Perthshire in bygone days

EPISTLE DEDICATORY. V
Macdonald, the painting of Thomas Duncan, the poetry of
Lady Nairne and Eobert Nicoll, the love stories of Bonnie
Margaret Drumniond, and Bessie Bell and Mary Gray,
together with the quaint eccentricities of John Scott and
William Glendinning, are interesting themes, however dull
I nfay have been in unfolding them, and amply justify you
in the partiality you have formed for the land of your birth,
and me in inscribing to such bodies of men my impressions
of their interest and value.
The people of Perthshire take pride in the unions you
have formed, not merely as demonstrations of local par-
tiality, but because love of country is a normal condition
in man, and the lack of it indicates a turning aside. Lord
Byron has written,
England, with all thy faults I love thee still.
Bobert Burns in the fulness of his heart says,
Auld Ayr whom ne'er a toun surpasses,
For honest men and bonnie lasses. .
And in Sir Walter Scott's famous passage on love of
country, he denounces in indignant terms the character of
the man in whom it is found wanting,
Breathes there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land !
But in every movement of your societies its presence is
manifest, not only as a primary condition, but as a vital,
kindred impulse. The bird of passage returns year by year
and perches under his native eaves, but the lord of creation
goes out for life. He struggles for a name, and a position,
and a family carriage, and to the scene of that struggle he
becomes partially naturalised, but still retains in its pristine
force the love of his birth-place, and of the companions of
his youthful days. It is highly gratifying to all who remain
as fixed denizens of our interesting county, to hear from
day to day that groups of intellectual citizens are being