fellow-servant which his farmer gratefully addresses on entering on another year of labour, how many of its kind have been fed or spared! In the winter storm 'tis useless to think of the sailor on his slippery shrouds; but the "outland eerie 'cattle" he teaches his feres to care for in the drifting snow. In what jocund strains he celebrates their amusements, their recreations, their festivals, passionately pursued with all their pith by a people in the business of life grave and determined as if it left no hours for play! Gait, dress, domicile, furniture, throughout all his poetry, are Scottish as their dialect; and sometimes, in the pride of his heart, he rejoices by such nationality to provoke some alien's smile. The sickle, the scythe, and the flail, the spade, the mattock, and the hoe, have been taken up more cheerfully by many a toil-worn cottar, because of the poetry with which Burns has invested the very implements of labour. Now and then, too, here and there peals forth the clangour of the war-trumpet. But Burns is not, in the vulgar sense, a military poet; nor are the Scottish, in a vulgar sense, a military people. He and they best love tranquil scenes and the secure peace of home. They are prompt for war, if war be needed-no more. Therefore two or three glorious strains he has that call to the martial virtue quiescent in their bosoms-echoes from the warfare of their ancient self-deliverance-menacings-a prophetical Nemo me impune lacesset, should a future foe dare to insult the beloved soil. So nourishes his poetry all that is tender and all that is stern in the national character. So does it inspire his people with pride and contentment in their own peculiar lot; and as that is at once both poetical and practical patriotism, the poet who thus lightens and brightens it is the best of patriots.

I have been speaking of Burns as the poet of the countryand his is the rural, the rustic muse. But we know well that the charm of his poetry has equal power for the inhabitants of towns and cities. Occupations, familiar objects, habitual thoughts, are indeed very different for the two great divisions of the people; but there is a brotherhood both of consanguinity and of lot. Labour-the hand pledged to constant toil-the daily support of life, won by its daily wrestle with a seemingly adverse but friendly necessity-in these they are all commoners

with one another. He who cheers, who solaces, who inspirits, who honours, who exalts the lot of the labourer, is the poet alike of all the sons of industry. The mechanic who inhabits a smoky atmosphere, and in whose ear an unwholesome din from workshop and thoroughfare rings hourly, hangs from his rafter the caged linnet; and the strain that should gush free from blossomed or green bough, that should mix in the murmur of the brook, mixes in and consoles the perpetual noise of the loom or the forge. Thus Burns sings more especially to those whose manner of life he entirely shares; but he sings a precious memento to those who walk in other and less pleasant ways. Give then the people knowledge, without stint, for it nurtures the soul. But let us never forget, that the mind of man has other cravings-that it draws nourishment from thoughts, beautiful and tender, such as lay reviving dews on the drooping fancy, and are needed the more by him to whom they are not wafted fresh from the face of nature. This virtue of these pastoral and rural strains to penetrate and permeate conditions of existence different from those in which they had their origin, appears wheresoever we follow them. In the mine, in the dungeon, upon the great waters, in remote lands under fiery skies, Burns's poetry goes with his countrymen. Faithfully portrayed, the image of Scotland lives there; and thus she holds, more palpably felt, her hand upon the hearts of her children, whom the constraint of fortune or ambitious enterprise carries afar from the natal shores. Unrepining and unrepentant exiles, to whom the haunting recollection of hearth and field breathes in that dearest poetry, not with homesick sinkings of heart, but with home-invigorated hopes that the day will come when their eyes shall have their desire, and their feet again feel the greensward and the heather-bent of Scotland. Thus is there but one soul in this our great National Festival; while to swell the multitudes that from morning light continued flocking towards old Ayr, till at mid-day they gathered into one mighty mass in front of Burns's Monument, came enthusiastic crowds from countless villages and towns, from our metropolis, and from the great City of the West, along with the sons of the soil dwelling all round the breezy uplands of Kyle, and in regions that stretch away to the stormy mountains of Morven.

