“I beg ten thousand pardons for the interruption,” cried Mrs. Bluemits from the opposite side of the room; “but my ear was smote with the sounds of publish, and interesting,—­words which never fail to awaken a responsive chord in my bosom.  Pray,” addressing Grizzy, and bringing her into the full blaze of observation, “may I ask, was it of the Campbell these electric words were spoken?  To you, Madam, I am sure I need not apologise for my enthusiasm—­you who claim the proud distinction of being a country woman, need I ask—­an acquaintance?”

All that poor Grizzy could comprehend of this harangue was that it was reckoned a great honour to be acquainted with a Campbell; and chuckling with delight at the idea of her own consequence, she briskly replied—­

“Oh, I know plenty of Campbells; there’s the Campbells of Mireside, relations of ours; and there’s the Campbells of Blackbrae, married into our family; and there’s the Campbells of Windlestrae Glen, are not very distant by my mother’s side.”

Mary felt as if perforated by bullets in all directions, as she encountered the eyes of the company, turned alternately upon her aunt and her; but they were on opposite sides of the room; therefore to interpose betwixt Grizzy and her assailants was impossible.

“Possibly,” suggested Mrs. Dalton, “Miss Douglas prefers the loftier strains of the mighty Minstrel of the Mountains to the more polished periods of the Poet of the Transatlantic Plain.”

“Without either a possibility or a perhaps,” said Mrs. Apsley, “the probability is, Miss Douglas prefers the author of the ‘Giaour’ to all the rest of her poetical countrymen.  Where, in either Walter Scott or Thomas Campbell, will you find such lines as these;—­

    ’Wet with their own best blood, shall drip
    Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip!’”

“Pardon me, madam,” said Miss Parkin; “but I am of opinion you have scarcely given a fair specimen of the powers of the Noble Bard in question.  The image here presented is a familiar one; ’the gnashing tooth’ and ‘haggard lip’ we have all witnessed, perhaps some of us may even have experienced.  There is consequently little merit in presenting it to the mind’s eye.  It is easy, comparatively speaking, to portray the feelings and passions of our own kind.  We have only, as Dryden expresses it, to descend into ourselves to find the secret imperfections of our mind.  It is therefore in his portraiture of the canine race that the illustrious author has so far excelled all his contemporaries—­in fact, he has given quite a dramatic cast to his dogs,” and she repeated, with an air of triumph—­

    “And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall,
    Hold o’er the dead their carnival;
    Gorging and growling o’er carcase and limb,
    They were too busy to bark at him! 
    From a Tartar’s skull they had stripped the flesh,
    As ye peel the fig when its