with him the sympathies of his kind, and in his highest moods he was not satisfied with their admiration without their love. There never beat a heart more alive to kindness. To the wise and good, how eloquent his gratitude! to Glencairn, how imperishable! This exceeding tenderness of heart often gave such pathos to his ordinary talk, that he even melted common-place people into tears! Without scholarship, without science, with not much of what is called information, he charmed the first men in a society equal in all these to any at that time in Europe. The scholar was happy to forget his classic lore, as he listened, for the first time, to the noblest sentiments flowing from the lips of a rustic, sometimes in his own Doric, divested of all offensive vulgarity, but oftener in language which, in our northern capital, was thought pure English, and comparatively it was so, for in those days the speech of many of the most distinguished persons would have been unintelligible out of Scotland, and they were proud of excelling in the use of their mother tongue. The philosopher wondered that the peasant should comprehend intuitively truths that had been established, it was so thought, by reasoning demonstrative or inductive; as the illustrious Stewart, a year or two afterwards, wondered how clear an idea Burns the Poet had of Alison's True Theory of Taste. True it is that the great law of association has by no one been so beautifully stated in a single sentence as by Burns: "That the martial clangor of a trumpet had something in it vastly more grand, heroic, and sublime than the twingle-twangle of a Jews'-harp; that the delicate flexure of a rose-twig, when the half-blown flower is heavy with the tears of the dawn, was infinitely more beautiful and elegant than the upright stalk of the burdock; and that from something innate and independent of all associations of ideas-these I had set down as irrefragable orthodox truths, until perusing your book shook my faith." The man of wit-aye even Harry Erskine himself and a wittier than he never charmed social life—was nothing loth, with his delightful amenity, to cease for a while the endless series of anecdotes so admirably illustrative of the peculiarities of nations, orders, or individuals, and almost all of them created or vivified by his own genius, that the most accomplished compa

nies might experience a new pleasure from the rich and racy humor of a natural converser fresh from the plough.

And how did Burns bear all this, and much besides even more trying? For you know that a duchess declared that she had never before in all her life met with a man who so fairly carried her off her feet. Hear Professor Stewart: "The attentions he received during his stay in town, from all ranks and descriptions of persons, were such as would have turned any head but his own. I cannot say that I could perceive any unfavorable effect which they left on his mind. He retained the same simplicity of manners and appearance which had struck me so forcibly when I first saw him in the country; nor did he seem to feel any additional self-importance from the number and rank of his new acquaintance." In many passages of his letters to friends who had their fears, Burns expressed entire confidence in his own self-respect, and in terms the most true and touching; as, for example, to Dr. Moore: "The hope to be admired for ages is, in by far the greater part of those who even were authors of repute, an unsubstantial dream. For my part, my first ambition was, and still is, to please my compeers, the rustic inmates of the hamlet, while ever-changing language and manners shall allow me to be relished and understood." And to his venerated friend Mrs. Dunlop, he gives utterance, in the midst of his triumphs, to dark forebodings, some of which were but too soon fulfilled! "You are afraid that I shall grow intoxicated with my prosperity as a poet. Alas! Madam, I know myself and the world too well. I assure you, Madam, I do not dissemble, when I tell you I tremble for the consequences. The novelty of a poet in my obscure situation, without any of those advantages which are reckoned necessary for that character, at least at this time of day, has raised a partial tide of public notice, which has borne me to a height where I am feeling absolutely certain my abilities are inadequate to support me; and too surely do I see that time, when the same tide will leave me, and recede, perhaps, as far below the mark of truth. I do not say this in ridiculous affectation of self-abasement and modesty. I have studied myself, and know what ground I occupy; and however a friend or the world may differ from me in that par

ticular, I stand for my own opinion in silent resolve, with all the tenaciousness of property. mention this to you once for all, to disburthen my mind, and I do not wish to hear or say more about it. But,

When proud fortune's ebbing tide recedes,'

you will bear me witness, that, when my bubble of fame was at the highest, I stood, unintoxicated with the inebriating cup in my hand, looking forward with rueful resolve to the hastening time when the blow of Calumny should dash it to the ground with all the eagerness of vengeful triumph.”

