prove.

Beattie employs the greater part of his first Canto of the "Minstrel" in
showing the influence of Nature on the dawning mind of a poet. And there
can be little doubt that it is the scenery of his own native region, and
the progress of his own mind, that he has described. "The long, long
vale withdrawn," is the Howe of the Mearns--the "uplands" whence he
views it, are the hills of Garvock--the "mountain grey," is the Grampian
ridge to the north-west--the "blue main" is the German Ocean, expanding
eastward--and the "vale" where the hermit is overheard pouring out his
plaint, may not inaptly be figured by that portion of Glen Esk, which
meets the all-beautiful Burn, and where "rocks on rocks are piled by
magic spell," and where, then as now,

"Southward a mountain rose with easy swell,
Whose long, long groves eternal murmur made."

And, besides, there is his famous piece of cloud scenery, beginning,

"And oft the craggy cliff he loved to climb,"

the truth of which any one may attest by walking up, in the cloudy and
dark day, the Cairn-a-Mount, a lofty knoll, across which a road leads to
Deeside, to the north of the poet's birthplace, and watching the sea of
vapour boiling, shifting, sinking, rising, tumultuating at his feet.

Gray used to contend that, the stanza beginning, "O how canst thou
renounce the boundless store?" was absolute inspiration, but objected,
we think erroneously, to one word in it as French--"the _garniture_ of
fields," to which Cary very properly produces, in reply, the words from