Yes, James--thou wert but a poor shepherd to the last--poor in this world's goods--though Altrive Lake is a pretty little bit farmie--given thee by the best of Dukes--with its few laigh sheep-braes--its somewhat stony hayfield or two--its pasture where Crummie might unhungered graze--nyuck for the potato's bloomy or ploomy shaws--and path-divided from the porch the garden, among whose flowers "wee Jamie" played. But nature had given thee, to console thy heart in all disappointments from the "false smiling of fortune beguiling," a boon which thou didst hug to thy heart with transport on the darkest day--the "gift o' genie," and the power of immortal song. And has Scotland to the Ettrick Shepherd been just--been generous--as she was--or was not--to the Ayrshire peasant?--has she, in her conduct to him, shown her contrition for her sin--whatever that may have been--to Burns? It is hard to tell. Fashion tosses the feathered head--and gentility turns away her painted cheek from the Mountain Bard; but when, at the shrine of true poetry, did ever such votaries devoutly worship? Cold, false, and hollow, ever has been their admiration of genius--and different, indeed, from their evanescent ejaculations, has ever been the enduring voice of fame. Scorn be to the scorners! But Scott, and Wordsworth, and Southey, and Byron, and other great bards, have all loved the Shepherd's lays--and Joanna the palm-crowned, and Felicia the muse's darling, and Caroline the Christian poetess, and all the other fair female spirits of song. And in his native land, all hearts that love her streams, and her hills, and her cottages, and her kirks, the bee-humming garden and the primrose-circled fold, the white hawthorn and the green fairy-knowe, all delight in "Kilmeny" and "Mary Lee," and in many another vision that visited the Shepherd in the Forest. And what can surpass many of the Shepherd's songs? The most undefinable of all undefinable kinds of poetical inspiration are surely--Songs. They seem to start up indeed from the dew-sprinkled soil of a poet's soul, like flowers; the first stanza being root, the second leaf, the third bud, and all the rest blossom, till the song is like a stalk laden with its own beauty, and laying itself down in languid delight on the soft bed of moss--song and flower alike having the same "dying fall!"