material which it uses.  “Vacancies in the factory, daily made, were daily filled by male and female workers; often queer enough people, and from all parts—­none too coarse for using.  The pickpocket, trained to the loom six months in Bridewell, came forth a journeyman weaver; and his precious experiences were infused into the common moral puddle, and in due time did their work.”  No wonder that “the distinctive character of all sunk away.  Man became less manly—­woman unlovely and rude.”  No wonder that the factory, like too many more, though a thriving concern to its owners, becomes “a prime nursery of vice and sorrow.”  “Virtue perished utterly within its walls, and was dreamed of no more; or, if remembered at all, only in a deep and woful sense of self-debasement—­a struggling to forget, where it was hopeless to obtain.”  But to us, almost the most interesting passage in his book, and certainly the one which bears most directly on the general purpose of this article, is one in which he speaks of the effects of song on himself and his fellow factory-workers.

Moore was doing all he could for love-sick boys and girls, yet they had never enough!  Nearer and dearer to hearts like ours was the Ettrick Shepherd, then in his full tide of song and story; but nearer and dearer still than he, or any living songster, was our ill-fated fellow-craftsman Tannahill.  Poor weaver chiel! what we owe to you!—­ your “Braes of Balquidder,” and “Yon Burnside,” and “Gloomy Winter,” and the “Minstrel’s” wailing ditty, and the noble “Gleneiffer.”  Oh! how they did ring above the rattle of a thousand shuttles!  Let me again proclaim the debt which we owe to these song spirits, as they walked in melody from loom to loom, ministering to the low-hearted; and when the breast was filled with everything but hope and happiness, let only break out the healthy and vigorous chorus, “A man’s a man for a’ that,” and the fagged weaver brightens up . . .  Who dare measure the restraining influences of these very songs?  To us they were all instead of sermons.  Had one of us been bold enough to enter a church, he must have been ejected for the sake of decency.  His forlorn and curiously patched habiliments would have contested the point of attraction with the ordinary eloquence of that period.  Church bells rang not for us.  Poets were indeed our priests:  but for those, the last relic of moral existence would have passed away.  Song was the dewdrop which gathered during the long dark night of despondency, and was sure to glitter in the very first blink of the sun.  You might have seen “Auld Robin Gray” wet the eyes that could be tearless amid cold and hunger, and weariness and pain.  Surely, surely, then there was to that heart one passage left.

Making all allowance for natural and pardonable high-colouring, we recommend this most weighty and significant passage to the attention of all readers, and draw an argumentum a fortiori, from the high estimation in which Thom holds those very songs of Tannahill’s, of which we just now spoke somewhat depreciatingly, for the extreme importance which we attach to popular poetry, as an agent of incalculable power in moulding the minds of nations.