self-harm" could make him a stranger or an alien in the courts of Nature. He gives proof of this in some stanzas entitled Recollections of Love, which were written on revisiting Nether Stowey in the summer of 1807 :

Eight springs have flown since last I lay
On seaward Quantock's heathy hills,
Where quiet sounds from hidden rills
Float here and there, like things astray,

And high o'er head the sky-lark shrills.

Or take this glimpse of early morning on a hillside, from Alice du Clos, a later poem of uncertain date :

There stands the flow'ring may-thorn tree!
From thro' the veiling mist you see

The black and shadowy stem ;—
Smit by the sun the mist in glee
Dissolves to lightsome jewelry-
Each blossom hath its gem!

Or this momentary response to the sweet influences of a sunny day in February 1827 :

All Nature seems at work.

Slugs leave their lair—

The bees are stirring-birds are on the wing-
And Winter, slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I the while, the sole unbusy thing,

Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

Work without Hope, from which these lines are taken, and the exquisite Garden of Boccaccio (sole poetic testimony of a visit to Italy) were written in Coleridge's later days when he sat on the brow of Highgate Hill," when Nature in her homelier or in her

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wilder aspects was but a memory of the past, when it sufficed him to pace slowly along Lovers' Lane, or among the trees in front of "The Grove," or to look from his attic window across Lord Mansfield's woods to the country beyond. But the day had been when Philosophy had borne "no other name but Poesie," and to the last he kenned "the banks where amaranths blow." Though he had deserted Nature, Nature ne'er deserted him. Let him speak for himself:

...

The love of Nature is ever returned double to us, not only the delighter in our delight, but by linking our sweetest, but, of themselves, perishable feelings to distinct and vivid images. . . . She is the preserver, the treasurer of our joys. . . . And even when all men have seemed to desert us and the friend of our heart has passed on, with one glance from his "cold disliking eye"-yet, even then, the blue heaven spreads it out and bends over us, and the little tree still shelters us under its plumage as a second cope, a domestic firmament, and the low creeping gale will sigh in the heath-plant, and soothe us by sound of sympathy till the lulled grief lose itself in fixed gaze on the purple heath-blossom, till the present beauty becomes a vision of memory (Anima Poetae, p. 246).

SCOTT

NOT less than Wordsworth's the Muse of Scott is the child and lover of Nature, and "Nature mourns her worshipper," where "the sound of all others most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of Tweed over its pebbles," murmurs by Sir Walter's tomb at Dryburgh. Scott has remarked in Rob Roy on the personal feeling of affection, and almost of reverence, which his countrymen entertain for the rivers of their native land, like the Greeks, and a legend tells of a lady who loved Tweed as dearly as Tyro, in Homer, loved Enipeus, "far the fairest of all streams that wander through the world." Though born in Edinburgh, Scott was a son of the Tweed; from Tweedside, and from the tributaries of the Tweed, Ettrick, Yarrow, and Teviot, came the forefathers who be queathed to him his spirit and his memories of the past. His "fancy's wakening hour," he says, was passed, indeed,

and

where no broad river swept along,

scarce a puny streamlet's speed Claimed homage from the shepherd's reed.

But Smailholme Tower and Sandyknowe farm, where his fancy awoke, were, at least, in Tweeddale, and the vigorous lame child could soon visit the Border waters on his pony. He fell in love with the pastoral streams, as every Borderer does; he knew them in every aspect, whether flowing clear in summer from pool to pool, or rushing "great and muckle o' spate," foaming red from brim to brim; or full and dark, of the colour that the salmon-fisher loves. It was his joy to ride the most dangerous fords, and to light the black woods at night with the flame of the salmon-leisterer, no less than to fish the summer clearness with the fly, or to dream beneath a tree above the flowing water. To him, his bare grey hills were more charming than even the raven-haunted precipices and black, enchanted lochs of Skye; and ces bosses verdâtres, as Prosper Mérimée described the hills of Tweedside, were to him enchanted land. Born in a city which has at least the most beautiful of all situations, if it lacks the colour of Athens, Sir Walter was also born in an old house, "at the head of the College Wynd," whence nothing more beautiful than squalid streets was to be seen. But the house stood on the site of a mystery and a tragedy, the Kirk o' Field, where Darnley was murdered.

As if by a combination of early influences, memory of the storied past was, from childhood, blended in Scott's fancy with love of Nature. For him, river and burn, loch and hill were not in themselves enough: he must know what befell the ancient dwellers in these

THE PASS OF LENY

The Pass of Leny is seen to full advantage from the ascent of Ben Ledi. I was fortunate enough to view it during a storm. Loch Lubnaig in the distance appeared and disappeared through the rain-clouds; their shadows passing over the hills and valley made a scene to illustrate the "Land of the Mountain."

F. S. W.