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    song-making , though for that it often passes , is the yoking of verses to music like that of horses to an omnibus , and then going off with a crack and a squeak , and a long rattling and rumbling . A song is a single emotion , breathed forth in the consentaneous melody of words and notes . The music of the verses and of the air should be not so much

    harmonized as identified . A real songster is both poet and musician * Failing either quality , in a sufficient degree for original production , there should be , and this is essential , a strong appreciation of whichever exists first , the poetry or the music , by those who supply the musical or the poetical complement , to produce the perfect song . The author , who is known to our readers by two or three of the songs which reappear in this volume , and especially by a beautiful ballad which was set as our

    * Song of the Month , ' for May , ' My Bessie , O but look upon these bonnie budding flowers , has shown his susceptibility for music by the airs for which he has written his words , and by which they were probably , in most cases , generated . They are Scottish a'thegither ; and verses are interspersed not unworthy of Burns himself . Such is the following image in ' the Braes o * Tweeddale •/—

    ' The heart may for a time forget The land where it an' life first met , But menVry , like a sun that set , Has ris ' n again on Tweeddale / Or this , in the description of a sturdy peasant : —•

    •* Auld Nature , just to show the warV Ae truly honest callan , She strippit till't , and made a carle , An ca'd him Sandy Allan / Our May song has here an additional verse interposed between the third and tlie last , the simple truth of which , is touching : —

    * We'd raise our lisping voices in auld Coila ' s melting lays , An' sing that tearfu' tale about Doon ' s bonnie banks an' braes ; But thocht na we o' banks an braes , except those at our feet—Like yon wee bird , we sang our sang , yet kent na that 'twas sweet . ' In quoting an entire song , as a specimen for those of our readers who may have become so recently , we cannot do better than take the last in the volume , which expresses a sentiment that the writer evidently feels strongly . It is written for the air of ' Galla Water . '

    MY MOUNTAIN HAME . 4 My mountain hame ! my mountain hame ! My kind , my independent mother ; While thought an' feeling rule my frame , Can I forget the mountain heather , Scotland dear ?

    Though foes should e ' er in chains me bind , An' dungeon was around me gather , Can they blot raem ' ry from my mind , Or wile my heart frae the mountain heather , Scotland dear ?

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    142 Critical Notices .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1835, page 142, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2642/page/62/