Burns's letters, however, are valuable as memorials of his temperament and genius. He was often distinct, forcible, and happy in expression-rich in sallies of imagination and poetical feeling-at times deeply pathetic and impressive. He lifts the veil from the miseries of his latter days with a hand struggling betwixt pride and a broken spirit. His autobiography, addressed to Dr Moore, written when his mind was salient and vigorous, is as remarkable for its literary talent as for its modest independence and clear judgment; and the letters to Mrs Dunlop (in whom he had entire confidence, and whose ladylike manners and high principle rebuked his wilder spirit) are all characterised by sincerity and elegance. One beautiful letter to this lady we are tempted to copy: it is poetical in the highest degree, and touches with exquisite taste on the mysterious union between external nature and the sympathies and emotions of the human frame: 'ELLISLAND, New-Year-Day Morning, 1789. This, dear madam, is a morning of wishes, and would to God that I came under the apostle James's description!-the prayer of a righteous man availeth much. In that case, madam, you should welcome in a year full of blessings: everything that obstructs or disturbs tranquillity and self enjoyment should be removed, and every pleasure that frail humanity can taste should be yours. I own myself so little a Presbyterian, that I approve of set times and seasons of more than ordinary acts of devotion, for breaking in on that habituated routine of life and thought which is so apt to reduce our existence to a kind of instinct, or even sometimes, and with some minds, to a state very little better than mere machinery. This day, the first Sunday of May, a breezy, blue-skied noon some time about the beginning, and a hoary morning and calm sunny day about the end of autumn; these, time out of mind, have been with me a kind of holiday. I believe I owe this to that glorious paper in the charming person, and delightful in conversation, but expressed himself so as to appear to her to mean that she was fond of speaking: to which the Gallic dame indignantly replied, that it was quite as common for poets to be impertinent as for women to be loquacious.' The friend who introduced Burns on this occasion (and who herself related the anecdote to Mr Campbell) was Miss Margaret Chalmers, afterwards Mrs Lewis Hay, who died in 1843. The wonder is, that the dissipated aristocracy of the Caledonian Hunt, and the buckish tradesmen of Edinburgh,' left any part of the original plainness and simplicity of his manners. Yet his learned friends saw no change in the proud self-sustained and self-measuring poet. He kept his ground, and he asked no more. A somewhat clearer knowledge of men's affairs, scarcely of their charac ters,' says the quaint but true and searching Thomas Carlyle, 'this winter in Edinburgh did afford him; but a sharper feel ing of Fortune's unequal arrangements in their social destiny it also left with him. He had seen the gay and gorgeous arena, in which the powerful are born to play their parts; nay, had himself stood in the midst of it; and he felt more bitterly than ever that here he was but a looker-on, and had no part or lot in that splendid game. From this time a jealous indignant fear of social degradation takes possession of him; and perverts, so far as aught could pervert, his private contentment, and his feelings towards his richer fellows. It was clear to Burns that he had talent enough to make a fortune, or a hundred fortunes, could he but have rightly willed this. It was clear also that he willed something far different, and therefore could not make one. Unhappy it was that he had not power to choose the one and reject the other, but must halt for ever between two opinions, two objects; making hampered advancement towards either. But so it is with many men: "we long for the merchandise, yet would fain keep the price;" and so stand chaffering with Fate, in vexatious altercation, till the night come, and our fair is over!' Spectator-the Vision of Mirza-a piece that struck my young fancy before I was capable of fixing an idea to a word of three syllables: "On the 5th day of the moon, which, according to the custom of my forefathers, I always keep holy, after having washed myself, and offered up my morning devotions, I ascended the high hill of Bagdat, in order to pass the rest of the day in meditation and prayer.” We know nothing, or next to nothing, of the substance or structure of our souls, so cannot account for those seeming caprices in them, that one should be particularly pleased with this thing, or struck with that, which, on minds of a different cast, makes no extraordinary impression. I have some favourite flowers in spring, among which are the mountain-daisy, the harebell, the foxglove, the wild-brier rose, the budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight. I never hear the loud, solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of gray plovers in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the Eolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own myself partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities-a God that made all things—man's immaterial and immortal nature, and a world of weal or wo beyond death and the grave.' To the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, Burns seems to have clung with fond tenacity: it survived the wreck or confusion of his early impressions, and formed the strongest and most soothing of his beliefs. In other respects his creed was chiefly practical. Whatever mitigates the woes, or increases the happiness of others,' he says, this is my criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at large, or any individual in it, this is my reason of iniquity.' The same feeling he had expressed in one of his early poems But deep this truth impressed my mind, The heart benevolent and kind The most resembles God. Conjectures have been idly formed as to the probable effect which education would have had on the mind of Burns. We may as well speculate on the change which might be wrought by the engineer, the planter, and agriculturist, in assimilating the wild scenery of Scotland to that of England. Who would wish (if it were possible), by successive graftings, to make the birch or the pine approximate to the oak or the elm? Nature is various in all her works, and has diversified genius as much as she has done In Burns we have a genuine her plants and trees. Scottish poet: why should we wish to mar the beautiful order and variety of nature by making him a Dryden or a Gray? Education could not have improved Burns's songs, his Tam o' Shanter, or any other of his great poems. He would never have written them but for his situation and feelings as a peasant and could he have written anything better? The whole of that world of passion and beauty which he has laid open to us might have been hid for ever; and the genius which was so well and worthily employed in embellishing rustic life, and adding new interest and glory to his country, would only have swelled the long procession of English poets, stript of his originality, and bearing, though proudly, the ensign of conquest and submission. [From Burns's Epistles.] We'll sing auld Coila's plains and fells, Her moors red-brown wi' heather bells, Her banks and braes, her dens and dells, Where glorious Wallace Aft bure the gree, as story tells, Frae southron billies. At Wallace' name what Scottish blood Still pressing onward, red-wat shod, Oh sweet are Coila's haughs and woods, While through the braes the cushat croods With wailfu' cry! Even winter bleak has charms to me When winds rave through the naked tree; Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree Are hoary gray: Or blinding drifts wild furious flee, Oh nature! a' thy shows and forms Or winter howls in gusty storms The Muse, nae poet ever fand her, Oh sweet, to stray and pensive ponder Then farewell hopes o' laurel-boughs, And teach the lanely heights and howes I'll wander on, with tentless heed I'll lay me with the inglorious dead, But why o' death begin a tale? And large before enjoyment's gale, This life, sae far's I understand, Where pleasure is the magic wand, Maks hours like minutes, hand in hand, The magic wand then let us wield; For, ance that five-and-forty's speeled, See, crazy, weary, joyless eild, Wi' wrinkled face, Comes hostin', hirplin' owre the field, Wi' creepin' pace. When ance life's day draws near the gloamin', And fareweel dear, deluding woman! Oh Life! how pleasant in thy morning, Like schoolboys, at the expected warning, We wander there, we wander here, And though the puny wound appear, To a Mountain Daisy, On turning one down with the plough in April 1786. To spare thee now is past my power, Alas! it's no thy neibor sweet, When upward-springing, blithe, to greet Cauld blew the bitter-biting north Scarce reared above the parent earth The flaunting flowers our gardens yield, There in thy scanty mantle clad, Such is the fate of artless maid, Such is the fate of simple bard, Of prudent lore, Such fate to suffering worth is given, Even thou who mourn'st the daisy's fate, That fate is thine-no distant date; Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate, Full on thy bloom, Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight, Shall be thy doom. On Captain Matthew Henderson. A gentleman who held the patent for his honours immediately from Almighty God. 'Should the poor be flattered?'