Ayr, whence, taking the rail, we soon beheld Ailsa Craig rising like a
pyramid out of the sea. Drawing nearer to Glasgow, Ben Lomond hove in
sight, with a dome-like summit, supported by a shoulder on each side.
But a man is better than a mountain; and we had been holding
intercourse, if not with the reality, at least with the stalwart ghost
of one, amid the scenes where he lived and sung. We shall appreciate
him better as a poet, hereafter; for there is no writer whose life, as
a man, has so much to do with his fame, and throws such a necessary
light upon whatever he has produced. Henceforth, there will be a
personal warmth for us in everything that he wrote; and, like his
countrymen, we shall know him in a kind of personal way, as if we had
shaken hands with him, and felt the thrill of his actual voice.


* * * * *

PASQUIN AND PASQUINADES.

At an angle of the palace which Pius VI., (Braschi,) with paternal
liberality, built for the residence of his family, before the French
Revolution put an end to such beneficence, stands the famous statue of
Pasquin, giving its name to the square upon which it looks. It is
little more now than a mere trunk of marble, bearing the marks of
blows and long hard usage. But even in this mutilated condition it
shows traces of excellent workmanship and of pristine beauty. The
connoisseurs in sculpture praise it,[1] and the antiquaries have
embittered their ignorance in regard to it by discussions as to
whether it was a statue of Hercules, of Alexander the Great, or of
Menelaus bearing the body of Patroclus. Disabled and maimed as it is,
it is thus only the more fitting type of the Roman people, of which it