During the just, benignant sway of the "good Duke James," perhaps Fleurs was the happiest place of all Scotland to live in;--not a happier could be in the wide world. To have been born and brought up there, and in one's childhood to have had such a taste of the "golden age," I have always esteemed the sweetest privilege of life. No one can become utterly sour, no one can lose faith and hope in humanity, who was nurtured on the milk and honey of Fleurs, under "good Duke James." Poetry and enthusiasm must spring eternal in his breast. This is no illusion from the fancies of boyhood. Ask the old peasant of Tweedside--a mature, hardy man then--and he will tell, with a glow on his cheek, and a tear, due to remembrance, in his eye, "Ah! the Fleurs was a braw place under auld Duke Jemmy!" Nature, industry, peace, mirth, love, a kindred soul between duke and people, seemed to breathe in every gale there, and sing in the matins and vespers of every bird. There the _lyric joyousness_, characteristic of the Scottish people when allowed freely to develop, expanded itself to the utmost of its power and fervour. Fleurs was like the "Ida Vale" of Spenser:--
"In Ida vale, (who knows not Ida vale?) When harmless Troy yet felt not Grecian spite, An hundred shepherds wonn'd; and in the dale, While their fair flocks the three-leaved pastures bite, The shepherd boys, with hundred sportings light, Gave wings unto the time's too speedy haste."