His more earnest poems are somewhat tainted with that cardinal fault of his school, of which he steered so clear in prose--fine words; yet he never, like the Corn-Law Rhymer, falls a cursing. He is evidently not a good hater even of "priests and kings, and aristocrats, and superstition;" or perhaps he worked all that froth safely over and off in debating-club speeches and leading articles, and left us, in these poems, the genuine metheglin of his inner heart, sweet, clear, and strong; for there is no form of lovable or right thing which this man has come across, which he does not seem to have appreciated. Besides pure love and the beauties of nature--those on which every man of poetic power, and a great many of none, as a matter of course, have a word to say--he can feel for and with the drunken beggar, and the warriors of the ruined manor-house, and the monks of the abbey, and the old mailed Normans with their "priest with cross and counted beads in the little Saxon chapel"--things which a Radical editor might have been excused for passing by with a sneer. His verses to his wife are a delicious little glimpse of Eden; and his "People's Anthem" rises into somewhat of true grandeur by virtue of simplicity: Lord, from Thy blessed throne, Sorrow look down upon! God save the Poor! Teach them true liberty-- Make them from tyrants free-- Let their homes happy be! God save the Poor! The arms of wicked men Do Thou with might restrain-- God save the Poor! Raise Thou their lowliness-- Succour Thou their distress-- Thou whom the meanest bless! God save the Poor! Give them stanch honesty-- Let their pride manly be-- God save the Poor! Help them to hold the right; Give them both truth and might, Lord of all LIFE and LIGHT! God save the Poor! And so we leave Robert Nicoll, with the parting remark, that if the "Poems illustrative of the feelings of the intelligent and religious among the working-classes of Scotland" be fair samples of that which they profess to be, Scotland may thank God, that in spite of temporary manufacturing rot-heaps, she is still whole at heart; and that the influence of her great peasant poet, though it may seem at first likely to be adverse to Christianity, has helped, as we have already hinted, to purify and not to taint; to destroy the fungus, but not to touch the heart, of the grand old Covenant-kirk life-tree.