LANDSCAPES OF AYRSHIRE 95 



between ' ; we see ' glittering streamlets ' in a sunny 

 glade ' ; we skirt a ' sable, silent, solemn forest ' ; and 

 pass a ' wood of blackening pines,' which runs up the 

 hills on either side, and see the famous castle ' close 

 hid amid embowering trees,' that make a kind of 

 chequered day and night. The landscape, we are 

 told, 'inspires perfect ease' — a quality which must 

 now have become indispensable to the ' bard, more 

 fat than bard beseems.' Thomson, with his adoption 

 of English scenery, had also polished his style and 

 rid himself of much of his turgidity and latinism. He 

 had changed his theme, too, and had chosen one more 

 in consonance with the prevailing vogue. But to the 

 end he had an eye for the charms of the free open face 

 of nature. For the share he took in bringing back into 

 our literature the recognition of these charms, he will 

 ever hold an honourable place in the history of letters. 



It was from another and somewhat dissimilar part 

 of the Scottish lowlands that a far more powerful 

 impulse than that of Thomson was given by the 

 genius of Burns to the progress of the literary revolu- 

 tion of the eighteenth century. The landscapes of 

 Ayrshire, where Burns was born and spent most of 

 his life, though akin in their main aspects to those 

 of Roxburghshire, present nevertheless certain well- 

 marked differences in topography which were not 

 without their influence on the muse that inspired 

 Tarn 0' Shanter and Halloween. 



The lowlands familiar to Burns throughout most of 

 his life form a wide and undulating plain, surrounded 

 on three sides by ranges of upland, and on the fourth 

 by the open Firth of Clyde. The heights along the 



