, and has been, since the world began.

Change, to be blessed, must be calm and clear,
Thoughtful and pure, sinless, and sound of mind;
Else power unchained and change are things of fear--
Let not the struggling to this truth be blind.--ARIAN.

FAIR MARGARET.

A LEGEND OF THOMAS THE RHYMER.

BY WILLIAM H. C. HOSMER.

Old yews in the church-yard are crumbled to dust
Deep shade on her grave-mound once flinging;
But oral tradition, still true to its trust,
Her name by the hearth-stone is singing;
For never enshrined by the bard in his lay
Was a being more lovely than Margaret Gray.

Her father, a faithful old tenant, had died
On lands of Sir Thomas the Seer--
And the child who had sprung like a flower by his side,
Sole mourner, had followed his bier;
But Ereildoun's knight to the orphan was kind,
And watched like a parent the growth of her mind.

The wizard knew well that her eye was endowed
With sight mortal vision surpassing--
_Now_ piercing the heart of Oblivion's cloud,
The _Past_, in its depths, clearly glassing;
_Anon_ sending glance through that curtain of dread
Behind which the realm of the Future lies spread.

He gave her a key to decipher dim scrolls,
With characters wild, scribbled over;
And taught her dark words that would summon back souls
Of the dead round the living to hover;
Or oped, high discourse with his pupil to hold,
Old books of enchantment with clasps of bright gold.

The elf queen had met her in green, haunted dells
When stars in the zenith were twinkling,
And time kept the tramp of her palfry to bells,
At her bridle rein merrily tinkling:
By Huntley Burn oft, in the gloaming, she strolled
Weird shapes, that were not of this earth, to behold.

One eve came true Thomas to Margaret's bower,
In this wise the maiden addressing--
"No more will I visible be from this hour,
Save to those sight unearthly possessing;
But when I am seen at feast, funeral or fair
Let the mortal who makes revelation beware!"

Long years came and passed, and the Rhymer's dread seat
Was vacant the Eildon Tree under,
And oft would old friends by the ingle-side meet,
And talk of his absence in wonder:
Some thought that, afar from the dwellings of men,
He had died in some lone Highland forest