Norna, our author best knows how, was enabled to predict, the meeting of the crimson foot and the crimson hand, now takes place. It is broken off by Norna, who enables Cleveland to escape through one of the subterraneous passages so frequent in the ruins of romance, and dismisses him to his ship with an injunction, if he would avoid utter destruction, to depart within twenty-four hours; a warning which she might safely give, as she had sent intelligence to the Halcyon which would bring her to the Orkneys at the expiration of that period. As he walks the deck, looking on at the provisioning of the vessel—

Thoughts of remorse were now rolling in his mind, and he may be forgiven if recollections of Minna mingled with and aided them. He looked around, too, on his mates, and profligate and hardened as he knew them to be, he could not think of their paying the penalty of his obstinacy. "We shall be ready to sail with the ebb tide," he said to himself" why should I endanger these men, by detaining them till the hour of danger, predicted by that singular woman, shall arrive? Her intelligence, howsoever acquired, has been always strangely accurate; and her warning was as solemn as if a mother were to apprize an erring son of his crimes, and of his approaching punishment. Besides, what chance is there that I can again see Minna? She is at Kirkwall, doubtless, and to hold my course thither would be to steer right upon the rocks. No, I will not endanger these poor fellows-I will sail with the ebb tide. On the desolate Hebrides, or on the north-west coast of Ireland, I will leave the vessel, and return hither in some disguise-yet, why should I return, since it will perhaps be only to see Minna the bride of Mordaunt ?-No-let the vessel sail with this ebb tide without me. I will abide and take my fate."-vol. iii. pp. 169, 170.

His meditations are interrupted by the news that Magnus Troil, with his daughters and Mordaunt, to whom he has been reconciled by Norna, are in the house of Stennis, at a short distance from the bay in which the sloop is lying. In spite of presentiment and prediction, Cleveland delays sailing till the next day's ebb, and employs the interval in arranging a last interview with Minna. The pirates, vexed at the interference of their captain's love with his duty, resolve to use this opportunity to get possession of Minna, and use her as a pledge for her lover's services. At daybreak the next morning the meeting takes place, in the Druidical circle of Stennis. In execution of their project, the pirates surprize the lovers, and Mordaunt with a party of his friends rescues Minna, as in duty bound, and makes prisoners Cleveland and his lieutenant, Bunce, the contriver of the plot. We must transcribe part of the conversation between Cleveland and Bunce, in the apartment overlooking the sea, in which they are confined.

"I forgive you from all my soul, Jack," said Cleveland, who had resumed his situation at the window; " and the rather that your folly is

of

of little consequence-the morning is come that must bring ruin on us all."

"What, you are thinking of the old woman's prophecy you spoke of?" said Bunce. "Come

"It will soon be accomplished," answered Cleveland. hither; what do you take yon large square-rigged vessel for, that you see doubling the head-land on the east, and opening the Bay of Stromness ?"

"Why, I can't make her well out," said Bunce, "but yonder is old Goffe, takes her for a West Indiaman loaded with rum and sugar, I suppose, for d-n me if he does not slip cable, and stand out to her!"

"Instead of running her into the shoal water, which was his only safety," said Cleveland-" The fool! the dotard! the drivelling, drunken ideot!-he will get his liquor hot enough; for yon is the HalcyonSee, she hoists her colours and fires a broad-side! and there will soon be an end of the Fortune's Favourite! I only hope they will fight her to the last plank. The Boatswain used to be staunch enough, and so is Goffe, though an incarnate demon.-Now she shoots away, with all the sail she can spread, and that shows some sense."

6.66

Up goes the Jolly Hodge, the old black flag, with the death's head and hour glass, and that shows some spunk."

"The hour glass is turned for us, Jack, for this bout-our sand is running fast-Fire away yet, my roving lads! The deep sea or the blue sky rather than a rope and a yard-arm."

'There was a moment of anxious and dead silence; the sloop, though hard pressed, maintaining still a running fight, and the frigate continuing in full chase, but scarce returning a shot. At length the vessels neared each other, so as to show that the man-of-war intended to board the sloop, instead of sinking her, probably to secure the plunder which might be in the pirate vessel.

