cayed, and the right hand holding the bonnet is somewhat so too. At his feet lies what I suppose was the slab of his former tomb, with this inscription: "In memory of Robert Burns, who died the 21st of July, 1796, in the 37th year of his age. And Maxwell Burns, who died the 25th of April, 1799, aged 2 years and 9 months. Francis Wallace Burns, who died the 9th of June, 1808, aged 14 years. His sons. The remains of Burns received into the vault below, 19th of September, 1815. And his two sons. Also, the remains of Jean Armour, relict of the Poet, born Feb., 1765, died 26th of March, 1834."

The long Latin inscription mentioned by his biographers, a manifest absurdity on the tomb of a man like Burns, and whose epitaph ought to be intelligible to all his countrymen, is, I suppose, removed, for I did not observe it, and the above English inscription, of the elegance of which, however, nothing can be said, substituted.

The gates of the mausoleum itself are kept locked, and the monument again inclosed within a plain railing.

Some countrymen were just standing at the gate, with their plaids on their shoulders, making their observations as I arrived at it. I stood and listened to them.

1st Man. "Ay, there stands Robin, still holding the plow, but the worst of it is, he has got no horses to it." 2d Man. "Ay, that is childish. It is just like a boy on a Sunday, who sets himself to the plow, and fancies he is plowing when it never moves. It would have been a deal better if you could have seen even the horses' tails."

3d Man. "Ay, or if he had been sitting on his plow, as I have seen him sometimes in a picture."

1st Man. "But Coila is well drawn, is not she? That arm which she holds up the mantle with is very well executed."

2d Man. "It's a pity, though, that the sculptor did not look at his own coat before he put the only button on that is to be seen."

3d Man. "Why, where is the button?"

2d Man. "Just under the bonnet; and it's on the wrong side."

1st Man. "Oh! it does not signify if it be a doublebreasted coat; or perhaps Robin buttoned his coat different to other folks, for he was an unco' chiel."

2d Man. "But it's only single-breasted, and it is quite wrong."

The men unbuttoned and then buttoned their coats up again to satisfy themselves, and they decided that it was a great blunder.

I thought there was much sound sense in their criticism. The allegorical figure of the muse seems too much, and the absence of the horses too little. Burns would have looked quite as well standing at the plow, and looking up inspired by the muse without her being visible.

The plow rests on a rugged piece of marble, laid on a polished basement, in the center of which is inscribed, in large letters,

BURNS.

I had to regret missing at Dumfries the three sons of Burns, and the stanch friend of the family, and of the genius of the poet, Mr. M'Diarmid. Mr. Robert Burns, the poet's eldest son, resides at Dumfries, but was then absent at Belfast, in Ireland, where I afterward saw him, and was much struck with his intelligence and great information. Colonel and Major Burns had just visited Dumfries, but were gone into the Highlands with their friend, Mr. M'Diarmid. The feelings with which I quitted Dumfries were those which so often weigh upon you in contemplating the closing scenes of poets' lives. "The life of the poet at Dumfries," says Robert Chambers, "was an unhappy one; his situation was degrading, and his income narrow." Reflecting on this as I proceeded by the mail toward Moffat, the melancholy lines of Wordsworth recurred to me with peculiar effect:

"My former thoughts returned; the fear that kills; And hope that is unwilling to be fed;

Cold, pain, and labor, and all fleshly ills;

And mighty poets in their misery dead."
T 2

THERE is scarcely any ground in England so well known in imagination as the haunts of Cowper at Olney and Weston; there is little that is so interesting to the lover of moral and religious poetry. There the beautiful but unhappy poet seemed to have created a new world out of unknown ground, in which himself and his friends, the Unwins, Lady Austen and Lady Hesketh, the Throckmortons, and the rest, played a part of the simplest and most natural character, and which fascinated the whole public mind. The life, the spirit, and the poetry of Cowper present, when taken together, a most singular combination. He was timid in his habit, yet bold in his writing; melancholy in the tone of his mind, but full of fun and playfulness in his correspondence; wretched to an extraordinary degree, he yet made the whole nation merry with his John Gilpin and other humorous writings; despairing even of God's mercy and of salvation, his religious poetry is of the most cheerful and even triumphantly glad kind;

"His soul exults, hope animates his lays,
The sense of mercy kindles into praise."

Filled with this joyous assurance, wherever he turns his eye on the magnificent spectacle of creation, he finds themes of noblest gratulation. He looks into the heavens, and exclaims:

"Tell me, ye shining host,
That navigate a sea that knows no storm,
Beneath a vault unsullied with a cloud,
If from your elevation, whence ye view
Distinctly scenes invisible to man,

And systems, of whose birth no tidings yet
Have reached this nether world, ye spy a race
Favored as ours, transgressors from the womb,
And hastening to a grave, yet doomed to rise,
And to possess a brighter heaven than yours?
As one who, long detained on foreign shores,
Pants to return, and when he sees afar
His country's weather-bleached and battered rocks
From the green wave emerging, darts an eye
Radiant with joy toward the happy land;
So I with animated hopes behold,

And many an aching wish, your beamy fires,
That show like beacons in the blue abyss,
Ordained to guide the embodied spirit home
From toilsome life to never-ending rest.
Love kindles as I gaze. I feel desires,
That give assurance of their own success,

And that, infused from heaven, must thither tend.
The Task, Book v.

Such is the buoyant and cordial tone of Cowper's poetry; how unlike that iron deadness that dared not and could not soften into prayer, which so often and so long oppressed him. Nay, it is not for himself that he rejoices only, but he feels in his glowing heart the gladness and the coming glory of the whole universe.

"All creatures worship man, and all mankind

One Lord, one Father. Error has no place;

That creeping pestilence is driven away;

The breath of Heaven has chased it. In the heart

No passion touches a discordant string,

But all is harmony and love. Disease