ntly sensitive and
intelligent, and not as a poet clad in his priestly robes and carrying
the ensigns of sacerdotal office, that he interests and affects us.

Whether he speaks of rivers, hills, and woods, it is not so much on
account of the properties with which they are absolutely endowed, as
relatively to local patriotic remembrances and associations, or as they
are ministerial to personal feelings, especially those of love, whether
happy or otherwise; yet it is not _always_ so. Soon after we had passed
Mosgiel Farm we crossed the Ayr, murmuring and winding through a narrow
woody hollow. His line,

'Auld hermit Ayr staw thro' his woods,' [=stole]

came at once to my mind, with Irwin, Lugar, Ayr, and Doon, Ayrshire
streams over which he breathes a sigh, as being unnamed in song; and,
surely, his own attempts to make them known were as successful as his
heart could desire.

408. *_Written on a Blank Leaf of Macpherson's 'Ossian_.' [XXVII]

This poem should, for variety's sake, take its place among the itinerary
Sonnets on one of the Scotch Tours.

409. _Cave of Staffa_. [XXIX.]

The reader may be tempted to exclaim, 'How came this and the two
following Sonnets to be written, after the dissatisfaction expressed in
the preceding one?' In fact, at the risk of incurring the reasonable
displeasure of the master of the steamboat, I returned to the cave, and
explored it under circumstances more favourable to those imaginative
impressions which it is so wonderfully fitted to make upon the mind.

410. _Ox-eyed Daisy_.

'Hope smiled when your nativity was cast,
Children of summer!' (XXXI. ll. 1-2.)

Upon the head of the columns which form the front of the cave, rests a
body of decomposed basaltic matter, which was richly decorated with that
large bright flower, the ox-eyed daisy. I had noticed the same flower
growing with profusion among the bold rocks on the western coast of the
Isle of Man; making a brilliant contrast with their black and gloomy
surfaces.

411. _Iona_. [XXXIII.]

The four last lines of this Sonnet are adapted from a well-known Sonnet
of Russel, as conveying my feeling better than any words of my own could
do.

412. _River Eden_, [XXXVIII.]

'Yet fetched from Paradise.'

It is to be feared that there is more of the poet than the sound
etymologist in this derivation of the name Eden. On the western coast of
Cumberland is a rivulet which enters the sea at Moresby, kno