Travelling through the vales of beautiful Moialuin, the habitation of Lugar was found desolate, the kid broused on its green surface, stretching itself in sleep in the once joyous dwelling. In its window was the bird of night, and green ivy shaded its desolate walls, the greyhound and dun roe surrounded them, and his hospitable door lies sorrowful under the falling rains. Sons of the hill, have you seen Lugar? Probably you rejoice that he is no more. But you shall decline like him, and your relations will one day inquire for you. Your children will shake their heads with sorrow, they know not the place of your abode! The vicissitudes of life are similar to those of the year. I lived void of trouble in the summer of youth, like firs on the green Mor-uth, careless of the storms of winter. I thought my verdant leaves would remain, and that age would not injure my branches. But now I am forlorn like thyself, and my aged locks are on the wings of the wind; our joyful days are both gone on the wings of the blast to the desert. The passage just given explains Smith’s failure to impress the public with his prose versions of Old Lays. It affords quite a contrast to the style of Macpherson, which was sententious and clarified by a Saxon as simple as that of the English Bible. In his Life of Columba, Smith gave translated specimens of the Saints’ Latin Hymns, of which an extract has been already given (p. 69). He rendered this passage of the _Altus prosatur_ in blank verse—the beginning of the same in rhymed metre by the writer being else where supplied (p. 81). The following lines by Smith, accompanying the Gaelic of _Taura_, show that he appeared to better advantage in verse than in prose translations:— OSSIAN. Malvina, say what now renews thy woe? Say why thy tears, like rills, incessant flow? Why heaves thy bosom with the moanful cry, Like Lego’s reeds when ghosts among them fly? MALVINA. And dost thou ask the cause of all my woe, When yonder Selma’s mossy tow’rs lie low? When bats and thistles dwell in Fingal’s hall, And roes bound fearless o’er its mould’ring wall: —Besides, I heard upon the distant wind A sound that rous’d my sadly-musing mind; It is, I fondly said, Cuchullin’s car! The Chief returning from the roar of war! —A light had likewise gleam’d on Lena’s heath; My love, my Oscar! ’tis thy spear of death! I said: but Oscar’s spear is in the tomb; His shield, O Selma, in thy empty womb. I saw its bosses cover’d o’er with rust, And all its thongs fast-mould’ring into dust. OSSIAN.