The Waverley novels, by Sir Walter Scott, complete in 12 vol., printed from the latest English ed., embracing the author's last corrections, prefaces & notes.

TiE ANTIQUARY. 61
with something of a disturbed expression of countenance. " I am seldom
in this apartment," he said, " and never without yielding to a melancholy
feeling-not, of course, on account of the childish nonsense that Grizel was
telling you, but owing to circumstances of an early and unhappy attachment.
It is at such moments as these, Mr. Lovel, that we feel the changes of time.
The same objects are before us —those inanimate things which we have
gazed on in wayward infancy and impetuous youth, in anxious and scheming
manhood-they are permanent and the same; but when we look upon them
in cold unfeeling old age, can we, changed in our temper, our pursuits, our
feelings-changed in our form, our limbs, and our strength,-can we be
ourselves called the same-? or do we not rather look back with a sort of
wonder upon our former selves, as beings separate and distinct from what
we now are? The philosopher who appealed front Philip inflamed with
wine to Philip in his hours of sobriety, did not choose a judge so different,
as if he had appealed from Philip in his youth to Philip in his old age. I
cannot but be touched with the feeling so beautifully expressed in a poem
which I have heard repeated: *
My eyes are dim with childish tears
Mly heart is idly stirred,
For the same sound is in niy ears
Which in those days I heard.
Thus fares it still in our decay;
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what time takes away
Than what he leaves behiidd.
W5ell, time cures every wound, and though the scar may remain and occasionally ache, yet the earliest agony of its recent infliction is felt no more."
So saying, he shook Lovel cordially by the hand, wished him good-night,
and t)ok his leave.
Step after step Lovel could trace his host's retreat along the various passages, and each door which he closed behind him fell with a sound more
distant and dead. The guest, thus separated from the living world, took up
the candle and surveyed the apartment.
The fire blazed cheerfully. Mrs. Grizel's attention had left some fresh
wood, should he choose to continue it, and the apartment had a comfortable,
though not a lively appearance. It was hung with tapestry, which the
looms of Arras had produced in the sixteenth century, and which the learned
typographer, so often mentioned, had brought with him aIs a sample of the
arts of the Continent. The subject was a hunting-piece; and as the leafy
boughs of the forest-trees, branching over the tapestry, formed the predominant colour, the apartment had thence acquired its name of the Green
Chamber. Grim figures, in the old Flemish dress, with slashed doublets
covered with ribbands, short cloaks, and trunk-hose, were engaged in holding grey-hounds or stag-hounds in the leash, or cheering them upon the
objects of their game. Others, with boar-spears, swords, and old-fashioned
guns, were attacking stags or boars whom they had brought to bay. The
branches of the woven forest were crowded with fowls of various kinds, each
depicted with its proper plumage. It seemed as if the prolific and rich invention of old Chaucer had animated the Flemish artist with its profusion,
and Oldbuck had accordingly caused the following verses, from that ancient
and excellent poet, to be embroidered in Gothic letters on a sort of border
which he had added to the tapestry:Lo! here be oakis grete, streight as a lime,
Under the which the grass, so fresh of line
Be'th newly sprung-at eight foot or nine.
Everich tree well from his fellow grew,
With branches broad laden with leaves new,
That sprongen out against the sonne sheene,
Some golden red, and some a glad bright green.
* Probably Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads had not as yet been published.
F