While he thus
discoursed, Wallace drew him toward the castle, and there presented to
him the two nephews of the Earl of May.
He paid some warm compliments to Edwin on his early success in the
career of glory; and then turning to Murray: "Ay!" said he, "it is joy
to me to see the valiant house of Bothwell in the third generation.
Thy grandfather and myself were boys together at the coronation of
Alexander the Second; and that is eighty years ago. Since then, what
have I not seen! the death of two noble Scottish kings! our blooming
princes ravished from us by untimely fates! the throne sold to a
coward, and at last seized by a foreign power! Then, in my own person,
I have been the father of as brave and beauteous a family as ever
blessed a parent's eye; but they are all torn from me. Two of my sons
sleep on the plains of Dunbar; my third, my dauntless William, since
that fatal day, has been kept a prisoner in England. And my daughters,
the tender blossoms of my aged years-they grew around me, the fairest
lilies of the land: but they, too, are passed away. The one, scorning
the mere charms of youth, and preferring a union with a soul that had
long conversed with superior regions, loved the sage of Ercildown.
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