SCOTIA'S BARDS.

"The throne and sceptre of England will crumble into dust like those of Scotland; and Windsor Castle and Westminster Abbey will lie in ruins as poor and desolate as those of Scone and Iona, before the lords of Scottish song will cease to reign in the hearts of men"

EDWARD EVERETT,

"How prolific this sterile land

In great deeds and illustrious men!
O, mountain-crested Scotland,

I marvel not thou art
Dear as a sainted mother
Unto thy children's heart,
I marvel not they love thee,
Thou land of rock and glen,

Of strath, and lake and mountain,
And more-of gifted men."

MARY HOWITT

JAMES THOMSON.

1699-1746.

THOMSON was born at Ednam, near Kelso, in Roxburghshire, of which parish his father was minister. A poet from his boyhood, he abandoned the ecclesiastical profession, to which he had been destined, and in 1725 went to London to seek a sphere for his more congenial pursuit. The publication of his "Winter" raised him to the greatest celebrity, and acquired him the friendship of Pope and other distinguished literary men. But his celebrity did not enrich him, and he was only rescued from severe embarrassment by being employed to travel with the son of Chancellor Talbot, who rewarded him with a sinecure office, which his indolence lost at his patron's death. The sentiments of some of his pieces, and his connection with the opposition party, particularly with Mr. (afterwards Lord) Lyttleton,* excluded him from prospects of court patronage. Lyttleton procured for him, however, a pension from the Prince of Wales, the patron of the opposition against Walpole's ministry. On the fall of that statesman, Thomson's friend, now in power, conferred on the poet a situation which, while it yielded him a competent revenue, he could execute by proxy, so that the concluding years of his life were spent in luxurious ease in a comfortable cottage in the neighborhood of London. He died in 1748 of a fever contracted by a cold. Few have been more lamented by friendship than James Thomson. His benevolent nature, and his numberless

He is to be distinguished from his infamous son.

admirable qualities, independent of his shining genius, endeared him to all.

Besides the "Seasons," he left a long and somewhat tedious poem, "Liberty;" some tragedies, the most successful of which was "Tancred and Sigismunda;" several elegies and smaller pieces; and the "Castle of Indolence," a composition replete with beauty of imagery and melody of verse.