right or wrong involved, and celebrate the praises of chieftains for their ability as leaders.

It follows that we must not expect to find in these productions high moral precepts, refined sentiment, or elegance of expression, though ballad poetry has been found in modern times highly susceptible of all these graces. Still they contain passages in which the early minstrel melts into natural pathos, and rises into rude energy. The profession of the Bard was held in such high esteem that in pagan times it amounted to a sacred reverence for this highly privileged class. "Their skill was considered as something divine, their persoUS were deemed sacred, their attendance was solicited by Kings, and they were loaded with honours and rewards. In short, the ancient Bards and their art were held in that rude admiration which is ever shown by an unlettered people to such as excel them in intellectual accomplishments."*

When the inhabitants of Ancient Caledonia† were brought under the benign and softening influences of Christianity, and the knowledge of letters began to spread, this rude admiration abated gradually, and poetry was no longer a peculiar possession.

These ancient Bards, however, maintained their position for centuries as the literary leaders of the country, and exercised great influence in the moulding of men. During what are known as the Middle Ages, and while full scope was allowed them, the existing state of things so changed that they became gradually merged in, or it may be, gave place to a class called Minstrels, to whom were entrusted the task of composing the military odes or ballads, which they recited or sung as chants in the halls of Nobles, Barons, and Chiefs, to the accompaniment possibly of Mallet's Northern Antiquities.

That portion of the island of Britain north of the Forth and Clyde was known to the Romans in the first century by this name.

the harp, on public occasions of greater or less social or state importance or emergency.

It may be that the ballad was the earliest form of poetry, and constituted the germ from which subsequent forms sprang: the lyric, relating domestic or personal matters in the minor key to the accompaniment of stringed instruments; the epic, dealing in the major key with grand Historical events and personages; the dramatic, for the propriæ personæ move and act as living conscious beings performing their several parts-these having been used for the expression of weighty thought and deep feeling both of a secular and sacred character.

The old ballad was originally constructed either on a warlike, pastoral, sentimental, or ideal basis. It was composed with rough majestic force, as recording the heroic deeds and triumphant achievements of the tribe. The more highly gifted of the Bards and Skalds who had proved themselves equal to the task of striking a bold original thought or idea in language and imagery, either of "love, war, or glamourie,"-powerful enough to excite and sustain attention, and so awaken and foster the chivalrous spirit, were patronised and courted alike by Prince, Earl, and Baron: honoured as their compeers at the estive board, and on many other occasions calling into play their chivalrous and impassioned utterances, were highly appreciated and enthusiastically applauded.

Some rehearsed their own compositions, others were mere Reciters: probably all could add a few stanzas as occasion demanded; a few scrupled not to alter the productions of others, adding or omitting whole stanzas according to personal taste or liking.

Ultimately a taste for and desire to excel in the cultivation of poetry, and probably in the use of the harp as an accompaniment, was cherished by men of letters. It may be that some of the most ancient of

our Scottish poetry was composed amid the studied leisure and refined retirement of monastic institutions. The learning which then existed was almost entirely found in these religious houses; and even in the sixteenth century, when knowledge became more widely diffused, it did not readily penetrate the recesses of these northern parts. Still, Minstrels as a privileged class, belonging to a distinct order, wearing an assumed well-known garb, and encircled with a definite character, continued to have their place freely accorded. The story of King Alfred resorting to the expedient of securing his reception at the Danish Camp in 878, by personating the garb and guise of a poor minstrel, is too well known to require

rehearsal.

With the decline of the chivalrous era, and the gradual advance of civilization, arts, and letters, consequent on the invention of printing, the Minstrels' position rapidly declined, becoming, ere the close of the sixteenth century (except perhaps in Wales), a thing of the past.

The lives and work of the Bards, Skalds, and Minstrels, did not, however, pass wholly into oblivion: all left their mark. The primitive compositions of the first merged into that of the second, and reappeared, though in new phases, in the metrical romances of the third; while they in turn formed the germs of later productions, and so became the ultimate basis of many of our older heroic ballads, and eventually formed the ground work of "The Reliques of Ancient Poetry," collected and edited by Bishop Percy, and "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," collected, compiled, and edited by Sir Walter Scott; the former published in 1765, the latter in 1802.

From the spirit of wild romance shown in many of them, it has been supposed that some of the ballads forming these two celebrated collections are but

episodes which, during the inevitable changes of traditional recitation merely, became detached from the long lost romances of which they originally formed part. And it may be, says Motherwell, "That this spirit of romance was indebted to the ballads rather than the reverse." He further says:-" As society advanced in refinement, and the rudeness and simplicity of earlier ages partially disappeared, the historic ballad, like the butterfly bursting the crust of its chrysalis state, and expanding itself in winged pride under the gladdening and creative influence of warmer suns and more genial skies, became speedily transmuted into the Romance of Chivalry."

The truth, however, may lie midway; for the ballad would probably be only the first rude versified form of the Historical Romance, while the Metrical Romance might be formed on the basis of the more ancient tradition handed down from father to son, from generation to generation.

The selection and arrangement of words into poetical rhythm, or their construction into a technical rule or measure, is so intimately associated with the science of music that their connection must have been early perceived. It would be hazardous to say which was anterior, but it matters little whether the primitive poet in reciting his productions fell naturally into a chant or song, or did the early musician adapt rude lines to a rude tune? It may be that both were to some extent contemporaneous.

The early minstrel was both poet and musician, and the two ideal arts were rendered more complete when, subsequently, the harp, lute, or any other primitive instrument was the accompaniment of the living voice.

There seem to be two chief orders of poets-those who possess the creative faculty, as Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, and Burns; the other,

the reflective or the perceptive, as Horace, Chaucer, Allan Ramsay, Joanna Baillie, Wordsworth, Scott, and Tennyson.

Pastoral poetry is a branch of the latter, and embraces a numerous class. It is essentially descriptive of rural life and natural objects in their varied phases, animate and inanimate-full of truthfulness to nature. Of the former we have pictures of simple country life in almost endless variety, yet too often refined and artificial, thereby imparting an unnatural air of ease, elegance, and dignity to its objects. Of the latter we have descriptions of country villages, green fields, shaded alleys, valleys, mountains, and ravines, with the higher forms of landscape sublimity in ever varying and fanciful settings, and picturesque poetical limnings.

To one of keen, or even moderate sensibilities, there is formed a marked connection between the general tenor of the imagination, and the nature of the scenery daily presented to the senses. Keen sensibilities are blunted, and a lively imagination deadened, with little or no variety in the daily life, or a prolonged familiarity with dull and uninteresting scenery. On the other hand, frequent converse with a large and diversified landscape, interspersed with mountains, rocks, precipices, and cataracts, and other prominently marked objects of nature, stimulates the imagination.

By frequent contact with these, the powers of illustration and expression are enlarged, favouring those naturally meditative and susceptible, and who long for increased mental perfections and ideal possessions, so far as attainable by a picturesque cast of the imagination, thereby acquiring a greater mental vigour, and a consequent richer store of original conception in thought and expression.

Lovers of poetry must be interested by even a cursory glance over the field covered by our National