things is in the Souvenir of this season--it is pure
and graceful, warm, yet delicate; and we have nought in
the language to compare to it, save everybody's
'Kilmeny.' In other portions of verse you have been
equalled, and sometimes surpassed; but in scenes which
are neither on earth, nor wholly removed from it--where
fairies speak, and spiritual creatures act, you are
unrivalled.

"Often do I tread back to the foot of old
Queensberry,[40] and meet you coming down amid the
sunny rain, as I did some twenty years ago. The little
sodded shealing where we sought shelter rises now on my
sight--your two dogs (old Hector was one) lie at my
feet--the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel' is in my hand, for
the first time, to be twice read over after sermon, as
it really was--poetry, nothing but poetry, is our talk,
and we are supremely happy. Or, I shift the scene to
Thornhill, and there whilst the glass goes round, and
lads sing and lasses laugh, we turn our discourse on
verse, and still our speech is song. Poetry had then a
charm for us, which has since been sobered down. I can
now meditate without the fever of enthusiasm upon me;
yet age to youth owes all or most of its happiest
aspirations, and contents itself with purifying and
completing the conceptions of early years.

"We are both a little older and a little graver than we
were some twenty years ago, when we walked in glory and
joy on the side of old Queensberry. My wife is much the