Few books can give more delight by the winter's fire, when the sea-wind shakes the windows and roars in the chimney; few are better to read among the summer woods or the blowing heather; across the minds of those whose windows are only shaken by the traffic of modern cities; and perhaps, in this day of small decadent subtleties and malodorous morbidities of "Art", no book in the world can be of better service to the cause of true poetry than the famous Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.