Sons of Burns! Inheritors of the name which we proudly revere, you claim in the glad solemnity which now unites us, a privileged and more fondly affectionate part. To the honour with which we would deck the memory of your father, your presence, and that of your respected relatives, nor less that of her sitting in honour by their side, who, though not of his blood, did the duties of a daughter at his dying bed, give an impressive living reality; and while we pay this tribute to the poet, whose glory, beyond that of any other, we blend with the renown of Scotland, it is a satisfaction to us, that we pour not out our praises in the dull cold ear of death. Your lives have been passed for many years asunder; and now that you are freed from the duties that kept you so long from one another, your intercourse, wherever and whenever permitted by your respective lots to be renewed, will derive additional enjoyment from the recollection of this day—a sacred day indeed to brothers, dwelling-even if apart-in unity and peace. And there is one whose warmest feelings, I have the best reason to know, are now with you and us, as well on your own account as for the sake of your great parent, whose character he respects as much as he admires his genius, though it has pleased Heaven to visit him with such affliction as might well deaden even in such a heart as his all satisfaction even with this festival. But two years ago, and James Burnes was the proud and happy father of three sons, all worthy of their race. One only now survives; and may he in due time return from India to be a comfort, if but for a short, a sacred season, to his old age! But Sir Alexander Burnes—a name that will not die—and his gallant brother, have perished, as all the world knows, in the flower of their life-foully murdered in a barbarous land. For them many eyes have wept; and their country, whom they served so faithfully, deplores them among her devoted heroes. Our sympathy may not soothe such grief as his; yet it will not be refused, coming to him along with our sorrow for the honoured dead. Such a father of such sons has far other consolations.

In no other way more acceptable to yourselves could I hope to welcome you, than by thus striving to give an imperfect utterance to some of the many thoughts and feelings that have been crowding into my mind and heart concerning your

father. And I have felt all along that there was not only no impropriety in my doing so, after the address of our noble Chairman, but that it was even the more required of me that I should speak in a kindred spirit, by that very address, altogether so worthy of his high character, and so admirably appropriate to the purpose of this memorable day. Not now for the first time, by many times, has he shown how well he understands the ties by which, in a country like this, men of high are connected with men of humble birth, and how amply he is endowed with the qualities that best secure attachment between the Castle and the Cottage. We rise to welcome you to your Father's land.

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAY.

FYTTE I.

[JUNE 1834.]

[This ride, although enriched with many imaginative embellishments, is not all a fable. The Professor actually tried the paces of Colonsay in a regular match, against those of a thorough-bred filly, ridden by a sporting character of local celebrity, on the road between Elleray and Ambleside, and came off winner. This was in 1823 or 1824.]

In our younger days we were more famous for our pedestrian than for our equestrian feats; liker Pollux than Castor. Yet were we no mean horseman; riding upwards of thirteen stone, we seldom mounted the silk jacket, yet we have won matches -and eyewitnesses are yet alive of our victory over old Qon the last occasion he ever went to scale-after as pretty a run home-so said the best judges—as was ever seen at Newmarket. Had you beheld us a half-century ago in a steeplechase, you would have sworn we were either the Gentleman in Black, or about to enter the Church. Then we used to stick close to the tail of the pack, to prevent raw, rash lads from riding over the hounds-and what a tale could we tell of the day thou didst die, thou grey, musty, moth-eaten Foxface! now almost mouldered away on the wall-there-below the antlers of the Deer-king of Braemar, who, as the lead struck his heart, leaped twenty feet up in the air, before his fall was proclaimed by all the echoes of the forest. We hear them now in the silence of the wilderness. Pleasant but mournful to the soul is the memory of joys that are past, saith old Ossian-and from the cavern of old North's breast issueth solemnly the same oracular response! For many a joyous crew are they not ghosts!

Gout and rheumatism were ours-we sold our stud, and