then there was to that heart one passage left.

Making all allowance for natural and pardonable high-colouring, we
recommend this most weighty and significant passage to the attention
of all readers, and draw an argumentum a fortiori, from the high
estimation in which Thom holds those very songs of Tannahill's, of
which we just now spoke somewhat depreciatingly, for the extreme
importance which we attach to popular poetry, as an agent of
incalculable power in moulding the minds of nations.

The popular poetry of Germany has held that great nation together,
united and heart-whole for centuries, in spite of every disadvantage
of internal division, and the bad influence of foreign taste; and the
greatest of their poets have not thought it beneath them to add their
contributions, and their very best, to the common treasure, meant not
only for the luxurious and learned, but for the workman and the child
at school. In Great Britain, on the contrary, the people have been
left to form their own tastes, and choose their own modes of
utterance, with great results, both for good and evil; and there has
sprung up before the new impulse which Burns gave to popular poetry,
a considerable literature--considerable not only from, its truth and
real artistic merit, but far more so from its being addressed
principally to the working classes. Even more important is this
people's literature question, in our eyes, than the more palpable
factors of the education question, about which we now hear such ado.
It does seem to us, that to take every possible precaution about the
spiritual truth which children are taught in school, and then leave
to chance the more impressive and abiding teaching which popular
literature, songs especially, give them out of doors, is as great a
niaiserie as that of the Tractarians who insisted on getting into the
pulpit in their surplices, as a sign that the clergy only had the
right of preaching to the people, while they forgot that, by means of
a free press (of the licence of which they, too, were not slack to
avail themselves), every penny-a-liner was preaching to the people
daily, and would do so, maugre their surplices, to the end of time.
The man who makes the people's songs is a true popular preacher.
Whatsoever, true or false, he sends forth, will not be carried home,
as a sermon often is, merely in heads, to be forgotten before the
week is out: it will ring in the ears, and cling round the
imaginatio