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116 glowing with the excitement of the narrative, and his large blue eyes almost double their usual size with eager attention. "I have always thought," said Lord Mandeville—"and Frank seems to think with me—that no poet ever carried you so completely along with him as Sir Walter Scott: he is the poet, of all others, made to be read aloud. What is the reason I like to read Lord Byron to myself, but like Scott to be read to me?" "Because," said Mr. Morland, "the one is the poet of reflection, the other of action. Byron's pages are like the glasses which reflect ourselves—Scott's are like those magic mirrors which give forth other and distant scenes, and other and passing shapes; but this is a sweeping remark—and both poets often interchange their characteristics. Scott will excite pensive and lingering thought—and Byron, as in the Corsair and Lara, carry us along by the mere interest of the story." "I think," observed Emily, "In the Lay of the Last Minstrel there is one of the most exquisite touches of natural feeling I ever met with. Sir William Deloraine uncloses the tomb of Michael Scott, while the monk, his early