handsome but for the ravages of time, and the effects of exposure to the severe weather of her country. Age and, perhaps, sorrow, had quenched, in some degree, the fire of a dark blue eye, whose hue almost approached to black, and had sprinkled snow on such part of her tresses as had escaped from under her cap, and were dishevelled by the rigour of the storm.

'Such was the appearance of Norna of the Fitful Head, upon whom many of the inhabitants of the island looked with observance, many with fear, and almost all with a sort of veneration.'-vol. i. pp. 117, 118.

Norna's magic-for she has the supernatural pretensions which sometimes dignify, and more often render absurd, her prototypes in our author's works, is that of her Norwegian ancestors: it is exercised on the elements. Subsequently (our author can scarcely refrain from saying consequently) to her chanting a Runic invocation, the tempest subsides, and Mordaunt regains his home. But the next morning, when he and his father looked from the verge of the precipice, of which the landward slope was terminated by their house,

"the wide sea still heaved and swelled with the agitation of the yesterday's storm which had been far too violent to subside speedily. The tide, therefore, poured on the headland with a fury deafening to the ear, and dizzying to the eye, threatening instant destruction to whatever might be at the time involved in its current. The sight of nature in her magnificence, or in her beauty, or in her terrors, has at all times an overpowering interest, which even habit cannot greatly weaken; both father and son sate themselves down on the cliff to look out upon that unbounded war of waters, which rolled in their wrath to the foot of the precipice.

and

At once Mordaunt, whose eyes were sharper, and probably his attention more alert than that of his father, started up and exclaimed, "God in Heaven! there is a vessel in the roost."

'Mertoun looked to the north-westward, and an object was visible amid the rolling tide. "She shews no sail," he observed; and immediately added, after looking at the object through his spy-glass, “she is dismasted, and lies a sheer-hulk upon the water."

"And is drifting on the Sumburgh-head," said Mordaunt, struck with horror, "without the slightest means of weathering the cape." "She makes no effort," replied the father; "she is probably deserted by her crew."

"And in such a day as yesterday," replied Mordaunt, "when no open boat could live, were she manned with the best men ever handled an oar-all must have perished." —vol. i. p. 160-162.

'Onward it came, the large black hulk seeming larger at every fathom's length. She came nearer, until she bestrode the summit of one tremendous billow, which rolled on with her unbroken, till the wave and its burthen were precipitated against the rock, and then the triumph of the elements over the work of human hands was at once completed. One wave, we have said, made the wrecked vessel completely manifest

in her whole bulk, as it raised her, and bore her onward against the face of the precipice. But when that waye receded from the foot of the rock, the ship had ceased to exist; and the retiring billow only bore back a quantity of beams, planks, casks, and similar objects, which swept out to the offing, to be brought in again by the next wave, and again precipitated upon the face of the rock.

It was at this moment that Mordaunt conceived he saw a man floating on a plank or water cask, which, drifting away from the main current, seemed about to go a-shore upon a small spot of sand, where the water was shallow, and the waves broke more smoothly.'—vol. i. p. 163 -165.

Mordaunt, at great risk, rescues the shipwrecked man; and, by the powerful intervention of Norna, succeeds in placing him, with some of his baggage unplundered, at the cottage of the Ranzelman, or petty magistrate of the hamlet. A scene has, in the meau time, been passing, which is painted in our author's happiest manner. The love of fortuitous gain, which seems one of the strongest passions of uncultivated human nature-which gives zest to the pursuits of the sportsman and the gambler-which makes the soldier prize booty so much above pay-which caused the feudal monarch or his delegate, to bestow so disproportionate an attention on treasure-trove, and wreck, and royal fish, and heriots, and other casual sources of revenue, and forces poor Swertha, Mertoun's housekeeper, to exclaim that a ship a-shore is a sight to while the minister out of his very pu'pit in the middle of his preaching-this universal passion has poured the whole village upon the beach, in earnest unscrupulous plunder of the wreck.

