suscitation of drowned hope, when they are both suffused with affection, when tones are as tender as tears, yet can better hide the pity that ever and anon will be gushing from the lids of grief. He expressed deep contrition for having been betrayed by his inferior nature and vicious sympathy with the dissolute, into impurities in verse, which he knew were floating about among people of loose lives, and might on his death be collected to the hurt of his moral character. Never had Burns been "hired minstrel of voluptuous blandishment," nor by such unguarded freedom of speech had he ever sought to corrupt; but emulating the ribald wit and coarse humor of some of the worst old ballants current among the lower orders of the people, of whom the moral and religious are often tolerant of indecencies to a strange degree, he felt that he had sinned against his genius. A miscreant, aware of his poverty, had made him an offer of fifty pounds for a collection, which he repelled with the horror of remorse. Such things can hardly be said to have existence; the polluted perishes, or shovelled aside from the socialities of mirthful men, are nearly obsolete, except among those whose thoughtlessness is so great as to be sinful, among whom the distinction ceases between the weak and the wicked. From such painful thoughts he turned to his poetry, that had every year been becoming dearer and dearer to the people, and he had comfort in the assurance that it was pure and good; and he wished to live a little longer that he might mend his Songs, for through them he felt he would survive in the hearts of the dwellers in cottage-homes all over Scotland; and in the fond imagination of his heart Scotland to him was all the world.

"He spoke of his death without any of the ostentation of philosophy," and perhaps without any reference to religion; for dying men often keep their profoundest thoughts to themselves, except in the chamber in which they believe they are about to have the last look of the objects of their earthly love, and there they give them utterance in a few words of hope and trust. While yet walking about in the open air, and visiting their friends, they continue to converse about the things of this life in language so full of animation, that you might think, but for something about their eyes, that they are unconscious of their doom;

and so at times they are; for the customary pleasure of social intercourse does not desert them; the sight of others well and happy beguiles them of the mournful knowledge that their own term has nearly expired, and in that oblivion they are cheerful as the persons seem to be who for their sakes assume a smiling aspect in spite of struggling tears. So was it with Burns at the Brow. But he had his Bible with him in his lodgings, and he read it almost continually—often when seated on a bank, from which he had difficulty in rising without assistance, for his weakness was extreme, and in his emaciation he was like a ghost. The fire of his eye was not dimmed-indeed fever had lighted it up beyond even its natural brightness; and though his voice, once so various, was now hollow, his discourse was still that of a Poet. To the last he loved the sunshine, the grass, and the flowers; to the last he had a kind look and word for the passers-by, who all knew it was Burns. Laboring men, on their way from work, would step aside to the two or three houses called the Brow, to know if there was any hope of his life; and it is not to be doubted that devout people remembered him, who had written the Cottar's Saturday Night, in their prayers. His sceptical doubts no longer troubled him; they had never been more than shadows; and he had at last the faith of a confiding Christian. We are not even to suppose that his heart was always disquieted within him because of the helpless condition of his widow and orphans. That must have been indeed with him a dismal day on which he wrote three letters about them so full of anguish; but to give vent to grief in passionate outcries usually assuages it, and tranquillity sometimes steals upon despair. His belief that he was so sunk in debt was a delusion-not of delirium, but of the fear that is in love. And comfort must have come to him in the conviction that his country would not suffer the family of her Poet to be in want. As long as he had health they were happy, though poor; as long as he was alive, they were not utterly destitute. That on his death they would be paupers, was a dread that could have had no abiding place in a heart that knew how it had beat for Scotland, and in the power of genius had poured out all its love on her fields and her people. His heart was pierced with the same wounds that extort lamen

tations from the death-beds of ordinary men, thinking of what will become of wife and children; but like the pouring of oil upon them by some gracious hand, must have been the frequent recurrence of the belief-" On my death people will pity them, and care for them for my name's sake." Some little matter of money he knew he should leave behind him-the two hundred pounds he had lent to his brother; and it sorely grieved him to think that Gilbert might be ruined by having to return it. What brotherly affection was there! They had not met for a good many years; but personal intercourse was not required to sustain their friendship. At the Brow often must the dying Poet have remembered Mossgiel.

