hout 'that treasure of departed
sorrow' that is even now at my right hand as I write these lines.

"'The Christian Politician'[4] was published during the time of my
indisposition. This work I had written at leisure hours, with the hopes
of its being beneficial to the people placed under my care, by giving
them a general and connected view of the principles and philosophical
bearing of the Christian religion. In exhorting them privately, I
discovered that many of them understood that religion better in itself,
than they appeared to comprehend the manner in which it stood in
connexion with the surrounding circumstances of this life. In other
words, they were acquainted with doctrines and principles whose
application and use, whether in regard to thought, or feeling, or daily
practice, they did not so clearly recognise. To remedy this state of
things, I wrote 'The Christian Politician' in a style as simple as the
subjects treated of in it would well admit of, giving it a
conversational cast, instead of systematic arrangement, that it might
be the less forbidding to those for whom it was principally intended.
Being published, however, at the time when, through my indisposition, I
could take no interest in it, it was sent forth in a somewhat more
costly shape than rightly suited the original design; and although
extensively introduced and well received, it was in society of a higher
order than that which it was its object chiefly to benefit.

"My latest publication is a volume of 'Poems and Songs,'[5] published by
Messrs Sutherland and Knox of Edinburgh. 'The Cottagers of Glendale,'
the 'Lay of Life,' and some others of the compositions in this volume,
were written during the period of my convalescence; the songs are, for
the greater part, the production of 'the days of other years.' Many of
the latter had been already sung in every district of the kingdom, but
had been much corrupted in the course of oral transmission. These
wanderers of the hill-harp are now secured in a permanent form."

To this autobiographical sketch it remains to be added, that Mr Riddell
is possessed of nearly all the qualities of a great master of the
Scottish lyre. He has viewed the national character where it is to be
seen in its most unsophisticated aspects, and in circumstances the most
favourable to its development. He has lived, too, among scenes the best
calculated to foster the poetic temperament. "He has got," wrote
Professor Wilson, "a p