Perthshire in bygone days

LA WHENCE MACDONALD. 113
more capacity than half of his contemporaries bundled
together. Like other young men, whose talents had a
poetical tendency, Macdonald expressed his sorrow in
English verse ; but it was four years after his return to
Edinburgh that he first appeared in print as a votary of
the Nine.
Turner, the Academician, concluded that because he
distanced all competitors in landscape-painting, he must of
necessity be a poet ; indeed, he does not scruple to assert
that, if he had turned his attention to poetry or architecture
when young, he would certainly have succeeded in either.
His great theory was, that the man highly endowed has
only to choose between the sister arts, and leave study and
practice to do the rest. He has shown, to some extent, the
truth of his theory as applied to architecture ; but his
poetical effusions have made manifest that the " application
when young " is an important condition of ultimate
success. Lawrence Macdonald restricted his muse to short
fugitive pieces, but Turner essayed an epic. The first had
some success, but the second diluted his poetic spirit with
too much water.
On the 25th of January, 1830, the following verses, with
the prefatory note, appeared in an Edinburgh publication
entitled The Edinburgh Literary Journal, or Weekly Begister
of Criticism and Belles Lettres : —
ORIGINAL POETRY.
STANZAS TO A LADY.
By Lawrence Macdonald.
We have pleasure in introducing to our readers as a worshipper of
the muses one of the most successful and eminent of our Scottish
sculptors. — Ed.
She walks in beauty like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
Where all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes :
Thus mellowed to the tender light
That heaven to gaudy day denies.
There is a pensive sweetness in thine eyes,
A mystery and a depth like that of heaven
When viewed by night without the day's disguise.
Though 'gainst this world my spirit e'er hath striven,
I