On the near approach of death he returned to his own house, in a spring-cart; and having left it at the foot of the street, he could just totter up to his door. The last words his hand had strength to put on paper were to his wife's father, and were written probably within an hour of his return home. "My dear Sir-Do, for heaven's sake, send Mrs. Armour here immediately. My wife is hourly expected to be put to bed! Good God! what a situation for her to be in, poor girl, without a friend! I returned from sea-bathing quarters to-day; and my medical friends would almost persuade me that I am better; but I think and feel that my strength is so gone, that the disorder will prove fatal to me. Your son-in-law, R. B." That is not the letter of a man in delirium; nor was the letter written a few days before from the Brow to "my dearest love." But next day he was delirious, and the day after too, though on being spoken to he roused himself into collected and composed thought, and was, ever and anon, for a few minutes himself— Robert Burns. In his delirium there was nothing to distress the listeners and the lookers on; words were heard that to them had no meaning; mistakings made by the parting spirit among its language now in confusion breaking up; and sometimes words of trifling import about trifling things about incidents and events unnoticed in their happening, but now strangely cared for in their final repassing before the closed eyes just ere the dissolution of the dream of a dream. Nor did his death-bed want for affectionate and faithful service. The few who were

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privileged to tend it did so tenderly and reverently-now by the side of the sick wife, and now by that of the dying husband. Maxwell, a kind physician, came often to gaze in sadness where no skill could relieve. Findlater, supervisor of excise, sat by his bed-side the night before he died; and Jessie Lewars, daughter and sister of a gauger, was his sick nurse. own father, she could not have done her duty with a more perHad he been her fect devotion of her whole filial heart-and her name will never die, "here eternized on earth" by the genius of the Poet who, for all her Christian kindness to him and his, had long cherished toward her the tenderest gratitude. His children had been taken care of by friends, and were led in to be near him, now that his hour was come. His wife in her own bed knew it, as soon as her Robert was taken from her; and the great Poet of the Scottish people, who had been born "in the auld clay biggin” on a stormy winter night, died in an humble tenement on a bright summer morning, among humble folk, who composed his body, and according to custom strewed around it flowers brought from their own gardens.

Great was the grief of the people for their Poet's death. They felt that they had lost their greatest man; and it is no exaggeration to say that Scotland was saddened on the day of his funeral. It is seldom that tears are shed even close to the grave beyond the inner circle that narrows round it; but that day there were tears in the eyes of many far off at their work, and that night there was silence in thousands of cottages that had so often heard his songs-how sweeter far than any other, whether mournfully or merrily to old accordant melodies they won their way into the heart! The people had always loved him; they best understood his character, its strength and its weakness. Not among them at any time had it been harshly judged, and they allowed him now the sacred privileges of the grave. The religious have done so ever since, pitying more than condemning, nor afraid to praise; for they have confessed to themselves, that had there been a window in their breasts as there was in that of Burns, worse sights might have been seen— a darker revelation. His country charged herself with the care of them he had loved so well, and the spirit in which she

performed her duty is the best proof that her neglect--if neglect at any time there were of her Poet's well-being had not been wilful, but is to be numbered with those omissions incident to all human affairs, more to be lamented than blamed, and if not to be forgotten, surely to be forgiven, even by the nations who may have nothing to reproach themselves with in their conduct towards any of their great poets. England, "the foremost land of all this world," was not slack to join in her sister's sorrow, and proved the sincerity of her own, not by barren words, but fruitful deeds, and best of all by fervent love and admiration of the poetry that had opened up so many delightful views into the character and condition of our "bold peasantry, their country's pride," worthy compatriots with her own, and exhibiting in different Manners the same national Virtues.

No doubt wonder at a prodigy had mingled in many minds with admiration of the ploughman's poetry; and when they of their wondering found an end, such persons began to talk with abated enthusiasm of his genius and increased severity of his character, so that during intervals of silence, an under current of detraction was frequently heard brawling with an ugly noise. But the main stream soon ran itself clear; and Burns has no abusers now out of the superannuated list; out of it—better still -he has no patrons. In our youth we have heard him spoken of by the big-wigs with exceeding condescension; now the tallest men know that to see his features rightly they must look up. Shakspeare, Spencer, and Milton, are unapproachable; but the present era is the most splendid in the history of our poetry-in England beginning with Cowper, in Scotland with Burns. Original and racy, each in his own land is yet unexcelled; immovably they both keep their places-their inheritance is sure. Changes wide and deep, for better and for worse, have been long going on in town and country. There is now among the people more education-more knowledge than at any former day. Their worldly condition is more prosperous, while there is still among them a deep religious spirit. By that spirit alone can they be secured in the good, and saved from the evil of knowledge; but the spirit of poetry is akin to that of religion, and the union of the two is in no human composition more