We have warned you against moralising: let us now say a word or two on the subjects of description and declamation. Upon one or other of these rocks, have most of our modern ballad-writers struck and foundered. What can be in worse taste than the introduction of an elaborate landscape into the midst of a poem of action, or an elaborate account of a man's accoutrements when he is fighting for life or death? A single epithet, if it be a choice one, can indicate the scene of action as vividly and far more effectively than ten thousand stanzas; and, unless you are a tailor and proud of your handiwork, what is the use of dilating upon the complexion of a warrior's breeches, when the claymore is whistling around his ears? Nevertheless, even our best ballad-writers, when their soul was not in their task, have fallen into this palpable error. None of Sir Walter's ballads commences more finely than "The Gray Brother,"--none has been more spoiled in its progress by the introduction of minute description. We pass from the high altar of Saint Peter to the bank of the Eske, and there we are regaled with a catalogue of the modern seats and villas, utterly out of place and inconsistent with the solemn nature of the theme. But "The Gray Brother" is a mere fragment which Scott never would complete--owing, perhaps, to a secret consciousness, that he had already marred the unity of the poem by sketching in a modern landscape behind his antique figures. Give him, however, a martial subject--let his eye but once kindle, and his cheek flush at the call of the trumpet, and we defy you to find his equal. Read--O ye poetasters who are now hammering at Crecy--read the "Bonnets of Dundee," and then, if you have a spark of candour left, you will shove your foolscap into the fire. Or tell us if you really flatter yourselves that, were your lives prolonged to the perpetuity of the venerable Parr, you ever would produce ten stanzas worthy of being printed in the same volume with these:-- "The Coronach's cried on Bennachie, And down the Don and a', And Hieland and Lawland may mournfu' be, For the sair field of Harlaw. They saddled a hundred milk-white steeds, They hae saddled a hundred black, With a chafron of steel on each horse's head, And a good knight upon his back. They hadna ridden a mile, a mile, A mile, but barely ten, When Donald came branking down the brae, Wi' twenty thousand men. Their tartans they were waving wide, Their glaives were glancing clear, The pibrochs rung frae side to side, Would deafen you to hear. The great Earl in his stirrups stood, That Highland host to see; 'Now here a knight that's stout and good, May prove a jeopardie. 'What would ye do, my squire so gay, That rides beside my rein, Were ye Glenallan's Earl this day, And I were Roland Cheyne?