infamy. Bah! rather the plain, honest, homely life of our
grandfathers--

"Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool, sequester'd vale of life,
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way."

Or rather (for every age has its own type, and old forms of life cannot
be stereotyped and reproduced), let us have a philosophic and Christian
combination of modern adventure and "gold-digging" with old-fashioned
balance of mind, and neighbourliness, and open-heartedness, and thankful
enjoyment.

Our Scottish race have been--yes, and notwithstanding modern changes,
still are--a joyous people--a people full of what I shall term _a lyric
joyousness_. I say they still are--as may be found any day up the
Ettricks, and Yarrows, and Galas--up any of our Border glens and dales.
The Borderers continue to merit the tribute paid to them in the odd but
expressive lines of Wordsworth:--

"The _pleasant men of Tiviotdale_,
Fast by the river Tweed."

From time immemorial they have been enthusiastic lovers of song and
music, and have been thoroughly imbued with their influences. Bishop
Leslie, a contemporary of the state of manners which he describes, has
recorded of them, upwards of two centuries ago--"That they take extreme
delight in their music, and in their ballads, which are composed amongst
themselves, celebrating the deeds of their ancestors, or the valour and
success of their predatory expeditions;" which latter, it must be
remembered, were esteemed, in those days, not only not criminal, but
just, honourable, and heroic. What a gush of mirth overflows in king
James' poem of "Peebles to the Play," descriptive of the Beltane or
May-day festival, four hundred years ago! at Peebles, a charming
pastoral town in the upper district of the vale of the Tweed:--

"At Beltane, when ilk body bouns
To Peebles to the play,
To hear the singin' and the soun's,
The solace, sooth to say.
By firth and forest forth they wound,
They graithit them full gay:
God wot what they would do that stound,
For it was their feast-day,
They said,
Of Peebles to the play!

* * * * *

"Hop, Calye, and Cardronow
Gatherit out thick-fald,
With, _Hey and How and Rumbelow!_
The young folk were full bald.
The bagpipe blew, and they out threw