'Fawdoun, that ugly sire, That haill hall he had set into a fire, As to his sight, his OWN HEAD IN HIS HAND.' Arriving in a village at the hour of morning rest and refreshment, he charms the swains by such words as 'The merry day sprang from the orient With beams bright illuminate the Occident, After Titan Phoebus upriseth fair, High in the sphere the signs he made declare. Zephyrus then began his morning course, The sweet vapour thus from the ground resourse,' &c.-- and the simple villagers wonder at hearing these images from one who is blind, not seeing the sun. As the leaves are rustling down from the ruddy trees of late autumn, he sings to a little circle of wayside wanderers-- 'The dark region appearing wonder fast, In November, when October was past, * * * * * Good Wallace saw the night's messenger, Phoebus had lost his fiery beams so clear; Out of that wood they durst not turn that side For adversours that in their way would hide.' And while on the verge of the December sky, the wintry sun is trembling and about to set as if for ever, then is the Minstrel's voice heard sobbing amidst the sobs of his hearers, as he tells how his hero's sun went down while it was yet day. 'On Wednesday the false Southron furth brocht To martyr him as they before had wrocht, Of men in arms led him a full great rout, With a bauld sprite guid Wallace blent about.' There can be little doubt that Blind Harry, during his lifetime, became a favourite, nay, a power in the realm. Wherever he circulated, there circulated the fame of Wallace; there, his deeds were recounted; there, hatred of a foreign foe, and love to their native land, were inculcated as first principles; and long after the Homer of Scotland had breathed his last, and been consigned perhaps to some little kirkyard among the uplands, his lays continued to live; and we know that such a man as Burns (who read them in the modern paraphrase of William Hamilton of Gilbertfield, a book which was, till within a somewhat recent period, a household god in the libraries of the Scotch) derived from the old singer much of 'that national prejudice which boiled in his breast till the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest.' If Barbour, as we said, was fortunate in his subject, still more was Blind Harry in his. The interest felt in Wallace is of a deeper and warmer kind than that which we feel in Bruce. Bruce was of royal blood; Wallace was from an ancient but not wealthy family. Bruce stained his career by one great crime --great in itself, but greater from the peculiar notions of the age --the murder of Comyn in the sanctuary of Dumfries; on the character of Wallace no similar imputation rests. Wallace initiated that plan of guerilla warfare,--that fighting now on foot and now on the wing, now with beak and now with talons, now with horns and now with hoofs,--which Bruce had only to perfect.