Ten men in Gilnockie were stronger then in proportion to the whole, and probably had in them more of intelligence, resource, and genuine manly power, than ten regiments now of red-coats drilled to act out manoeuvres they do not understand, and use artillery which needs of them no more than the match to go off and do its hideous message.
Farther on we saw Branxholm, and the water in crossing which the Goblin Page was obliged to resume his proper shape and fly, crying, "Lost, lost, lost!" Verily these things seem more like home than one's own nursery, whose toys and furniture could not in actual presence engage the thoughts like these pictures, made familiar as household words by the most generous, kindly genius that ever blessed this earth.
On the coach with us was a gentleman coming from London to make his yearly visit to the neighborhood of Burns, in which he was born.

"I can now," said he, "go but once a year; when a boy, I never let a week pass without visiting the house of Burns." He afterward observed, as every step woke us to fresh recollections of Walter Scott, that Scott, with all his vast range of talent, knowledge, and activity, was a poet of the past only, and in his inmost heart wedded to the habits of a feudal aristocracy, while Burns is the poet of the present and the future, the man of the people, and throughout a genuine man.

This is true enough; but for my part I cannot endure a comparison which by a breath of coolness depreciates either.

Both were wanted; each acted the important part assigned him by destiny with a wonderful thoroughness and completeness.

Scott breathed the breath just fleeting from the forms of ancient Scottish heroism and poesy into new,--he made for us the bridge by which we have gone into the old Ossianic hall and caught the meaning just as it was about to pass from us for ever.