and hues as may be most to the taste of the intellectual vision.  In a former letter you mention Francis Edgeworth.  He is a person not to be forgotten.  If you be in communication with him pray present him my very kind respects, and say that he was not unfrequently in my thoughts during my late poetic rambles; and particularly when I saw the objects which called forth a Sonnet that I shall send you.  He was struck with my mention of a sound in the eagle’s notes, much and frequently resembling the yelping and barking of a dog, and quoted a passage in Eschylus where the eagle is called the flying hound of the air, and he suggested that Eschylus might not only allude by that term to his being a bird of chase or prey, but also to this barking voice, which I do not recollect ever hearing noticed.  The other day I was forcibly reminded of the circumstances under which the pair of eagles were seen that I described in the letter to Mr. Edgeworth, his brother.  It was the promontory of Fairhead, on the coast of Antrim, and no spectacle could be grander.  At Dunally Castle, a ruin seated at the tip of one of the horns of the bay of Oban, I saw the other day one of these noble creatures cooped up among the ruins, and was incited to give vent to my feelings as you shall now see: 

    ’Dishonoured Rock and Ruin! that by law
    Tyrannic, keep the Bird of Jove imbarred,
    Like a lone criminal whose life is spared. 
    Vexed is he and screams loud:—­The last I saw
    Was on the wing, and struck my soul with awe,
    Now wheeling low, then with a consort paired,
    From a bold headland their loved aery’s guard,
    Flying, above Atlantic waves,—­to draw
    Light from the fountain of the setting sun. 
    Such was this prisoner once; and, when his plumes
    The sea-blast ruffles as the storm comes on,
    In spirit, for a moment he resumes
    His rank ’mong free-born creatures that live free;
    His power, his beauty, and his majesty.’

You will naturally wish to hear something of Sir Walter Scott, and particularly of his health.  I found him a good deal changed within the last three or four years, in consequence of some shocks of the apoplectic kind; but his friends say that he is very much better, and the last accounts, up to the time of his going on board, were still more favourable.  He himself thinks his age much against him, but he has only completed his 60th year.  But a friend of mine was here the other day, who has rallied, and is himself again, after a much severer shock, and at an age several years more advanced.  So that I trust the world and his friends may be hopeful, with good reason, that the life and faculties of this man, who has during the last six and twenty years diffused more innocent pleasure than ever fell to the lot of any human being to do in his own life-time, may be spared.  Voltaire, no doubt, was full as extensively known, and filled a larger space probably in the eye of Europe; for he was a great theatrical writer, which Scott has not proved himself to be, and miscellaneous to that degree, that there was something for all classes of readers:  but the pleasure afforded by his writings, with the exception of some of his Tragedies and minor Poems, was not pure, and in this Scott is greatly his superior.