-Shakspeare. But now his radiant course is run, Oh Death! thou tyrant fell and bloody! And like stock-fish come o'er his studdie He's gane! he's gane! he's frae us torn, Where, haply, Pity strays forlorn, Ye hills, near neibors o' the starns, Where echo slumbers! Come join, ye Nature's sturdiest bairns, Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens! Or foaming strang, wi' hasty stens, Mourn, little harebells o'er the lea; In scented bowers; Ye roses on your thorny tree, At dawn, when every grassy blade Ye maukins whiddin through the glade, Mourn, ye wee songsters o' the wood; Ye whistling plover; Mourn, sooty coots, and speckled teals, Mourn, clamering craiks at close o' day, Frae our cauld shore, Tell thae far worlds wha lies in clay 1 Eagles. Ye houlets, frae your ivy bower, Wail through the dreary midnight hour Oh, rivers, forests, hills, and plains! And frae my een the drapping rains Mourn, spring, thou darling of the year, Thy gay, green, flowery tresses shear Thou, autumn, wi' thy yellow hair, Wide o'er the naked world declare The worth we've lost! Mourn him, thou sun, great source of light! For through your orb he's ta'en his flight, Oh, Henderson! the man-the brother! Like thee, where shall we find another, Go to your sculptured tombs, ye great, [Songs.] Macpherson's Farewell. Farewell, ye dungeons dark and strong, Macpherson's time will not be long On yonder gallows-tree. Sae rantingly, sae wantonly, Sae dauntingly gaed he; He played a spring, and danced it round, Oh, what is death but parting breath! On many a bloody plain I've dared his face, and in this place Untie these bands from off my hands, I've lived a life of sturt and strife; I die by treacherie; It burns my heart I must depart And not avenged be. Now farewell light-thou sunshine bright, May coward shame distain his name, Menie. Again rejoicing nature sees Her robe assume its vernal hues, Her leafy locks wave in the breeze, All freshly steeped in morning dews. In vain to me the cowslips blaw, In vain to me the violets spring; In vain to me, in glen or shaw, The mavis and the lintwhite sing. The merry ploughboy cheers his team, Wi' joy the tentie seedsman stalks; But life to me's a weary dream, A dream of ane that never wauks. The wanton coot the water skims, Amang the reeds the ducklings cry, The stately swan majestic swims, And everything is blessed but I. The shepherd steeks his faulding slap, And owre the moorland whistles shrill; Wi' wild, unequal, wandering step, I meet him on the dewy hill. And when the lark, 'tween light and dark, Ae Fond Kiss. [These exquisitely affecting stanzas contain the essence of a thousand love tales.'-Scott.] Ae fond kiss, and then we sever; Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee, Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest! Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee, Go fetch to me a pint o' wine, And fill it in a silver tassie; A service to my bonnie lassie; Fu' loud the wind blaws frae the Ferry; And I maun leave my bonnie Mary. The battle closes thick and bloody; But it's not the roar o' sea or shore Wad make me langer wish to tarry; Nor shouts o' war that's heard afarIt's leaving thee, my bonnie Mary. Mary Morison. ['One of my juvenile works.'-Burns. Of all the productions of Burns, the pathetic and serious love songs which he has left behind him in the manner of old ballads, are perhaps those which take the deepest and most lasting hold of the mind. Such are the lines of Mary Morison, &c.'-Hazlitt] Oh Mary, at thy window be, It is the wished, the trysted hour! I sat, but neither heard nor saw. I sighed, and said amang them a', Oh Mary, canst thou wreck his peace, Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, Or to victory! Now's the day, and now's the hour; See the front o' battle lour; See approach proud Edward's power- Wha will be a traitor knave? By oppression's woes and pains! ALEXANDER WILSON. ALEXANDER WILSON, a distinguished naturalist, was also a good Scottish poet. He was a native of Paisley, and born July 6, 1766. He was brought up to the trade of a weaver, but afterwards preferred that of a pedlar, selling muslin and other wares. In 1789 he added to his other commodities a prospectus of a volume of poems, trusting, as he said, If the pedlar should fail to be favoured with sale, Then I hope you'll encourage the poet. He did not succeed in either character; and after publishing his poems he returned to the loom. In 1792 he issued anonymously his best poem, Watty and Meg, which was at first attributed to Burns. A foolish personal satire, and a not very wise admiration of the principles of equality disseminated at the time of the French Revolution, drove Wilson to America in the year 1794. There he was once more a weaver and a pedlar, and afterwards a schoolmaster. A love of ornithology gained upon him, and he wandered over America, collecting specimens of birds. In 1808 appeared his first volume of the American Ornithology, and he continued collecting and publishing, traversing swamps and forests in quest of rare birds, and undergoing the greatest privations and fatigues, till he had committed an eighth volume to the press. He sank under his severe labours on the 23d of August 1813, and was interred with public honours at Philadelphia. In the Ornithology of Wilson we see the fancy and descriptive powers of the poet. The following extract is part of his account of the bald eagle, and is extremely vivid and striking: of wing, and sudden suspension in air, he knows him to be the fish-hawk, settling over some devoted victim of the deep. His eye kindles at the sight, and balancing himself with half-opened wings on the branch, he watches the result. Down, rapid as an arrow from heaven, descends the distant object of his attention, the roar of its wings reaching the ear as it disappears in the deep, making the surges foam around. At