Such equanimity is magnanimous; for though it is easy to declaim on the vanity of fame, and the weakness of them who are intoxicated with its bubbles, the noblest have still longed for it, and what a fatal change it has indeed often wrought on the simplicity and sincerity of the most gifted spirits! There must be a moral grandeur in his character who receives sedately the unexpected, though deserved ratification of his title to that genius whose empire is the inner being of his race, from the voice of his native land uttered aloud through all her regions, and harmoniously combined of innumerable tones all expressive of a great people's pride. Make what deductions you will from the worth of that "All hail!" and still it must have sounded in Burns's ears as a realization of that voice heard by his prophetic soul in the "VISION."

Robert Burns was not the man to have degraded himself everlastingly, by one moment's seeming slight or neglect of friends, new or old, belonging either to his own condition, or to a rank in life somewhat higher perhaps than his own, although not exactly to that "select society" to which the wonder awakened by his genius had given him a sudden introduction. Persons in that middle or inferior rank were his natural, his best, and his

truest friends; and many of them, there can be no doubt, were worthy of his happiest companionship either in the festal hour or the hour of closer communion. He had no right, with all his genius, to stand aloof from them, and with a heart like his he had no inclination. Why should he have lived exclusively with lords and ladies-paper or land lords--ladies by descent or courtesy-with aristocratic advocates, philosophical professors, clergymen, wild or moderate, Arminian or Calvinistic? Some of them were among the first men of their age; others were doubtless not inerudite, and a few not unwitty in their own esteem; and Burns greatly enjoyed their society, in which he met with an admiration that must have been to him the pleasure of a perpetual triumph. But more of them were dull and pompous; incapable of rightly estimating or feeling the power of his genius; and when the glitter and the gloss of novelty was worn off before their shallow eyes, from the poet who bore them all down into insignificance, then no doubt they began to get offended and shocked with his rusticity or rudeness, and sought refuge in the distinctions of rank, and the laws, not to be violated with impunity, of "select society." The patronage he received was honorable, and he felt it to be so; but it was still patronage; and had he, for the sake of it or its givers, forgotten for a day the humblest, lowest, meanest of his friends, or even his acquaintances, how could he have borne to read his own two bold lines

"The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that?"

Besides, we know from Burns's poetry what was then the character of the people of Scotland, for they were its materials, its staple. Her peasantry were a noble race, and their virtues moralized his song. The inhabitants of the towns were of the same family-the same blood-one kindred-and many, most of them, had been born, or in some measure bred, in the country. Their ways of thinking, feeling, and acting were much alike; and the shopkeepers of Edinburgh and Glasgow were as proud of Robert Burns, as the ploughmen and shepherds of Kyle and the Stewartry. He saw in them friends and brothers.

Their admiration of him was, perhaps, fully more sincere and heartfelt, nor accompanied with less understanding of his merits, than that of persons in higher places; and most assuredly among the respectable citizens of Edinburgh Burns found more lasting friends than he ever did among her gentry and noblesse. Nor can we doubt, that then as now, there were in that order great numbers of men of well cultivated minds, whom Burns, in his best hours, did right to honor, and who were perfectly entitled to seek his society, and to open their hospitable doors to the brilliant stranger. That Burns, whose sympathies were keen and wide, and who never dreamt of looking down on others as beneath him, merely because he was conscious of his own vast superiority to the common run of men, should have shunned or been shy of such society, would have been something altogether unnatural and incredible; nor is it at all wonderful or blameable that he should occasionally even have much preferred such society to that which has been called "more select," and therefore above his natural and proper condition. Admirably as he in general behaved in the higher circles, in those humbler ones alone could he have felt himself completely at home. His demeanor among the rich, the great, the learned, or the wise, must often have been subject to some little restraint, and all restraint of that sort is ever painful; or, what is worse still, his talk must sometimes have partaken of display. With companions and friends, who claimed no superiority in anything, the sensitive mind of Burns must have been at its best and happiest, because completely at its ease, and free movement given to the play of all its feelings and faculties; and in such companies we cannot but believe that his wonderful conversational powers shone forth in their most various splendor. He must have given vent there to a thousand familiar fancies, in all their freedom and all their force, which, in the fastidious society of high life, his imagination must have been too much fettered even to conceive; and which, had they flowed from his lips, would either not have been understood, or would have given offence to that delicacy of breeding which is often hurt even by the best manners of those whose manners are all of nature's teaching, and unsubjected to the salutary restraints of artificial life. Indeed, we know