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XV.

She clad herself in a russet gown

She was no longer Lady Clare:

She went by dale, and she went by down,
With a single rose in her hair.

XVI.

The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought
Leapt up from where she lay,

Dropt her head in the maiden's hand,
And followed her all the way.

XVII.

Down stept Lord Ronald from his tower:
"O Lady Clare, you shame your worth!
Why come you drest like a village maid,
That are the flower of the earth?"

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He laughed a laugh of merry scorn:

He turned and kissed her where she stood:

"If you are not the heiress born,

And I," said he, "the next of blood

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XXII.

"If you are not the heiress born,
And I," said he, "the lawful heir,
We two will wed to-morrow morn,

And you shall still be Lady Clare."

TENNYSON.

CXI.-A WAIT THE ISSUE.

N this world, with its wild whirling eddies and mad

I

foam oceans, where men and nations perish as if without law, and judgment for an unjust thing is sternly delayed, dost thou think that there is therefore no justice? It is what the fool hath said in his heart. It is what the wise, in all times, were wise because they denied, and knew forever not to be. I tell thee again, there is nothing else but justice. One strong thing I find here below: the just thing, the true thing.

2. My friend, if thou hadst all the artillery of Woolwich trundling at thy back in support of an unjust thing, and infinite bonfires visibly waiting ahead of thee, to blaze centuries long for thy victory on behalf of it, I would advise thee to call halt, to fling down thy baton, and say, "In Heaven's name, No!"

3. Thy "success"? Poor fellow, what will thy success amount to? If the thing is unjust, thou hast not succeeded; no, not though bonfires blazed from north to south, and bells rang, and editors wrote leading articles, and the just things lay trampled out of sight, to all mortal eyes an abolished and annihilated thing.

4. It is the right and noble alone that will have victory in this struggle; the rest is wholly an obstruction, a postponement and fearful imperilment of the victory. Towards an eternal center of right and nobleness, and of that only, is all confusion tending. We already know whither it is all tending; what will have victory, what will have none! The Heaviest will reach the center. The Heaviest has its

deflections, its obstructions, nay, at times its reboundings; whereupon some blockhead shall be heard jubilating: "See, your Heaviest ascends!" but at all moments it is moving centerward, fast as is convenient for it; sinking, sinking; and, by laws older than the world, old as the Maker's first plan of the world, it has to arrive there.

5. Await the issue. In all battles, if you await the issue, each fighter has prospered according to his right. His right and his might, at the close of the account, were one and the same. He has fought with all his might, and in exact proportion to all his right he has prevailed. His very death is no victory over him. He dies indeed; but his work lives, very truly lives.

6. A heroic Wallace, quartered on the scaffold, cannot hinder that his Scotland become, one day, a part of England; but he does hinder that it become, on tyrannous, unfair terms, a part of it; commands still, as with a god's voice, from his old Valhalla and Temple of the Brave, that there be a just, real union, as of brother and brother, not a false and merely semblant one as of slave and master. If the union with England be in fact one of Scotland's chief blessings, we thank Wallace withal that it was not the chief curse. Scotland is not Ireland: no, because brave men rose there and said, “Behold, ye must not tread us down like slaves; and ye shall not, and cannot!"

7. Fight on, thou brave true heart, and falter not, through dark fortune and through bright. The cause thou fightest for, so far as it is true, no further, yet precisely so far, is very sure of victory. The falsehood alone of it will be conquered, will be abolished, as it ought to be: but the truth of it is part of Nature's own laws, co-operates with the world's eternal tendencies, and cannot be conquered.

T. CARLYLE.

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