338 A Walk from 



surpassed or even equalled. He died hugging the 

 conviction that he had attained it. This little village 

 was his birth-place. Here he wrote his first rhymes, 

 and- wooed and won the first inspirations of the muse. 

 His heart, as its last pulses grew weaker and slower, 

 in that far-off heathen land, took on its child-thoughts 

 again and its child-memories ; and his last words 

 were about this little, rural hamlet where he was born. 

 A beautiful monument has been erected to his memory 

 in the centre of the large common around which the 

 village is built. On each of the four sides of the 

 monument there is a tribute to his name and worth ; 

 one from Sir Walter Scott, and one taken from his 

 own poems, entitled " Scenes of my Infancy," a touch- 

 ing appeal to his old friends and neighbors to hold 

 him in kind remembrance. 



All this section is as fertile as it can be with the 

 sceneries and historical associations favorable for in- 

 spiring a strong-hearted love of country, and for the 

 development of the poetry of romantic patriotism. 

 It was pleasant to emerge from the dark, cold, barren 

 border-land, from the uncivilised mountains, standing 

 sullen in the wild, shaggy chevelurc of nature, and to 

 walk again between towering hills dressed in the best 

 toilet of human industry, crowned with golden wheat- 

 fields, and zoned with broad girdles of the greenest 



