Save when a transient sunbeam through the

rain

Passed, like some beauteous phantom of the

mind,

Leaving the hind in solitude again—

These were their last retreats, and heard their parting strain.

Oh! I remember, as young fancy grew,

How oft thou spok'st in voice of distant rill;

What sheeted forms thy plastic finger drew, Throned on the shadow of the moonlit hill, Or in the glade so motionless and still That scarcely in this world I seemed to be; High on the tempest sing thine anthem shrill ; Across the heaven upon the meteor flee; Or in the thunder speak with voice of majesty!

All these are gone the days of vision o'er;
The bard of fancy strikes a tuneless string.
Oh! if I wist to meet thee here no more,
My muse should wander, on unwearied wing,
To find thy dwelling by some lonely spring,
Where Norway opes her forests to the gale;
The dell thy home, the cloud thy covering;

The tuneful sea-maid, and the spectre pale, Tending thy gloomy throne, amid heaven's awful

veil.

Oh! let me quake before thee once again, And take one farewell on my bended knee, Great ruler of the soul, which none can rule like thee!"*

Surely these lines are true of the Shepherd :

"dear

Was vision of 'the dappled vales of heaven,' With mountain-side and tree, at evening fall, Upon the Loch's calm breast, that slept and dreamed

A quiet gloamin' dream of earth and sky!

Yet strange things all and stern to him were joys,

The moving cloud that visored stern Clockmore,
When Cramalt, gathering all her rainy springs,
Poured wild and wayward from her skyey crag,
Not heeding grassy nook or heather brae,
Where she had lingered through the summer
time.

* Superstition.

He loved, as only poet's heart can love,

The flashing levin and the winter storm,

And Yarrow's flooded roar, and sounds dim

heard

Of airy tumult 'mid the driving mist."

251

CHAPTER XXI.

MODERN PERIOD: JOHN WILSON AND OTHERS.

(1788-1854.)

JOHN WILSON (1788-1854) was born in Paisley, and died in Edinburgh at the age of sixty-six. He was educated at the University of Glasgow, and at Magdalene College, Oxford, which he entered in 1803. There he gained the Newdigate prize for the English poem. He purchased, and went to reside at, Elleray, on Windermere, in 1807. This continued to be his principal place of summer residence during life, the centre, at least, of his far and wide summer wanderings. In 1820 he was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, an office which he held for thirty years, resigning it in 1851.

Forty years ago "Christopher North" was

a familiar and striking figure on the streets of Edinburgh, and one has still a vivid image of him, manly and picturesque, with a dash of singularity in dress and appearance, befitting and not unexpected, as he passed daily, early in the winter afternoon, from the University, along the Bridges and by Princes Street, to "Blackwood's ' or his house in Gloucester Place. There was about him the interest of one of the great literary personages of the first half of the century, now no longer quite what he was in power, but personally regarded with a sympathetic enthusiasm. As a student of his in his latter days, one cherishes a kindly and grateful memory of "the old man eloquent." Wilson has added to the inspiring and interesting associations which link the literary and social Edinburgh of the past to the city of to-day. Hamilton, Chalmers, and Wilson might be seen on its streets at the same time; and Edinburgh is the richer for the memories of such a rare combination of men. Three such typical personalities have not been together in Edinburgh since their day.

Wilson's poetical career after the Newdigate Poem was first marked by an Elegy on the