Burns, like Wordsworth, felt love and sympathy, not only with all the animal, but even with the vegetable world of life. The man who hath not kindness and pity in his soul for the inferior animals, is fit for worse than "treason, stratagems and spoils." Beware of him! Our space forbids us to dilate upon the Cotter's Saturday Night, which is a whole that will not bear the mutilation of an analysis; and we can only finally advert to one other important passage of his life in Coila— his acquaintance with bonnie Jean, of whom we first hear in that little bit of gossip "BONNIE JEAN." In MAUCHLINE there dwells six proper young belles, Miss Miller is fine, Miss Markland's divine, In the fine specimen of the poetical epistle, addressed to David Sillar, we have a more affectionate remembrance of this friend and comfort of his latter days : DAVID SILLAR. There's a' the pleasure o' the heart, Ye hae your Meg, your dearest part, It warms me, it charms me, To mention but her name: It heats me, it beets me, And sets me a' on flame. O all ye pow'rs, who rule above! When heart-corroding care and grief Her dear idea brings relief, O hear my fervent pray'r! All hail, ye tender feelings dear! Long since this world's thorny ways Had it not been for you! Fate still has blest me with a friend, And oft a more endearing band, A tie more tender still. It lightens, it brightens, The tenebrific scene, To meet with, and greet with My Davie or my Jean. 47 He who could thus from the heart (for is it not from the heart?) speak of the pure pleasures of a sincere and mutual friendship, and an everduring domestic love, mutually cheering, mutually excusing, through weal and through wo, through good report and evil report, was emphatically a man whose heart was full to overflowing with the milk of generous human kindness and the aspirations of tenderest feeling. The spirit, at least, was indeed willing. The name of Bonnie Jean is as an ever-verdant oasis in the moral desert of the life of Burns. It is a question whether he could have made a happier union with the passionate object of his early choice. It was the friendship and enduring forbearance of such a patient and reverent soul as that of Jean Armour, that was wanted to pour oil upon the raging billows of his soul, and soothe his vexed spirit to occasional forgetfulness of Christian Scotland's unchristian contumely of her greatest and noblest son. Jean, like Highland Mary, was in the service of Burns's kind friend, Mr. Gawin Hamilton, during much of the period of his anxious courtship for her livelong acquaintance. But we shall not here dwell upon the melancholy and harassing circumstances connected with this passion in its earliest stages, during which his heart was filled with such gloomy thoughts as these:— Oppress'd with grief, oppress'd with care, A burden more than I can bear, I set me down and sigh; DAVID SILLAR. Dim backward as I cast my view, What sorrows yet may pierce me thro', Too justly I may fear. Still caring, despairing, Must be my bitter doom; My woes here shall close ne'er But with the closing tomb. 49 Let us rather rest upon the green spot in his history -HER endearing love and friendship. E CONCLUSION. We feel that our task is but half completed. We have, without due method it may be, but with an humble faith in the greatness of this truly great spirit, called up, as they were suggested to us by the windings of the banks of his favourite rivers, some of the loves and the sorrows, and the outpourings of the soul of Robert Burns. We have but indicated the treasures of his mind: and sought pleasantly to identify some few of the more conspicuous localities of his inspiration and the more prominent features of his history. But the theme is a boundless one and not compatible with the limits of a tiny handbook. In this, however, we trust we may have succeeded in beguiling the gentle traveller over those regions into a living sympathy with the "genius loci," and into a generous commiseration of the errors as well as of the misfortunes of Robert Burns. For true it is, that, if the poet exhibited the one extreme fault of genius, defying the warnings of sober practical wisdom, his native country was guilty of the other extreme error of a cold, calculating, unforgiving disregard of the worldly interests of one whose genius honored and dignified her. How different was the sentiment which actuated him in his dealings with all who possessed any claim upon his gratitude; as where he writes to an early friend: |