have been even lovelier, if a kindly sun had shone upon it.  The ivy-grown, ancient bridge, with its high arch, through which we had a picture of the river and the green banks beyond, was absolutely the most picturesque object, in a quiet and gentle way, that ever blessed my eyes.  Bonny Doon, with its wooded banks, and the boughs dipping into the water!  The memory of them, at this moment, affects me like the song of birds, and Burns crooning some verses, simple and wild, in accordance with their native melody.

It was impossible to depart without crossing the very bridge of Tam’s adventure; so we went thither, over a now disused portion of the road, and, standing on the centre of the arch, gathered some ivy-leaves from that sacred spot.  This done, we returned as speedily as might be to Ayr, whence, taking the rail, we soon beheld Ailsa Craig rising like a pyramid out of the sea.  Drawing nearer to Glasgow, Ben Lomond hove in sight, with a dome-like summit, supported by a shoulder on each side.  But a man is better than a mountain; and we had been holding intercourse, if not with the reality, at least with the stalwart ghost of one, amid the scenes where he lived and sung.  We shall appreciate him better as a poet, hereafter; for there is no writer whose life, as a man, has so much to do with his fame, and throws such a necessary light upon whatever he has produced.  Henceforth, there will be a personal warmth for us in everything that he wrote; and, like his countrymen, we shall know him in a kind of personal way, as if we had shaken hands with him, and felt the thrill of his actual voice.

* * * * *

Pasquin and pasquinades.

At an angle of the palace which Pius VI., (Braschi,) with paternal liberality, built for the residence of his family, before the French Revolution put an end to such beneficence, stands the famous statue of Pasquin, giving its name to the square upon which it looks.  It is little more now than a mere trunk of marble, bearing the marks of blows and long hard usage.  But even in this mutilated condition it shows traces of excellent workmanship and of pristine beauty.  The connoisseurs in sculpture praise it,[1] and the antiquaries have embittered their ignorance in regard to it by discussions as to whether it was a statue of Hercules, of Alexander the Great, or of Menelaus bearing the body of Patroclus.  Disabled and maimed as it is, it is thus only the more fitting type of the Roman people, of which it has been so long the acknowledged mouthpiece; and the epigrams and satires which have made its name famous have gained an additional point and a sharper sting from the patent resemblance in the condition of their professed author to that of those for whom he spoke.