child of the irritable race, possessed even a tithe of your simple
manliness, of the heart that never knew a touch of jealousy, that
envied no man his laurels, that took honour and wealth as they came,
but never would have deplored them had you missed both and remained
but the Border sportsman and the Border antiquary?

Were the word "genial" not so much profaned, were it not misused in
easy good-nature, to extenuate lettered and sensual indolence, that
worn old term might be applied, above all men, to "the Shirra." But
perhaps we scarcely need a word (it would be seldom in use) for a
character so rare, or rather so lonely, in its nobility and charm as
that of Walter Scott. Here, in the heart of your own country, among
your own grey round-shouldered hills (each so like the other that
the shadow of one falling on its neighbour exactly outlines that
neighbour's shape), it is of you and of your works that a native of
the Forest is most frequently brought in mind. All the spirits of
the river and the hill, all the dying refrains of ballad and the
fading echoes of story, all the memory of the wild past, each legend
of burn and loch, seem to have combined to inform your spirit, and
to secure themselves an immortal life in your song. It is through
you that we remember them; and in recalling them, as in treading
each hillside in this land, we again remember you and bless you.

It is not, "Sixty Years Since" the echo of Tweed among his pebbles
fell for the last time on your ear; not sixty years since, and how
much is altered! But two generations have passed; the lad who used
to ride from Edinburgh to Abbotsford, carrying new books for you,
and old, is still vending, in George Street, old books and new. Of
politics I have not the heart to speak. Little joy would you have
had in most that has befallen since the Reform Bill was passed, to