Yet nature's charms, the hills and woods,
The sweeping vales, and foaming floods,
Are free alike to all.

In days when daisies deck the ground,
And blackbirds whistle clear,
With honest joy our hearts will bound
To see the coming year :

On braes when we please, then,
We'll sit an' sowth a tune;
Syne rhyme till't, we'll time till't,
And sing't when we hae dune.

It's no in titles nor in rank;
It's no in wealth like Lon'on bank,
To purchase peace and rest;
It's no in makin muckle mair;
It's no in books, it's no in lear,
To mak us truly blest;
If happiness hae not her seat
And centre in the breast,
We may be wise, or rich, or great,
But never can be blest;

Nae treasures, nor pleasures,
Could make us happy lang;
The heart aye's the part aye

That makes us right or wrang."

Through all these Epistles we hear him exulting in the consciousness of his own genius, and pouring out his anticipations in verses so full of force and fire, that of themselves they privilege him to declare himself a Poet after Scotland's own heart. Not even in "The Vision" does he kindle into brighter transports, when foreseeing his fame, and describing the fields of its glory, than in his Epistle to the schoolmaster of Ochiltree; for all his life he associated with schoolmasters -finding along with knowledge, talent, and integrity, originality and strength of character prevalent in that meritorious and ill-rewarded class of men. What can be finer than this?

"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
But boils up in a spring-tide flood!
Oft have our fearless fathers strode
By Wallace' side,

Still pressing onward, red-wat shod,
Or glorious died!

Oh, sweet are Coila's haughs and woods,
When lintwhites chaunt amang the buds,
And jinkin hares, in amorous whids,
Their loves enjoy,

While thro' the braes the cushat croods
Wi' wailfu' cry!

Ev'n winter bleak has charms for me
When winds rave through the naked tree;
Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree

Are hoary grey;

Or blinding drifts wild-furious flee,
Dark'ning the day.

O Nature! a' thy shows and forms
To feeling. pensive hearts hae charms!
Whether the simmer kindly warms
Wi' life an' light,

Or winter howls, in gusty storms,
The lang, dark night!

The Muse, nae poet ever fand her,
Till by himsel' he learn'd to wander,
Adown some trotting burn's meander,
An' no think lang;

Or sweet to stray, and pensive ponder
A heart-felt sang!"

It has been thoughtlessly said that Burns had no very deep love of nature, and that he has shown no very great power as a descriptive poet. The few lines quoted suffice to set aside that assertion; but it is true that his love of nature was always linked with some vehement passion, or some sweet affection for living creatures, and that it was for the sake of the humanity she cherishes in her bosom, that she was dear to him as his own life-blood. His love of nature by being thus restricted was the more intense. Yet there are not wanting passages that show how exquisite was his perception of her

beauties even when unassociated with any definite emotion, and inspiring only that pleasure which we imbibe through the senses into our unthinking souls.

"Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays,

As through the glen it wimpl't;
Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays ;
Whyles in a wiel it dimpl't;
Whyles glittered to the nightly rays,
Wi' bickering, dancing dazzle ;
Whyles cookit underneath the braes,
Below the spreading hazel,
Unseen that night."

Such pretty passages of pure description are rare, and the charm of this one depends on its sudden sweet intrusion into the very midst of a scene of noisy merriment. But there are many passages in which the descriptive power is put forth under the influence of emotion so gentle that they come within that kind of composition in which it has been thought Burns does not excel. As for example,

"Nae mair the flower on field or meadow springs;

Nae mair the grove with airy concert rings,
Except perhaps the Robin's whistling glee,
Proud o' the height o' some bit half-lang tree :

The hoary morns precede the sunny days,

Mild, calm, serene, wide spreads the noon-tide blaze,

While thick the gossamour waves wanton in the rays."

Seldom setting himself to describe visual objects but when he is under strong emotion, he seems to have taken considerable pains when he did, to produce something striking; and though he never fails on such occasions to do so, yet he is sometimes ambitious overmuch, and, though never feeble, becomes bombastic, as in his lines on the Fall of Fyers:

"And viewless echo's ear astonished rends."

