fluence exerted by Burns on Scottish song and
poetry, it is necessary first to inquire what he owed to his
predecessors in the art, as well as to the general Scottish atmosphere
of thought, feeling, scenery and manners.

First of all, Burns felt, in common with his _forbears_ in the genealogy
of Scottish song, the inspiring influences breathing from our
mountain-land, and from the peculiar habits and customs of a "people
dwelling alone, and not reckoned among the nations." He was not born in
a district peculiarly distinguished for romantic beauty--we mean, in
comparison with some other regions of Scotland. The whole course of the
Ayr, as Currie remarks, is beautiful; and beautiful exceedingly the Brig
of Doon, especially as it now shines through the magic of the Master's
poetry. But it yields to many other parts of Scotland, some of which
Burns indeed afterwards saw, although his matured genius was not much
profited by the sight. Ayrshire--even with the peaks of Arran bounding
the view seaward--cannot vie with the scenery around Edinburgh; with
Stirling--its links and blue mountains; with "Gowrie's Carse, beloved of
Ceres, and Clydesdale to Pomona dear;" with Straths Tay and Earn, with
their two fine rivers flowing from finer lakes, through corn-fields,
woods, and rocks, to melt into each other's arms in music, near the fair
city of Perth; with the wilder and stormier courses of the Spey, the
Findhorn, and the Dee; with the romantic and song-consecrated precincts
of the Border; with the "bonnie hills o' Gallowa" and Dumfriesshire; or
with that transcendent mountain region stretching up along Lochs Linnhe,
Etive, and Leven--between the wild, torn ridges of Morven and
Appin--uniting Ben Cruachan to Ben Nevis, and including in its sweep the
lonely and magnificent Glencoe--a region unparalleled in wide Britain
for its quantity and variety of desolate grandeur, where every shape is
bold, every shape blasted, but all blasted at such different angles as
to produce endless diversity, and yet where the whole seems twisted into
a certain terrible harmony; not to speak of the glorious isles

"Placed far amid the melancholy main,"

Iona, which, being interpreted, means the "Island of the Waves," the
rocky cradle of Scotland's Christianity; Staffa with grass growing above
the unspeakable grandeur which lurks in the cathedral-cave below, and
cows peacefully feeding over the tumultuous surge which forms the organ
of the eternal