pare to it, save everybody's
'Kilmeny.' In other portions of verse you have been
equalled, and sometimes surpassed; but in scenes which
are neither on earth, nor wholly removed from it--where
fairies speak, and spiritual creatures act, you are
unrivalled.

"Often do I tread back to the foot of old
Queensberry,[40] and meet you coming down amid the
sunny rain, as I did some twenty years ago. The little
sodded shealing where we sought shelter rises now on my
sight--your two dogs (old Hector was one) lie at my
feet--the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel' is in my hand, for
the first time, to be twice read over after sermon, as
it really was--poetry, nothing but poetry, is our talk,
and we are supremely happy. Or, I shift the scene to
Thornhill, and there whilst the glass goes round, and
lads sing and lasses laugh, we turn our discourse on
verse, and still our speech is song. Poetry had then a
charm for us, which has since been sobered down. I can
now meditate without the fever of enthusiasm upon me;
yet age to youth owes all or most of its happiest
aspirations, and contents itself with purifying and
completing the conceptions of early years.

"We are both a little older and a little graver than we
were some twenty years ago, when we walked in glory and
joy on the side of old Queensberry. My wife is much the
same in look as when you saw her in Edinburgh--at least
so she seems to me, though five boys and a girl might
admonish me of change--of loss of bloom, and abatement
of activity. My oldest boy resolves to be a soldier; he
is a clever scholar, and his head has been turned by
Caesar. My second and third boys are in Christ's School,
and are distinguished in their classes; they climb to
the head, and keep their places. The other three are at
their mother's knee at home, and have a strong capacity
for mirth and mischief.

"I have not destroyed my Scottish poem. I mean to
remodel it, and infuse into it something more of the
spark of living life. But my pen has of late strayed
into the regions of prose. Poetry is too much its own
reward; and one cannot always write for a barren smile,
and a thriftless clap on the back. We must live; and
the white bread and the brown can only be obtained by
gross payment. There is no