In the "Brigs of Ayr" there is one beautiful, and one magnifipassage of this kind.

cent

"All before their sight,
A fairy train appear'd in order bright:

Adown the glittering stream they featly danced;
Bright to the moon their various dresses glanced :

They footed o'er the wat'ry glass so neat,
The infant ice scarce bent beneath their feet :
While arts of Minstrelsy among them rung,

And soul-ennobling Bards heroic ditties sung."

He then breaks off in celebration of "M'Lauchlan, thairminspiring sage," that is, "a well-known performer of Scottish music on the violin," and returns, at his leisure, to the fairies!

The other passage which we have called magnificent is a description of a spate. But in it, it is true, he personates the Auld Brig, and is inspired by wrath and contempt of the New. "Conceited gowk! puff'd up wi' windy pride!

This mony a year I've stood the flood and tide;
And though wi' crazy eild I'm sair forfairn,
I'll be a Brig when ye're a shapeless cairn!
As yet ye little ken about the matter,
But twa-three winters will inform you better,
When heavy, dark, continued, a'-day rains,
Wi' deepening deluges o'erflow the plains;
When from the hills where springs the brawling Coil,
Or stately Lugar's mossy fountains boil,

Or where the Greenock winds his moorland course,
Or haunted Garpal draws his feeble source,
Aroused by blust'ring winds and spotting thowes,
In mony a torrent down his sna-broo rowes;
While crashing ice, borne on the roaring spate,
Sweeps dams and mills, and brigs, a' to the gate;
And from Glenbuck, down to the Ratton-key,
Auld Ayr is just one lengthen'd, tumbling sea;
Then down ye'll hurl, deil nor ye never rise!

And dash the gumlie jaups up to the pouring skies."

Perhaps we have dwelt too long on this point; but the truth is that Burns would have utterly despised most of what is now dignified with the name of poetry, where harmlessly enough

"Pure description takes the place of sense;"

but far worse, where the agonising artist intensifies himself into genuine convulsions at the shrine of nature, or acts the epileptic to extort alms. The world is beginning to lose patience with such idolators, and insists on being allowed to see the sun set with her own eyes, and with her own ears to hear the sea. Why, there is often more poetry in five lines of

Burns than any fifty volumes of the versifiers who have had the audacity to criticise him-as by way of specimen,—

"When biting Boreas, fell and dour,

Sharp shivers through the leafless bow'r ;
When Phoebus gies a short-lived glow'r
Far south the lift,

Dim-dark'ning through the flaky show'r
Or whirling drift:

Ae night the storm the steeples rock'd,
Poor labour sweet in sleep was lock'd,
While burns, wi' snawy wreaths up-chok'd,
Wild-eddying swirl,

Or through the mining outlet bock'd,
Down headlong hurl."

"Halloween" is now almost an obsolete word-and the liveliest of all festivals, that used to usher in the winter with one long night of mirthful mockery of superstitious fancies, not unattended with stirrings of imaginative fears in many a simple breast, is gone with many other customs of the good old time, not among town-folks only, but dwellers in rural parishes far withdrawn from the hum of crowds, where all such rites originate and latest fall into desuetude. The present wise generation of youngsters can care little or nothing about a poem which used to drive their grandfathers and grandmothers half-mad with merriment when boys and girls, gathered in a circle round some choice reciter, who, though perhaps endowed with no great memory for grammar, had half of Burns by heart. Many of them, doubtless, are of opinion that it is a silly affair. So must think the more aged marchof-mind men who have outgrown the whims and follies of their ill-educated youth, and become instructors in all manner of wisdom. In practice extinct to elderly people it survives in poetry; and there the body of the harmless superstition, in its very form and pressure, is embalmed. "Halloween was thought, surely you all know that, to be a night "when witches, devils, and other mischief-making beings, are all abroad on their baneful midnight errands; particularly those aerial people the fairies are said on that night to hold a grand anniversary." So writes Burns in a note; but in the poem evil spirits are disarmed of all their terrors, and fear is