THE BANKS O' DOON. Robert Burns. YE banks and braes o' bonnie Doon, How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair? Thou'lt break my heart, thou warbling bird, That wantons thro' the flowering thorn: Thou minds me o' departed joys, Thou'lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird, That sings beside thy mate; For sae I sat, and sae I sang, Aft hae I rov'd by bonnie Doon, To see the rose and woodbine twine; And ilka bird sang o' its Luve, And fondly sae did I o' mine. Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose, But, ah! he left the thorn wi' me. OF A' THE AIRTS THE WIND CAN BLAW. Robert Burns. OF a' the airts the wind can blaw I dearly like the west, For there the bonnie lassie lives, The lassie I lo'e best: There wild woods grow, and rivers row, But day and night my fancy's flight I see her in the dewy flowers, There's not a bonnie flower that springs O blaw, ye westlin' winds, blaw saft Wi' gentle gale, frae muir and dale, What sighs and vows, amang the knowes How fain to meet, how wae to part, That day she gaed awa! The Powers aboon can only ken (To whom the heart is seen) That nane can be sae dear to me As my sweet, lovely Jean. THE surliest critic must allow that Scott was a genuine man, which itself is a great matter. No affectation, fantasticality, or distortion dwelt in him; no shadow of cant. Nay, withal, was he not a right brave and strong man, according to his kind? What a load of toil, what a measure of felicity, he quietly bore along with him; with what quiet strength he both worked on this earth, and enjoyed in it; invincible to evil fortune and to good! A most composed invincible man; in difficulty and distress knowing no discouragement, Samsonlike carrying off on his strong Samson-shoulders the gates that would imprison him; in danger and menace laughing at the whisper of fear. And then, with such a sunny current of true humor and humanity, a free joyful sympathy with so many things; what of fire he had all lying so beautifully latent, as radical latent heat, as fruitful internal warmth of life; a most robust, healthy man! The truth is, our best definition of Scott were perhaps even this, that he was, if no great man, An then something much pleasanter to be, a robust, thoroughly healthy, and, withal, very prosperous and victorious man. eminently well-conditioned man, healthy in body, healthy in soul; we will call him one of the healthiest of men. Neither is this a small matter: health is a great matter, both to the possessor of it and to others. On the whole, that humorist in the Moral Essay was not so far out, who determined on honoring health only; and so instead of humbling himself to the highborn, to the rich and well-dressed, insisted on doffing hat to the healthy: coroneted carriages with pale faces in them passed by as failures, miserable and lamentable; trucks with ruddy-cheeked strength dragging at them were greeted as successful and venerable. For does not health mean harmony, the synonym of all that is true, justlyordered, good; is it not, in some sense, the net-total, as shown by experiment, of whatever worth is in us? The healthy man is a most meritorious product of Nature so far as he goes. A healthy body is good; but a soul in right health,—it is the thing beyond all others to be prayed for; the blessedest thing this earth receives of Heaven. Without artificial medicament of philosophy, or tight-lacing of creeds (always very questionable), the healthy soul discerns what is good, and adheres to it, and retains it; discerns what is bad, and spontaneously casts it off. An instinct from Nature herself, like that which guides the wild animals of the forest to their food, shows him what he shall do, what he shall abstain from. The false and foreign will not adhere to him; cant and all fantastic diseased incrustations are impossible; -as Walker the Original, in such eminence of health was he for his part, could not, by much abstinence from soap and water, attain to a dirty face! This thing thou canst work with and profit by, this thing is substantial and worthy; that other thing thou canst not work with, it is trivial and inapt: so speaks unerr ingly the inward monition of the man's whole nature. No need of logic to prove the most argumentative absurdity absurd; as Goethe says of himself, "All this ran down from me like water from a man in wax-cloth dress." Blessed is the healthy nature; it is the coherent, sweetly co-operative, not incoherent, self-distracting, self-destructive one! In the harmonious adjustment and play of all the faculties, the just balance of oneself gives a just feeling towards all men and all, things. Glad light from within radiates outwards, and enlightens and embellishes. Now all this can be predicated of Walter Scott, and of no British literary man that we remember in these days, to any such extent,-if it be not perhaps of one, the most opposite imaginable to Scott, but his equal in this quality and what holds of it: William Cobbett! Nay, there are other similarities, widely different as they two look; nor be the comparison disparaging to Scott: for Cobbett also, as the pattern John Bull of his century, strong as the rhinoceros, and with singular humanities and genialities shining through his thick skin, is a most brave phenomenon. So bounteous was Nature to us; in the sickliest of recorded ages, when British Literature lay all puking and sprawling in Werterism, Byronism, and other Sentimentalism tearful or spasmodic (fruit of internal wind), Nature was kind enough to send us two healthy Men, of whom she might still say, not without pride, "These also were made in England; such limbs do I still make there!" It is one of the cheerfulest sights, let the question of its greatness be settled as you will. A healthy nature may or may not be great; but there is no great nature that is not healthy. Or, on the whole, might we not say, Scott, in the new vesture of the nineteenth century, was intrinsically very much the old fighting Borderer of prior centuries; the kind of man Nature did of old make in that birthland of his? In the |