Westmoreland, England, where he formed one of the "Lake School" of poets.
While at Oxford he gained a prize for a poem on "Painting, Poetry, and
Architecture." In 1820 he became Professor of Moral Philosophy in the
University of Edinburgh, which position he retained until 1851. He gained
his greatest reputation as the chief author of "Noctes Ambrosianae,"
essays contributed to Blackwood's Magazine between 1822 and 1825. Among
his poems may be mentioned "The Isle of Palms" and the "City of the
Plague," This selection is adapted from "The Foresters," a tale of
Scottish life.

1. Lucy was only six years old, but bold as a fairy; she had gone by
herself a thousand times about the braes, and often upon errands to houses
two or three miles distant. What had her parents to fear? The footpaths
were all firm, and led to no places of danger, nor are infants themselves
incautious when alone in then pastimes. Lucy went singing into the low
woods, and singing she reappeared on the open hillside. With her small
white hand on the rail, she glided along the wooden bridge, or tripped
from stone to stone across the shallow streamlet.

2. The creature would be away for hours, and no fear be felt on her
account by anyone at home; whether she had gone, with her basket on her
arm, to borrow some articles of household use from a neighbor, or, merely
for her own solitary delight, had wandered off to the braes to play among
the flowers, coming back laden with wreaths and garlands.

3. The happy child had been invited to pass a whole day, from morning to
night, at Ladyside (a farmhouse about two miles off) with her playmates
the Maynes; and she left home about an hour after sunrise.

4. During her absence, the house was silent but happy, and, the evening