VI. From the days of old Thomas the Rhymer the barren glens and bleak hills of Scotland have been holy earth. An essence strong and mystic, an invisible presence, a something undefined, but powerful, hangs above and rests upon them. "The mantle of _historic poetry_ is upon her soil!" and the floating and fragmentary images on this mantle--in their influence, like those upon the Arras tapestry in the haunted chamber of Monkbarns--fashion the dreams of one looking upon it rarely. The dreamer dreams of Wallace wight, and of the deeds of the Bruce--of Douglas "tender and true," and of the hardy feats of the moss troopers, whose homes were from Inck Colm to the Solway. But the mantle of a milder poesy is too upon the Scottish valleys and hills! Shepherds have tuned the pipe to love among the hollows of Ettrick Wood--on the levels beside Yarrow--down by the shores of Loch Lomond, Loch Katrine, Loch Leven and Loch ---- Apollo knows what! A poet has sat on Eildon hill, and forgotten the hand of Michael the conjurer in a vision of love. Move where you may you will see the marks of these. Their songs ring in your ears, as the voices of the musical doves of the Bahamas haunt him who visits their pebbly islets. I have now to speak of one who wound these two mantles together:--mingling the spirit of _martial frolic_[2] with the softer one of Eros. [Footnote 2: There is a dash of merry _rattlingsomeness_ in the old Scottish spirit--that spirit which carried the Kerr and the Scott into the cattle lands South of the Tweed--rendering it a spirit rather of _martial frolic_ than of chivalry.] Most readers are familiar with the life as well as poetry of Robert Burns. The son of a gardener--brought up to "the plough, scythe and reap-hook"--his mind took upon itself the sturdy simplicity of his occupation. Scarcely a moderate English scholar, unversed in "lore of books," he won himself a place as an author among the greatest men of his time. Burns, like Scott, was much indebted to the nursery tales of his childhood for his success in after life. The oak springs from an acorn--and an old crone's vagaries had a great share in making our ploughman a poet. "She had," he tells us in his brief autobiography, "the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kedyers, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery." The earliest composition that he read with pleasure was the Vision of Mirza, and a hymn of Addison's, beginning "How are thy servants blest, O Lord."