In the evening Mordaunt visits the stranger, whom he finds a tall and well-made man, with a bold, sun-burnt handsome countenance, and manners that, in addition to the characteristic openness of a sailor, have an affectation of bluntness, a sort of defiance, uncalled for by his situation. He describes himself as Clement Cleveland, captain and part owner of the shipwrecked vessel, and departs, the next morning, for Burgh Westra, with an introduction from Mordaunt, in the hope of regaining a part of his plundered property, through the assistance of Magnus Troil. The story is now undramatic for a couple of months, during which a mutual attachment arises between Minna and Cleveland, whom Zetland hospitality had made an inmate at Burgh Westra, and both Cleveland and Troil are disposed to quarrel with Mordaunt; Cleveland, because Norna has informed him that she destines Minna for Mordaunt ; Troil, because he has received from the pedlar, Snaelsfoot, and from the gossips of the island, false rumours, that Mordaunt had spoken disrespectfully and presumptuously of his intimacy with the sisters. The anger of Troil shows itself in the interruption of the usual intercourse be

GG 4

tween

tween Burgh Westra and Jarlshof: no messenger from Minna asks the words of a Norse ballad, or specimens for her various collections of feathers, or eggs, or shells, or sea-weeds. Brenda sends no riddle to be resolved, or song to be learned; nor does the honest old Udaller, in a rude hand which might pass for an ancient Runic inscription, send his hearty greetings to his good young friend, with a present of something to make good cheer, and an earnest request that he will come to Burgh Westra as soon, and stay as long as possible. Even the grand festival of St. John's eve approaches, and no invitation has reached him. In obedience, however, partly to his own anxiety, and partly to the advice of Norna, he resolves to be present. His road again lies by Harfra, and some of the best broad farce in the novel describes his reception by Triptolemus and his sister, the avidity with which they join in the destruction of his luncheon, (though Babie's only motive is a curiosity to see whether the Shetland folks cure their beef in her own country way) and their united journey during the remainder

of the road.

The coolness with which Mordaunt is received by Magnus and his daughters, is alleviated by the warm greeting of Claud Halcro, a poet of Charles's days, again domesticated in his old age among his native islands, and whom our author has associated with Triptolemus Yellowley in a joint commission of bore.

The mighty feast, and the joyous dance, pass before us with the vividness of our author's drama. At the close of the latter, Brenda, in obedience to the commands of Norna, contrives an interview with Mordaunt, so delightfully managed that we can scarcely refrain from extracting it, in which he has an opportunity of hearing, and indignantly denying, the expressions attributed to him. Brenda's object is, to express her fears of Cleveland's influence over Minna; to entreat Mordaunt to avoid any strife with him, but to watch him, and, if possible, discover who he is, and what are his intentions; and to believe that, though her father and sister may appear altered, though she too must wear a face of cold friendship, at heart they are still Brenda and Mordaunt.

'She stretched her hand to him, but withdrew it in some slight confusion, laughing and blushing, when, by a natural impulse, he was about to press it to his lips. He endeavoured for a moment to detain her, for the interview had for him a degree of fascination, which, as often as he had formerly been alone with Brenda, he had never experienced. But she extricated herself from him, and again signing an adieu, and pointing out to him a path different from that which she was herself about to take, tripped towards the house, and was soon hidden from his view by the acclivity.

'Mordaunt stood gazing after her in a state of mind, to which, as yet, he had been a stranger. The dubious neutral ground between love and

friendship

friendship may be long and safely trodden, until he who stands upon it is suddenly called upon to recognize the authority of the one or the. other power; and then it most frequently happens, that he who for years supposed himself only to be a friend, finds himself at once transformed into a lover. That such a change in Mordaunt's feelings should take place from this date, although he himself was unable to distinguish its nature, was to be expected. He found himself at once received, with the most unsuspicious frankness, into the confidence of a beautiful and fascinating young woman, by whom he had, so short a time before, imagined himself despised and disliked; and, if any thing could make a change, in itself so surprising and so pleasing, yet more intoxicating, it was the guileless and open-hearted simplicity of Brenda, that cast an enchantment over every thing which he did or said. The scene too, might have had its effects, though there was little occasion for its aid. But a fair face looks yet fairer under the light of the moon, and a sweet voice sounds yet sweeter amongst the whispering sounds of a summer night.'-Vol. ii. p. 61-63.