"Now Goffe-now Boatswain!" exclaimed Cleveland, in an ecstacy of impatience, and as if they could have heard his commands, "stand by sheets and tacks-rake her with a broadside, when you are under her bows, then about ship, and go off on the other tack like a wild goose. The sails shiver-the helm's a-lee-Ah!-deep-sea sink the lubbers!-they miss stays, and the frigate runs them a-board!"

'Accordingly the various manoeuvres of the chase had brought them so near, that Cleveland, with his spy-glass, could see the man-of-war'smen boarding by the yards and bow-sprit, in irresistible numbers, their naked cutlasses flashing in the sun, when, at that critical moment, both ships were enveloped in a cloud of thick black smoke, which suddenly arose on board the captured pirate.

""Exeunt omnes," said Bunce, with clasped hands.

"There went the Fortune's Favourite, ship and crew," said Cleve} land, at the same instant.

But the smoke immediately clearing away, shewed that the damage had only been partial, and that from want of a sufficient quantity of powder, the pirates had failed in their desperate attempt to blow up their vessel with the Halcyon.

* Shortly

Shortly after the action was over, Captain Weatherport of the H cyon sent an officer and a party of marines to the house of Stennis, demand of them the pirate seamen who were their prisoners, and, particular, Cleveland and Bunce, who acted as Captain and Lientena of the gang.'-vol. iii. pp. 308-311.

The catastrophe is now at hand. It begins by a series of disc veries; that the real name of Norna is Troil, and that of Basil Me toun and Cleveland, Vaughan; that Basil was the early seduce of Norna, and that Cleveland is their son; that Cleveland an his father, while they both exercised piracy in the West Indie about eight years before, had at about the same time received a account of each other's death, and had been prevented from detecting its falsehood by each changing, at about the same time, his name. It appears too that Basil Vaughan, having also heard a report of his mistress's death, had never inquired into the particulars of her fate when he returned to Zetland; and, though Norna was the most marked person in the island, and the especial protectress of his son Mordaunt, had never heard, what must have been notorious to every body else in the island, and was so even to the provost of Kirkwall, that she had borne the name of Troil. The effect of all this is, to drive Basil into a foreign convent, and make Norna abdicate her elemental kingdom and die penitent and deVout. Cleveland, in return for some acts of generosity while a pirate, is pardoned, received into the British navy, and falls in action. Minna dies an old maid; Brenda and Mordaunt are married, and Magnus Troil enjoys a jovial old age.

Such is the fable-full of interest, activity, confusion, negligence, and improbability. The gentlest, the most confiding reader must be startled at the triple recognition, at the recurrence, in three distinct instances, of the same combination of events, a combination as unusual in real life, as it is trite in fiction. And he must be gentler still who can believe in the probability of Cleveland's pardon, or in the possibility of his reception into the British service.

Among the characters, our favourite is Magnus Troil. He is drawn with such vigour and consistency; the broad features of his natural disposition are so well marked, and the peculiarities which modify them are so well accounted for, they smack so much of his soil and culture, and are so incapable of being transferred to any other person, or any other situation, that he dwells in our recollection as more than an imaginary acquaintance. We are sure that at some indefinite period of our lives, we must have visited the sturdy Udaller, been greeted with his honest and hearty burst of hilarity, dined at his groaning table, danced in his rigging loft, and drank from the mightyMariner of Canton.' His hereditary rank and

