ind to
the parish children, and reverent of the spade with which Wilkinson had
tilled his lands: and I am by no means sure that his influence on the
stronger minds of his time was anywise hastened or extended by the
spirit of tunefulness under whose guidance he discovered that heaven
rymed to seven, and Foy to boy.

52. Tuneful nevertheless at heart, and of the heavenly choir, I gladly
and frankly acknowledge him; and our English literature enriched with a
new and a singular virtue in the aerial purity and healthful rightness
of his quiet song;--but _aerial_ only,--not ethereal; and lowly in its
privacy of light.

A measured mind, and calm; innocent, unrepentant; helpful to sinless
creatures and scathless, such of the flock as do not stray. Hopeful at
least, if not faithful; content with intimations of immortality such as
may be in skipping of lambs, and laughter of children--incurious to see
in the hands the print of the Nails.

A gracious and constant mind; as the herbage of its native hills,
fragrant and pure;--yet, to the sweep and the shadow, the stress and
distress, of the greater souls of men, as the tufted thyme to the
laurel wilderness of Tempe,--as the gleaming euphrasy to the dark
branches of Dodona.

[I am obliged to defer the main body of this paper to next
month,--revises penetrating all too late into my lacustrine
seclusion; as chanced also unluckily with the preceding paper, in
which the reader will perhaps kindly correct the consequent
misprints [now corrected, ED.], p. 203, l. 23, of
"scarcely" to "securely," and p. 206, l. 6, "full," with comma to
"fall," without one; noticing besides that "Redgauntlet" has been
omitted in the list, pp. 198, 199; and that the reference to note
should not be at the word "imagination," p. 198, l. 6, but at the
word "trade," l. 15. My dear old friend, Dr. John Brown, sends me,
from Jamieson's _Dictionary_, the following satisfactory end to one
of my difficulties:--"Coup the crans." The language is borrowed
from the "cran," or trivet on which small pots are placed in
cookery, which is sometimes turned with its feet uppermost by an
awkward assistant. Thus it signifies to be _completely_ upset.]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 62: August, 1880.]

[Footnote 63: The following fragments out of the letters in my own
possession, written by Scott to the builder of Abbotsford, as the outer
decorations of