Once I saw him on the plain,

The hero's cheek was clouded and pale;

His brow was dark, the heaving of his breast
Was frequent, and his steps were towards the hill.
Among the chiefs he shall not be seen
When the sound rises from the shield.
He lies in the dark and narrow house

Great chief of the gloomy mountains !

CRONAN.

O, I perceive Ninvela afar,

Like a sunbeam on a heathy rock,
Mild as the sun in a summer storm,

And like the full moon of harvest.

Dost thou come, O maid of the fairest locks,
Over rocks and hills to my presence?

Feeble is thy voice, O daughter of chiefs!

As a reed with the wind about its head!

She cried, "Has my hero returned from the fields? Where hast thou left thy friends my love?

I have heard of thy death on the hill,

I heard, and my soul was in grief."

"I have returned, O maid of the gentle age;

I have returned, of chiefs alone,

No more shall they be seen on the hill;

I have raised their tombs on the field.
But why art thou alone on the height?
By thyself on the sides of the mountain ?"

"Alone am I, O Shilric;

Alone and low in the house of winter.
With grief for my love, I fell,

Pale into the grave, O Shilric."

She fled like a shadow before the wind,

Like a mist on the mountain in sadness,
"Wilt thou not stay empty form of Ninvela?
Stay and behold the tears of my sorrow.
Lovely is thy form in mist;

Lovely thou wast when alive, Ninvela.

I will mourn by a fountain cool,
On the top of the hill, in the wind
At mid-day, when there is no sound
Speak thou, my love, among the heath;
Come thou, Ninvela, on the breeze,

On the light breeze from the woody rock,
Let me hear thy voice by my side,
At mid-day, in surrounding silence."
Thus did Cronan raise the song,
Midst joy, in the hall of the brave.

EARRAIG - I H URA.

A SPEECH OF FINGAL'S IN THE ORIGINAL GAELIO.

The Translation is on page 365,

A GHUTHA Chòna, 's àirde fuaim,
A bhàrda, tha luaidh mu h-aois,
Dha 'n éirich, air ar n-anam suas,
Feachda mòr nan gorm-chruaidh laoch.
A Chronain, a mhic nan caoin fhonn,
A Mhinfhonn nach trom air clàrsaich,
Togaibh sgeul air Silric donn,

Do righ nam mòr-thom 's nam fàsach.
Thigeadh a Bhinnbheul, a's àillidh,
Mar bhogha braoin, anall sa' ghleann,
Nuair dh'fheuchas e cheann san àirde,
'S a ghrian a' dol air chùl nam beann.
Sud an òigh, a righ nan lann,
Le guth fann, is i fo bhròn.

JAMES MONTGOMERY.

JAMES MONTGOMERY was born at Irvine, in Ayrshire, in 1771. His father was a Moravian missionary, who died whilst laboring for the propagation of Christianity in the island of Tobago. In 1792 he established himself in Sheffield (where he still resides) as an assistant in a newspaper office. In a few years the paper became his own property, and he continued to conduct it up to 1825.

Mr. Montgomery's first volume of poetry appeared in 1806, and was entitled the Wanderer of Switzerland, and other poems. The Edinburgh Review of January, 1807, denounced the unfortunate volume in a style of such authoritative reprobation as no mortal verse could be expected to survive. Notwithstanding this, within eighteen months of its first issue, the fourth edition (1500 copies each) was printed. The next work of the poet was The West Indies, a poem in four parts, written in honor of the abolition of the African slave trade by the British legislature, in 1807. Shortly after this Mr. Montgomery published a volume entitled Prison Amusements. In 1813 he came forward with a more elaborate performance, The World before the Flood, a poem in the heroic couplet, and extending to ten short cantos. Thoughts on Wheels, The Climbing Boy's Soliloquy, The Pelican Island, Greenland, and his Songs of Zion, which have cheered many a Christian heart, constitute his remaining works.

From his long residence in England, he has generally been viewed as an Englishman, but there can be no doubt that much of his inspiration has been drawn from the romantic scenery and poetical associations of his boyhood, spent as it was amid Scotia's rugged hills.