pon the top of the hill, and
enjoyed his celebrity and his ease and the pleasant conviction that "I
the best and fairest please." His only son, the second Allan Ramsay, was
a painter of some reputation, and he had daughters to care for him and
keep his home cheerful as long as he lived. A man more satisfied with
his lot could not be. His chirrup of self-satisfaction, the flattery,
yet familiarity, of his address to all the noble lords and lairds, the
judges and advocates, his laugh of jovial optimism and personal content,
belong perfectly to the character of the comfortable citizen, "in fair
round belly with good capon lined," and the shopkeeper's rather than the
poet's desire to please. One can better fancy him at the door of his
shop looking down the High Street jocose and beaming, with a joke for
the Lord President and for the Cadie alike, hand in glove with all the
Town Council, with a compliment for every fair lady or smiling lass that
tripped by under her tartan screen, delighted with himself and all
around him--than retired in his garden on the Castle Hill, though with
all the variations of the heavens and magnificence of the landscape
before his eyes. He had no doubt the admiration of that landscape which
is never wanting to an Edinburgh citizen, a part of the creed to which
he is born; but the homely limits of the green glens and knowes, the
wimpling burn, the washing-green, the laird's hospitable house behind,
were more in Allan's way when he wanted any relaxation from the even
more attractive town. The High Street and Habbie's Howe are the true
centres of his soul.

It would be wrong not to note the collections of songs which made his
name dear to all the pleasant singers both of drawing-room and cottage.
It is a strange peculiarity in a nation possessing a characteristic and
melodious popular music of its own like Scotland, to find how little
place music as a science, or even in its more serious developments, has
ever had in the country. Nothing can be more sweet, more touching, more
tender, than the native growth of Scottish song--nothing more full of
fun and spirit than the brilliant dance music which, like the song,
seems to have sprung spontaneous from the soil. And no country has ever
more loved both songs and strathspeys, or clung to them with greater
devotion. It would be perhaps impossible for the most learned to decide
between the rival claims of Scotland and Ireland in respect to the airs
which see