free;
For rose, thistle, and shamrock, shall ever be green!

V.

A hail and farewell! it is pledged to the brim,
And drain'd to the bottom in honour of him
Who a glory to Scotland shall be and hath been:
Untired in the cause of his country and crown,
May his path be a long one of spotless renown;
Till the course nobly rounded, the goal proudly won,
Fame, smiling on Scotland, shall point to her son,
For the thistle--Her thistle!--shall ever be green!

MY FRIEND THE DUTCHMAN.

"And you will positively marry her, if she will have you?"

"Not a doubt of either. Before this day fortnight she shall be Madame
Van Haubitz."

"You will make her your wife without acquainting her with your true
position?"

"Indeed will I. My very position requires it. There's no room for a
scruple. She expects to live on my fortune; thinks to make a great catch
of the rich Dutchman. Instead of that I shall spend her salary. The old
story; going out for wool and returning shorn."

The conversation of which this is the concluding fragment, occurred in
the public room of the Hotel de Hesse, in the village of Homburg on the
Hill--an insignificant handful of houses, officiating as capital of the
important landgravate of Hesse-Homburg. The table-d'hote had been over
some time; the guests had departed to repose in their apartments until
the hour of evening promenade should summon them to the excellent band
of music, provided by the calculating liberality of the gaming-house
keepers, and to loiter round the _brunnens_ of more or less nauseous
flavour, the pretext of resort to this rendezvous of idlers and
gamblers. The waiters had disappeared to batten on the broken meats from
the public table, and to doze away the time till the approach of supper
renewed their activity. My interlocutor, with whom I was alone in the
deserted apartment, was a man of about thirty years of age, whose dark
hair and mustaches, marked features, spare person, and complexion
bronzed by a tropical sun, entitled him to pass for a native of southern
Europe, or even of some more ardent clime. Nevertheless he answered to
the very Dutch patronymic of Van Haubitz, and was a native of Holland,
in whose principal city his father was a banker of considerable wealth
and financial influence.

It was towards the close of a glorious August, and for two months I had
been wandering in Rhine-land. Not after the fashion of deluded Cockneys,
who fancy