The last flush of day had not yet faded from the west, although the summer moon was riding above the verge of the eastern horizon, in a flood of mellow glory, with the diamond-spark of Lucifer glittering in solitary brightness at her side. It was one of those enchanting evenings which, peculiar to the southern lands of Europe, visit, but at far and fleeting intervals, the sterner clime of Britain. Not Italy, however, could herself have boasted a more delicious twilight than this, which now was waning into night, above the rude magnificence of Scotland’s capital. The fantastic dwellings of the city, ridge above ridge, loomed broadly to the left, partially veiled by those wreaths of vapor, which have been the origin of its provincial name; while, far above the misty indistinctness of the town, the glorious castle towered aloft upon its craggy throne, displaying a hundred fronts of massive shadow, and as many salient angles jutting abruptly into sight. The lovely vale of the King’s park, with its velvet turf and shadowy foliage, shone out in quiet lustre from beneath the dark-gray buttresses of Arthur’s seat; while from the trim alleys and pleached evergreens, which at that day formed a belt of lawn, and shrubbery, and royal garden, around the venerable pile of Holyrood, the rich song of the throstle--the nightingale of Scotland--came in repeated bursts upon the ear. Delightful as such an evening must naturally be to all who have hearts awake to the influence of sweet sounds and lovely sights, how inexpressibly soothing must it seem to one who, languishing beneath the ungenial atmosphere of a northern region, and sighing for the bluer skies and softer breezes of his fatherland, feels himself at once transported, by the unusual aspect of the heavens, to the distant home of his regrets! It was, perhaps, some fancied similarity to the nights in which he had been wont to court the favor of the high-born dames of France with voice and instrument, that had awakened the melody of some foreign cavalier, more suitable perchance to the light murmurs of the Seine than to the distant booming of the seas that lash the coasts of Scotland. Such, however, was the illusion produced by the unwonted softness of the hour, that the tinkling of a lute and the full, manly voice of the singer did not at the moment seem so inconsistent to the spirit of the country and of the times as in truth it was. The words were French, and the air, though sweet, so melancholy, that it left a vague sensation of pain upon the listener--as though none but a heart diseased could give birth to notes so plaintive. “Pensez à moi! pensez à moi!--noble dame--Pensez à moi!”--the burden of the strain swelled clearly audible in the deepest tones of feeling, although the intermediate words were lost amid the accompaniment of the silver strings. Never, perhaps, since the unfortunate Chatelain de Concy first chanted his extemporaneous farewell to the lady of his