were worse shame to be idle than to be on the worst side, though blacker than usurpation could make it.  As for Aunt Rachel, her scheme had not exactly terminated according to her wishes, but she was under the necessity of submitting to circumstances; and her mortification was diverted by the employment she found in fitting out her nephew for the campaign, and greatly consoled by the prospect of beholding him blaze in complete uniform.  Edward Waverley himself received with animated and undefined surprise this most unexpected intelligence.  It was, as a fine old poem expresses it, ’like a fire to heather set,’ that covers a solitary hill with smoke, and illumines it at the same time with dusky fire.  His tutor, or, I should say, Mr. Pembroke, for he scarce assumed the name of tutor, picked up about Edward’s room some fragments of irregular verse, which he appeared to have composed under the influence of the agitating feelings occasioned by this sudden page being turned up to him in the book of life.  The doctor, who was a believer in all poetry which was composed by his friends, and written out in fair straight lines, with a capital at the beginning of each, communicated this treasure to Aunt Rachel, who, with her spectacles dimmed with tears, transferred them to her commonplace book, among choice receipts for cookery and medicine, favourite texts, and portions from High-Church divines, and a few songs, amatory and Jacobitical, which she had carolled in her younger days, from whence her nephew’s poetical tentamina were extracted when the volume itself, with other authentic records of the Waverley family, were exposed to the inspection of the unworthy editor of this memorable history.  If they afford the reader no higher amusement, they will serve, at least, better than narrative of any kind, to acquaint him with the wild and irregular spirit of our hero:—­

    Late, when the Autumn evening fell
    On Mirkwood-Mere’s romantic dell,
    The lake return’d, in chasten’d gleam,
    The purple cloud, the golden beam: 
    Reflected in the crystal pool,
    Headland and bank lay fair and cool;
    The weather-tinted rock and tower,
    Each drooping tree, each fairy flower,
    So true, so soft, the mirror gave,
    As if there lay beneath the wave,
    Secure from trouble, toil, and care,
    A world than earthly world more fair.

    But distant winds began to wake,
    And roused the Genius of the Lake! 
    He heard the groaning of the oak,
    And donn’d at once his sable cloak,
    As warrior, at the battle-cry,
    Invests him with his panoply: 
    Then, as the whirlwind nearer press’d
    He ’gan to shake his foamy crest
    O’er furrow’d brow and blacken’d cheek,
    And bade his surge in thunder speak. 
    In wild and broken eddies whirl’d. 
    Flitted that fond ideal world,
    And to the shore in tumult tost
    The realms of fairy bliss were lost.