-room of Mr. Walsingham, after their hurried return to the cottage, than Llwellyn expressed his sense of obligation to him for the narrative which he had been so good as to communicate. It had, indeed, produced a considerable effect on the feelings of his auditors, and had thrown a corresponding shade of gloom and anxiety over their very appearance. Edward remained thoughtful, abstracted, and, in some degree yet agitated; a melancholy, sweet, and full of sensibility, stole over the fine countenance of Hoel, as he cast a look of sympathy and solicitude on the person of his young friend;

whilst an unusual seriousness, mingled with indications of awe and deep reflection, sat on the features of the aged minstrel.

"It has been your fate, I perceive, my kind host," said the bard, "as it hath been mine, to have experienced the pressure of vicissitude and misfortune; and though poverty and loss of sight, the latter, certainly an evil of great magnitude, are not in the catalogue of your calamities, I can yet sensibly feel, that your trial has been also severe. The consolation, however, of being highly useful to others, that noblest soother of the suffering mind, happily took place soon after the deprivation of your beloved wife; and though in her your loss has been, as I well know, in many respects irreparable; yet, as far as it could be compensated in this life, it has been, through the delightful consciousness of being the stay and hope, the friend and protector, of the fatherless and forsaken. To witness the sorrows of an unmerited affliction, fall when and where they may, must ever be an occurrence highly distressing to a human mind; but to see the very spring and morning of existence clouded with

grief, a victim, as it were, helpless and unresisting, to the folly or the vice of others, is a spectacle, beyond all others, truly mournful and distressing; and, therefore, he whose lot it hath been to become the averter of a calamity so deplorable, must, in my opinion, be pronounced blessed. May it be yours, long after the grass has waved over the grave of Llwellyn, to enjoy the fruits of a conduct so laudable and philanthropic !"

"It has been but the performance of a duty, my friend," replied Mr. Walsingham," from which, I trust, few would have shrank; but like every other duty, when entered into from proper motives, it has been attended with its peculiar gratifications. I am, like yourself Llwellyn, though less advanced into the vale of years, but as a tree stripped of its branches and withering by the way. In one respect, indeed, I may be reckoned more unfortunate; for I know not, that I have a relative left on earth: and were it not for this young man, (pointing to Edward,) whom I have brought up, as I hope, to honour his God, and be useful to his fellow creatures, there were none to love me !"

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"Nay, say not so, my noble countryman, exclaimed the grey-haired bard," for whilst a droop of blood yet warms this aged heart, it beats for friendship and for thee. But is there then, indeed, no kindred tie yet left for you in Switzerland? none in the land of your nativity?"

"My uncle, he whom I long looked up to with the reverence due to almost apostolic piety and zeal, and whose memory I cherish with a devotedness which nothing but virtues like his own could merit or create, has paid the debt of nature. He rests, together with the beloved partner of his pilgrimage, in the little churchyard of Meyringen. There, surrounded by those who once drank life and instruction from his lips, he awaits in calm repose the resurrection of the just. Yes, dearest Llwellyn, often in the deep silence of the night, when every eye, save mine, is closed in sleep, do I live in imagination with those I left and lost in Switzerland. Then is it, that I again hearken to the hallowed accents of the pastor of Meyringen; it is then, I again converse with dead Maria, that I again tread with her the green vallies, and listen to the falling

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