Page:Eugene Aram vol 1 - Lytton (1832).djvu/11

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DEDICATION.
vii

who is at once without an equal and without a detractor.

You have left us for a while; but what heart does not, from that very absence, and from its reported cause, follow you to a southern shore, with feelings that make remembrance a duty scarcely less than a delight? What Scotchman can ever forget that you have immortalized his country—or what Englishman that you have bestowed an equal gift upon his language? Whatever the honours that await you abroad, you have left the gratitude, the homage, the very hearts of two mighty Nations to watch over your fame at home.

Yon, I feel assured, will not deem it presumptuous in one, who, to that bright and undying flame which now streams from the grey hills of Scotland,—the last halo with which you have crowned her literary glories,—has turned from