Walter Scott makes the island the scene of part of _Peveril of the Peak_; but it does not appear from his life, or from his journal--still less does the novel show--that he ever set foot there. Wordsworth wrote some fine sonnets on the island, from one of which I have borrowed the lines at the head of the chapter. Mr. Hall Caine, of course, has done ample justice to the traditions and local colour. It is some years since I read, and much enjoyed, _The Manxman_ and _The Deemster_, and at the times of reading I was in blackest ignorance of the scenery. To me the Sacred Bard of the island was T. E. Brown, whose letters,[49] and especially those from the island, I read and re-read. I skimmed through a good deal of his poetry also, in the hope of finding something suitable for the Manx children to learn, but there was little or nothing of that special kind, and the teachers would have none of it. We are told that Browning, George Eliot, Max Müller, and W. E. Henley united in praising his poetry very highly, but his dialect poems are the most admired, and teachers wage war against dialect. I wonder whether Scotch children learn Burns? The Letters, however, are a priceless treasure; and the island which produced him, and introduced me to them, earns from me a double share of gratitude. Dip into vol. i. if you see no chance of personally inspecting his haunts: The island blooms like a rose. Primroses make no secret of it now--they are everywhere, and begin to bring with them young blue-bells, “ter’ble shoy,” but they’ll soon get over that. I went up Sulby Glen a bit the other day: the gorse there, as elsewhere, is a mass of golden flame; and I heard the cuckoo.... Ballaglass is delicious in the sunlight with the beechen spray breathing over it. Also its primroses are good, also its blue-bells. As yet the blue-bells are hesitant or apologetic. Of course you know that later on they will attend the funeral of the primroses with a mighty mourning of hyacinthine blooms; and then they will become quite cheeky and truculent, and make the ground their own. Hills above the Gob-y-volley at the mouth of Sulby Glen, twice; perfection of gorse hassocks, tufted with bell-heather, also of ling in sheets, sprinkled with the bell-heather--the sea-rim rounding all with glorious blue--the steamer going round the island with an almost impudent familiarity of approach, like a “Cotton”[50] throwing his arms round the neck of a pretty Manx country-girl--“smookin, too, the dirt.” Only fragmentary glimpses of these scenes were vouchsafed to us, but they were enough to enhance our enjoyment of the book. Schools were our urgent suitors; they engrossed our attention, and what we saw of the beauties of nature was, in the main, what we passed on our way to and from schools.