The effect of this scene on Mordaunt appears to us admirably imagined. Incredulous as we are in love at first sight, thinking it always to require previous acquaintance, and almost intimacy, as a predisposing cause, we believe its actual explosion to be, in general, as trifling as its immediate cause, and as complete in its effects, as in the instance before us. That Mordaunt would become attached to one of the sisters was a matter of certainty; to which of the two, was a matter of chance; and a chance, which circumstances, even slighter than those of which we have given the outline, might have determined. Our author has, with his usual skill, rather left us to infer the history of Brenda's affection, than actually related it. It appears to have been first roused from the slumber in which it lay, unperceived even by herself, while Mordaunt was living in undistinguishing intimacy with both the sisters, by her father's attempt to break off that intimacy. It is strengthened by the harshness with which he is treated by Minna, and the attachment which arises between Minna and Cleveland; the first accustoming her to sympathize with Mordaunt as injured, the second making a friend and lover doubly interesting to her, to alleviate the loss of her sister's confidence, and the mortification which female vanity, even in the simplest mind, must have felt at a decided preference of another to her, when shown by such a man as Cleveland. Under these circumstances, we think our author perfectly justified in leading us, as he does in a beautiful scene between the sisters, to which we are not yet arrived, to conclude that this interview was as decisive of Brenda's feelings as of Mordaunt's, and that it at once transformed them both from friends into lovers.'

The next morning is occupied by an attack on a whale which the tide has left in an estuary. After some distant battering,

Mordaunt

Mordaunt plunges a half-pike into his side; but the boat is stove. by a blow from the monster's tail, and he floats senseless on the

waves.

From this singular situation, (for we believe no man, stunned by a blow and thrown into the water, ever before floated,) he is rescued by Cleveland, who uses the equality on which this incident places him with his former preserver, to return an almost direct challenge for his thanks. At the evening feast Bryce Snaelsfoot arrives from Kirkwall, his pack distended with satins, silks, and embroideries, part of the cargo of a strange vessel then lying at Kirkwall, which Cleveland discovers to be a consort that parted company from him at the time his own ship was wrecked. The arrival of this vessel materially influences the subsequent events. Cleveland resolves to visit her at Kirkwall, both to reclaim the share to which he is entitled, in her gains, and to prevent the injurious effects of any unprepared meeting between himself and his former friends, if chance should carry them to Burgh Westra. And Troil proposes to go there with his daughters, in order to give them the amusement of the annual fair, to settle with the consignees of his fish, and to traffic with the proprietors of the cargo, of which Snaelsfoot has brought so enticing a specimen. The night is occupied by a scene between Norna and the sisters, of more effort than merit. By the light of a lamp, framed out of a gibbet iron, and nourished by what never came either from the fish or the fruit,' she relates to them (apparently with no object but to afford a vehicle of the information to the reader) her relationship to their family, her early history-her seduction by a stranger-the circumstances through which she becomes the accidental cause of her father's death-and the vision in which the Demon Trolld conferred on her the empire of the seas and the winds."

The conversation of the sisters, as they are dressing the next morning, which is turned by a hint of Brenda's, from the events of the night to the subjects nearest the hearts of each, and, after some hints and recriminations, and cautions and disclaimers, ends in a demi-confidence on the part of Brenda, and a full one on that of Minna, is one of the most exquisite scenes in the novel. Its truth, delicacy and ease are inimitable. We cannot bestow the same praise on that which follows, in which Norna in a half serious pastime enshrines herself in a bearskin tabernacle, and returns oracular answers to the questions addressed to her. She prognosticates to Brenda a fortunate marriage, to Minna a disastrous passion. As our author in this incident indulged at once his favourite propensities, of describing an obsolete custom, and prophetically indicating the subsequent events of his fable, it was not, perhaps, possible, with his weak powers of self-restraint, that he

should