But this is not all. The ballad period, rich as it is in all the higher elements of dramatic and poetic suggestiveness, was but the beginning of an era of song, which has secured for the Borderland an unique distinction. In the beginning of the eighteenth century there was born in the manse of Ednam, in the neighbourhood of Kelso, one of the most renowned of Border poets, James Thomson, the author of "The Seasons," "The Castle of Indolence," "Rule Britannia," and other pieces. His early youth was spent in the parish of Southdean, and here among the green rolling hills, and by the quiet streams, he stored his mind and imagination with those images of natural beauty which in later times, in a far-off city, he embodied in immortal verse. His services to the poetic literature of his age and country have been tardily, and often very inadequately, appreciated. To him mainly belongs the credit of bringing the minds of men back to nature and reality as the only genuine sources of poetic inspiration. He was the forerunner of Cowper, and Burns, and Wordsworth--the pioneer in a new and profoundly significant movement. After a considerable interval, Scott, Hogg, and Leyden appear on the scene--names that will for ever remain enshrined in Border song and story. Scott was a Borderer of Borderers, a descendant of Auld Wat of Harden and Mary Scott, the Flower of Yarrow. His grandfather, on the maternal side, was Professor Rutherford, a famous man in his day, the scion of an old Border stock, renowned, like the Harden family, in the annals of reiving. Hogg and Leyden occupy a place of honourable distinction in the life and literature of the Borders. "Kilmeny" is a masterpiece of imaginative genius, and has won for its author a fame which the lapse of time will not seriously impair. John Leyden, more renowned as a scholar and antiquary than a poet, gave evidence of the possession of powers which, had he been spared, would have secured for him a foremost place among the most brilliant men of his age. These services which the Borders have thus rendered to the literature of the country have been valuable and important in a high degree.