S. A. E. V.... N Written on the collar of a dog belonging to the Prince of Wales, I am his highness dog at Kew, Pray tell me Sir, whose dog are you? There is no duty, there is no pleasure, there is no sentiment, which does not borrow from enthusiasm—I know not what charm, which is still in perfect unison with the simple beauty of Truth. A deity believed is joy began, A deity adored is joy advanced, A deity beloved is joy matured. Your friend L. M. B. “He who breathes must suffer He who thinks must mourn.” With quotations from Thomas Moore, Young, Pope, Cooper, Milton, Ossian, Byron, Homer, Savage, Michael Angelo, Bishop Horne, Shakespeare, Cicero, Hannah More. To a Stone from the island of “the Lady of the Lake”—given by a friend who had visited Loch Katrine. Thou little brown stone: Ah what hast thou seen Since the floods roll’d thee up on your island so green, How many vast ages have travelled thee o’er. Like wave after wave on thy Lake girdled shore; How altered are all things; while thou art alone, Unaltered, unchanged, the same little brown stone, How many vast trees, have sprung where you lay, Have grown up, and flourished and mouldered away, How long was the time, when the deers tread alone, Tore the branches away which thy Lake had o’ergrown, When the eagle, alone woke the echo that slept, On the mountains around, which thy paradise kept, Ah! what has’t thou seen, since man sway’d thy shore, Saw’st thou the first boat which that plunderer bore, Well has’t thou mark’d every change he has made, Since he first drove thy deer from their far spreading shade, Wast thou their when fair Ellen first walk’d on thy shore, Did’st thou see thy proud waves as the Pine flag they bore, Did’st thou hear the loud shout of the Saxon’s afar, And saw’st thou thy clan as they fell in the war, Or has thy fair Lake never heard the war cry, Sounding shrill as the bird of thy own native sky, Is it fiction alone that endears thee to us, If Scott had not sung, should we feel towards thee thus, No: thou little brown stone—alone on thy shore, Thou still would’st have listened to Loch Katrine’s roar, Unheeded thy heath bell might bloom on thy isle; And thy Lakelet unlov’d in the sunbeams bright smile, And the cushat-doves notes, as in days that are past, Sound back to thy moss rocks the deer hunters blast, How great is thy power then, thou bard of the north, When thou giv’st to a pebble a diamonds worth, When a little brown stone from the Loch Katrine’s shore, Is valued by us more than crystals or ore, Sept. 4. 1816——