wealth,

wealth, and his neglected education among inferiors or dependents, exclude both the virtues and the vices which a more varied social intercourse, a collision with equals, and rivals and superiors, must have produced. His disposition has not been soured by neglect or injustice, his vanity stimulated by contest, his liberality confined by the necessity of saving, his selfishness rendered intense by the pursuit of personal aggrandizement, or his feelings blunted by habits of frequently subduing, and, still more frequently, concealing them; while the same circumstances have deprived him of controul over his temper, have left his prejudices unenlightened, and driven him for amusement to sensual excitement or promiscuous hospitality. He is, as we observed when he first was mentioned, a Zetlandish variation of Cedric, though with more shrewdness and practical sense, and less exaggeration, than our author chose to infuse into that worthy, but somewhat absurd, Thane. We wish, however, that his rupture with Mordaunt had been better accounted for. Our author himself has made the slightness of its grounds more striking, by so long delaying to explain them, a delay which we are inclined to attribute, either to his not having decided what they should be, or to his feeling ashamed of their inadequacy. The honest frankhearted Udaller would never have cast off his ' good young friend' in sulky silence, on the reports of the pedlar, a liar by profession, even aided by the tattle of Lady Glowrowrum. Their reconciliation is effected as clumsily, and slurred over as sneakingly. Minna and Brenda are the sisters of Flora Mac Ivor and Rose Bradwardine, with the

facies non una,

Nec diversa tamen'—

which has long been appropriated to that relationship. Minna has all Flora's high-blooded courage, and enthusiasm, and generosity, unchecked and uninformed by her experience and literature, by her knowledge of books and of the world. Brenda differs less from Rose, in accidental features, and more in natural ones. Her education has been nearly the same, but her spirits are higher, her talents weaker, and her feelings less susceptible. She defends her lover boldly and vehemently, but she required strong circumstances to direct her attachment to him, and she is ready to sacrifice him, even while undertaking his defence, if Minna will give up Cleveland. When Flora ridicules Waverley, Rose is silent-but she had given him her affection, she had gone through fatigue and danger to protect him, while he was the avowed lover of another. An alteration in external circumstances alone, would have identified the two former: if Flora had been a Zetlander she would have been Minna. But an alteration in mind would be necessary to make Brenda coincide with Rose. We do not recollect a stronger instance of

our author's talents, of the clearness with which his characters are conceived, and the consistency with which they are developed, than the points of resemblance and dissimilarity in these four exquisite portraits. In ordinary hands they would have been exact imitations of each other, or totally unlike.

Norna is a more palpable copy than any of the preceding characters. She is not, like them, the representative of a class whose existence we might have conjectured a priori, but belongs to a race of beings common, enough and more than enough, in our author's pages, but who probably never were, and never will be, found any where else. They are all tall, mysterious females, addicted to declamation and gifted with ubiquity, with strong talents and passions, and disordered imaginations, and without the hopes, or fears, or sympathies of ordinary mortals; who forward the catastrophe by totally different means, and on totally different motives, from those of the other agents in the fable. The first and the best (if we must exclude the Lady of Branxolm Tower) was Meg Merrilies: and even she touched the borders of nature; and all her successors, down to Magdalen Græme, have gone farther and farther in transgressing them. But hitherto they have had a method in their madness their features have been exaggerated, but they have been imposing and consistent. Norna is a perfect busy-body, and wastes her energy in restlessness and an affectation of activity as undignified and fidgetty as that of the Wierd Sister. She seems continually exclaiming

'I'll do, and I'll do, and I'll do.'

She sends intelligence to the Halcyon of Cleveland's movements, and then warns him of his danger-hides money under Yellowley's hearth, that she may hoax him with imaginary wealth, of which her pet dwarf is to deprive him; intrudes into his house to frighten him and show off her power over the winds, breaks in upon the convivial party, and deranges their game of conjuration, in order to alarm them by her prophecies, conceals Mordaunt's safety from his friends, that they may stare at his reappearance, and plays fifty such charlatan tricks, with no adequate purpose. All this would have done if the character had been avowedly burlesque, but it is intended to be lofty and dignified. She may please our transatlantic brethren, for they have an expression which seems made for her: she is awfully smart;' but we fear she will be understood by no one to whom the combination of ideas contained in that singular phrase is not familiar.

Cleveland appears to have won prodigiously on our author during the progress of the story, and we do not recollect a stronger instance of the ill effects of parental fondness. His feelings and his conduct on his first appearance are perfectly consistent with his

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