blind to those passages where it rose into real sublimity or melted into melodious pathos.
Macaulay has, in various of his papers, shewn a fine sympathy with original genius. He has done so notably in his always able and always generous estimate of Edmund Burke, and still more in what he says of Shelley and of John Bunyan. It was his noble panegyric on the former that first awakened the "late remorse of love" and admiration for that abused and outraged Shade. And it was his article on Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress which gave it—popular as it had been among religionists—a classical place in our literature, and that dared to compare the genius of its author with that of Shakespere and of Milton. But he has failed to do justice to Ossian, partly from some early prejudice at its author and his country, and partly from want of a proper early Ossianic training. To appreciate Ossian's poetry, the best way is to live for years under the shadow of the Grampians, to wander through lonely moors, amidst drenching mist and rain, to hold trystes with thunderstorms on the summit of savage hills, to bathe in sullen tarns after nightfall, to lean over the ledge and dip one's naked feet in the spray of cataracts, to plough a solitary path into the heart of forests, and to sleep and dream for hours amidst the sunless glades, on twilight hills to meet the apparition of the winter moon rising over snowy wastes, to descend by her ghastly light precipices where the eagles are sleeping, and returning home to be haunted by night visions of mightier mountains, wider desolations, and giddier descents. A portion of this experience is necessary to constitute a true "Child of the Mist"; and he that has had most of it—and that was Christopher North—was best fitted to appreciate the shadowy, solitary, and pensively sublime spirit which tabernacles in Ossian's poetry. Of this Macaulay had little or nothing, and, therefore, although no man knew the Highlands in their manners, customs, and history better, he has utterly failed as a critic on Highland Poetry.
We might add to the names of those authors who appreciated Ossian, Lord Byron, who imitates him in his "Hours of Idleness"; and are forced to include among his detractors, Lord Brougham, who, in his review of these early efforts, says clumsily, that he won't criticise it lest he should be attacking Macpherson himself, with whose own "stuff" he was but imperfectly acquainted, to which Lord Byron rejoins, that (alluding to Lord Byron being a minor) he would have said a much cleverer and severer thing had he quoted Dr Johnson's sarcasm, that "many men, many women, and many children could write as well as Ossian."
We venture, in fine, to predict that dear to every Scottish heart shall for ever remain these beautiful fragments of Celtic verse—verse, we scruple not to say, containing in the Combat of Fingal with the Spirit of Loda, and in the Address to the Sun—two of the loftiest strains of poetic genius, vieing with, surpassing "all Greek, all Roman fame." And in spite of Brougham's sneer, and Johnson's criticisms, and the more insolent attacks of Macaulay, Scotchmen both Highland and Lowland will continue to hear in the monotony of the strain, the voice of the tempest, and the roar of the mountain torrent, in its abruptness they will see the beetling crag and the shaggy summit of the bleak Highland hill, in its obscurity and loud and tumid sounds, they will recognize the hollows of the deep glens and the mists which shroud the cataracts, in its happier and nobler measures, they will welcome notes of poetry worthy of the murmur of their lochs and the waving of their solemn forests, and never will they see Ben-Nevis looking down over his clouds or Loch Lomond basking amidst her sunny braes, or in grim Glencoe listen to the Cona singing her lonely and everlasting dirge beneath Ossian's Cave, which gashes the breast of the cliff above it, without remembering the glorious Shade from whose evanishing lips Macpherson has extracted the wild music of his mountain song.
Alastair Buidhe MacIamhair, the Gairloch Bard, always wore a "Cota Gearr" of home-spun cloth, which received only a slight dip of indigo—the colour being between a pale blue and a dirty white. As he was wading the river Achtercairn, going to a sister's wedding, William Ross, the bard, accosted him on the other side, and addressing him said,
'S ann than aoibheal air bard an Rugha
'Sa phiuthar a dol a phosadh
B-fhearr dhuit fuireach aig a bhaile
Mo nach d' rinn thu malairt cota.
To which Alastair Buidhe immediately replied—
Hud a dhuine! tha'n cota co'lach rium fhein
Tha e min 'us tha e blath
'S air cho mor 's gha 'm beil do ruic-sa
Faodaidh tusa leigeal da.
MARY LAGHACH
Ho! my bonnie Mary,
My dainty love, my queen,
The fairest, rarest Mary
On earth was ever seen!
Ho! my queenly Mary,
Who made me king of men,
To call thee mine own Mary,
Born in the bonnie glen.
Young was I and Mary,
In the windings of Glensmoil,
When came that imp of Venus
And caught us with his wile;
And pierced us with his arrows,
That we thrilled in every pore,
And loved as mortals never loved
On this green earth before.
Ho! my bonnie Mary, &c.
Oft times myself and Mary
Strayed up the bonnie glen,
Our hearts as pure and innocent
As little children then;
Boy Cupid finely taught us
To dally and to toy,
When the shade fell from the green tree,
And the sun was in the sky.
Ho! my bonnie Mary, &c.
If all the wealth of Albyn
Were mine, and treasures rare,
What boots all gold and silver
If sweet love be not there?
More dear to me than rubies
In deepest veins that shine,
Is one kiss from the lovely lips
That rightly I call mine.
Ho! my bonnie Mary, &c.
Thy bosom's heaving whiteness
With beauty overbrims,
Like swan upon the waters
When gentliest it swims;
Like cotton on the moorland
Thy skin is soft and fine,
Thy neck is like the sea-gul
When dipping in the brine.
Ho! my bonnie Mary, &c.
The locks about thy dainty ears
Do richly curl and twine;
Dame Nature rarely grew a wealth
Of ringlets like to thine:
There needs no hand of hireling
To
