Page:Female Portrait Gallery.pdf/11

Rh life, have much to answer for, on the score of the inappropriate. This complaint cannot be urged against the natural and charming heiress of Tully Vedarose, by name, and rose by nature; neither lover nor poet could have imagined a more fitting emblem for the lovely girl, whose youth and bloom are in exquisite contrast to the various venerable objects by which she is surrounded—from the ancient tower, where she "makes a sunshine in a shady place,"to the ancient baillie Mac Wheeble, whose heart, crusted as it is with native and professional selfishness, has yet one warm and soft touch of affection for the child he has seen grow to all but womanhood beneath his eyes. Scott indicates, to use an expressive Irishism, "what a darling she is," by the attachment she inspires in all around. No one makes the heart of a little home circle entirely their own, without some very sweet gifts of nature—we must love to be beloved. That Waverley did not in the first instance yield his heart—"rescue or no rescue"—militates nothing against Rose's attraction. Lord Byron says, "In youth we like something older than ourselves, in age something younger." This is most especially true in a youth of imaginative temperament. He looks for a goddess, and it is rarely till more than one cloud has melted into bodiless air, that he begins to think that the claims of a young and pretty woman are at least equal to his own. What at first he asked from love, were excitement and romance;