this moment the eager looks of the eagle are all ardour; and, levelling his neck for flight, he sees the fish-hawk once more emerge, struggling with his prey, and mounting in the air with screams of exultation. These are the signal for our hero, who, launching into the air, instantly gives chase, and soon gains on the fish-hawk; each exerts his utmost to mount above the other, displaying in these rencontres the most elegant and sublime aerial evolutions. The unencumbered eagle rapidly advances, and is just on the point of reaching his opponent, when, with a sudden scream, probably of despair and honest execration, the latter drops his fish: the eagle, poising himself for a moment, as if to take a more certain aim, descends like a whirlwind, snatches it in his grasp ere it reaches the water, and bears his ill-gotten booty silently away to the woods.' By way of preface, to invoke the clemency of the reader,' Wilson relates the following exquisite trait of simplicity and nature: The celebrated cataract of Niagara is a noted place of resort for the bald eagle, as well on account of the fish procured there, as for the numerous carcases of squirrels, deer, bears, and various other animals, that, in their attempts to cross the river above the falls, have been dragged into the current, In one of my late visits to a friend in the counand precipitated down that tremendous gulf, where, try, I found their youngest son, a fine boy of eight among the rocks that bound the rapids below, they or nine years of age, who usually resides in town furnish a rich repast for the vulture, the raven, and for his education, just returning from a ramble the bald eagle, the subject of the present account. through the neighbouring woods and fields, where He has been long known to naturalists, being com- he had collected a large and very handsome bunch mon to both continents, and occasionally met with of wild flowers, of a great many different colours; from a very high northern latitude to the borders and, presenting them to his mother, said, “Look, of the torrid zone, but chiefly in the vicinity of the my dear mamma, what beautiful flowers I have sea, and along the shores and cliffs of our lakes and found growing on our place! Why, all the woods large rivers. Formed by nature for braving the are full of them! red, orange, and blue, and 'most severest cold, feeding equally on the produce of the every colour. Oh! I can gather you a whole parcel sea and of the land, possessing powers of flight of them, much handsomer than these, all growing capable of outstripping even the tempests them-in our own woods! Shall I, mamma? selves, unawed by anything but man, and, from the ethereal heights to which he soars, locking abroad at one glance on an immeasurable expanse of forests, fields, lakes, and ocean deep below him, he appears indifferent to the little localities of change of seasons, as in a few minutes he can pass from summer to winter, from the lower to the higher regions of the atmosphere, the abode of eternal cold, and from thence descend at will to the torrid or the arctic regions of the earth. He is, therefore, found at all seasons in the countries he inhabits; but prefers such places as have been mentioned above, from the great partiality he has for fish. In procuring these, he displays, in a very singular manner, the genius and energy of his character, which is fierce, contemplative, daring, and tyrannical; attributes not exerted but on particular occasions, but when put forth, overpowering all opposition. Elevated on the high dead limb of some gigantic tree that commands a wide view of the neighbouring shore and ocean, he seems calmly to contemplate the motions of the various feathered tribes that pursue their busy avocations below; the snow-white gulls slowly winnowing the air; the busy tringæ coursing along the sands; trains of ducks streaming over the surface; silent and watchful cranes intent and wading; clamorous crows; and all the winged multitudes that subsist by the bounty of this vast liquid magazine of nature. High over all these hovers one whose action instantly arrests his whole attention. By his wide curvature Shall I go and bring you more?" The good woman received the bunch of flowers with a smile of affectionate complacency; and, after admiring for some time the beautiful simplicity of nature, gave her willing consent, and the little fellow went off on the wings of ecstacy to execute his delightful commission. The similarity of this little boy's enthusiasm to my own struck me, and the reader will need no explanations of mine to make the application. Should my country receive with the same gracious indulgence the specimens which I here humbly present her; should she express a desire for me to go and bring her more, the highest wishes of my ambition will be gratified; for, in the language of my little friend, our whole woods are full of them, and I can collect hundreds more, much handsomer than these.' The ambition of the poet-naturalist was amply gratified. [A Village Scold surprising her Husband in an I' the thrang o' stories tellin, Maggy's weel-kent tongue and hurry |