When fairy thim'les woo the bees

In Tenach's brecken dell!

Nae mair I'll hear the cushie doo',

Wi' voice o' tender wailin',

Pour out her plaint, nor laverock's sang,
Up 'mang the white clouds sailin';
The lappin' waves that kiss the shore,
The music o' the streams,

The roarin' o' the linn nae mair
I'll hear but in my dreams.

When a' the house are gane to sleep,

I sit my leefu' lane,

And muse till fancy streaks her wing,
An' I am young again.

Again I wanner through the wuds,

Again I seem to sing

Some waefu' auld-warld ballant strain,

Till a' the echoes ring.

Again I wanner ower the lea,
And pu' the gowans fine;
Again I paidle in the burn,
But, oh it's lang sin' syne!

Again your faces blythe I see,

Your gladsome voices hear,

Frien's o' my youth-a' gane, a' gane!

An' I sit blin'lins here.

The star o' memory lichts the past,

But there's a licht abune,

To cheer the darkness o' a life

That maun be endit sune.

An' oft I think the gowden morn,
The purple gloamin' fa’,

Will shine as bricht, an' fa' as saft,
When I hae gane awa"."

Of the living writers of the time I do not speak. The diffusion of the feeling for nature is now so wide that it may be regarded, at least among true poets, or those in whose heart there is the primary requisite of sensibility and reverence in presence of nature and the power which it reveals, as no longer distinctive, but a common possession. To give quotations from living writers would be largely to increase the bulk of the book, adding, no doubt, to its illustrative effect, but not widening its true scope as an exposition of the principles of de

scriptive art. The feeling for nature has now become part of the daily atmosphere of the Scottish poet, to a considerable extent even of the Scottish people. It is only distinguished by greater or less degrees of purity, and by a wider or narrower reach, both among poets and people. My hope is that it will grow more intense, constant, and pure. I see in its fuller development the prospect of a higher culture and more refined civilisation. I rejoice to think that the flower of nature-feeling, which, in the course of the centuries, has come to its fulness in our own day, is not only rich and splendid, but that it appears ever and again in many a humble nook, in many an unlookedfor quarter, even among the sons of toil; that it is as widespread, indeed, as the wild-flowers of the land, and often to be found, like one of these, in spontaneous bloom in out-of-the-way glens, the solitary and precious glory of the burnside, or the radiance that lights the cottar's brae.

329

CHAPTER XXIV.

ART IN LANDSCAPE-PAINTING, WITH SPECIAL REF

ERENCE TO ITS RISE AND PROGRESS ON THE
CONTINENT OF EUROPE AND IN SCOTLAND.

LANDSCAPE-PAINTING, in its rise and progress on the continent of Europe and in Britain, especially Scotland, affords pertinent illustrations of the principles exemplified in descriptive poetry, and already stated in the foregoing pages. Without at all professing to go into full details on this branch of the subject, I think it well to note the points of analogy, and to show generally the historical relations of landscape art in painting and in poetry. It will be found that, while in Scotland and England the poetry of nature was first, and led on to landscape-painting, on the Continent, and especially in Italy, this order was reversed: the rich, wide outflow of

painting took precedence in time and in quality of poetical description and feeling for nature. Long before the poetry of nature was developed in Italy or Germany, the feeling for landscape in art had grown in strength, purity, and width of scope. Its progress and development were no doubt very gradual, and illustrate the general principles previously laid down regarding the manifestations of the æsthetical sense. It is true that Minnesinger and Troubadour felt the power of the softer and brighter side of nature, and expressed it in the love-song as early as the miniature painters did the same thing in art; and doubtless the two, poet and painter, acted and reacted on each other. But after this common beginning of the two arts, painting very soon became the more powerful in feeling, scope, and expression, and left the poetry far behind.

"Miniature painting" came after the somewhat stiff and formal period of the "Illumination of Manuscripts," and was the real source of modern landscape art. As Troubadour and Minnesinger, the miniature painter loved the soft, gentle, and bright in nature-the accessibly beautiful in flower and meadow, in spring and summer sky.