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160 were never more exquisite in their truth than in this slight sketch. Another great beauty in the "Monastery," are the poetical fragments sung by the White Lady. Fanciful, full of imagery and melody—they would bear comparison with Scott's earliest and happiest efforts. Though the word effort is mistaken as applied to poetry, "it comes unbidden if it come at all." Its very writers might themselves wonder why at times harmony and imagery crowd upon the mind which, at another time, would seek them, and in vain. The presence of poetry is as mysterious and uncertain in its loveliness as the shadowy beauty of the White Lady of Avenel.

 

seldom chooses a heroine from any but the upper ranks. He rarely urges that this is "the loveliest low-born lass;" he likes the lady of his choice to be unexceptionable in her quarterings, and I believe that the blot in Sir Percie Shafton's escutcheon originated in the desire to excuse the mes-alliance. Still the miller has a sort of poetical aristocracy—he belongs to the realm of tradition and ballad—the picturesque which the mill gives to the landscape, with its gigantic wings, and its rushing stream is, in some kind, 