nicated to the owner. He is connected with all that is loveliest in pastoral life, the golden cornfield, the glad harvest-home; and, if there be a beautiful bit in the country, it is where the mill rears its dusky sails. Neither has it lost its fair predominance even in our own day. The most exquisite ballad of modern production flings anew charm around the mill-dam. Need we name Mr. Tennyson's "Miller's Daughter." Now, as antiquity was the chief charm of rank with Scott, we can imagine it almost supplying its place—poetry in the case of the 'Miller's Daughter' was nearly equivalent to the peerage.
Mysie Happer's great charm is the perfect nature in the delineation; she is just a lively good-humoured girl, who has known no care, but whose naturally ready wit has been quickened by constant activity, as in Dame Glendinning's kitchen she has always been accustomed to make herself useful. Love gives the one touch of elevation to the warm and beating heart, which knew not its own sensibilities and its own powers. The depth of a woman's character is to be tested by her choice in affection; according to that preference must be her standard of perfection. Now, Sir Percie is but a feather-brained coxcomb—still Mysie's liking may well stand excused. In nine cases out of ten, the lover owes half his qualities to the imagination of his mistress; and, it must be admitted, that a proper
