lonely man sat at midnight, gazing upon the heavens. A storm had just
passed from the earth--the clouds had rolled away, and the high stars
looked down upon the rapid waters of the Rhine; and no sound save the
roar of the waves and the dripping of the rain from the mighty trees,
was heard around the ruined pile: the white sheep lay scattered on the
plain, and slumber with them. He sat watching over the herd, lest the
foes of a neighboring tribe seized them unawares, and thus he communed
with himself:

"The king sits upon his throne, and is honored by a warrior race, and
the warrior exults in the trophies he has won; the step of the huntsman
is bold upon the mountain-top, and his name is sung at night round the
pine-fires, by the lips of the bard; and the bard himself hath honor in
the hail. But I, who belong not to the race of kings, and whose limbs
can bound not to the rapture of war, nor scale the eyries of the eagle
and the haunts of the swift stag; whose hand cannot string the harp, and
whose voice is harsh in the song; _I_ have neither honor nor command,
and men bow not the head as I pass along; yet do I feel within me the
consciousness of a great power that should rule my species--not obey.
My eye pierces the secret hearts of men--I see their thoughts ere their
lips proclaim them; and I scorn, while I see, the weakness and the vices
which I never shared. I laugh at the madness of the warrior--I mock
within my soul at the tyranny of kings. Surely there is something in
man's nature more fitted to command--more worthy of renoun, than the
sinews of the arm, or the swiftness of the feet, or the accident of
birth!"

As Morven, the son of Osslah, thus mused within himself, still looking
at the heavens, the solitary man beheld a star suddenly shooting from
its place, and speeding through the silent air, till it as suddenly
paused right over the midnight river, and facing the inmate of the pile
of stones.

As he gazed upon the star strange thoughts grew slowly over him. He
drank, as it were, from its solemn aspect, the spirit of a great design.
A dark cloud rapidly passing over the earth, snatched the star from his
sight; but left to his awakened mind the thoughts and the dim scheme
that had come to him as he gazed.

When the sun arose one of his brethren relieved him of his charge over
the herd, and he went away, but not to his father's home. Musingly he
plunged into the dark and leafless recesses of the winter fores