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filth to filth: but with the industry of the native of the hive, he extracts from that on which he works all that is valuable to him. Old rags, old paper, white, brown, yellow, or blue, are all the same to him, so as it be paper no matter how soiled, no matter how torn, he drags it from the heap and commits it to the basket behind his back. No matter of what importance the paper may be : though it contain a song or a sermon, a letter of love, or a letter of state, it is all the same to him, to the basket it goes; and after having entered there all hope is abandoned, for out of that receptacle, there is no redemption till it be full.

When this fulness is achieved, off the Chiffonier posts to the depot, and there deposits his burden, for which he has an acknowledgment; and then to work again" with what appetite he may." Thus his life passes on, from "night to morn, from morn to dewy eve," midst filth, and offal, and rabbish, the "cankers of a calm world," and "the rankest compound of villainous smells," that ever assaulted the organs of a Christian. But it is a life, notwithstanding, full of rivalry, and strangely mixed with the web of a mingled yarn, containing good and ill together. To-day midst his peregrinations he may find a gold brooch, or a diamond ring, while tomorrow he may ply his" weary way" and not be rewarded by a moth-eaten cheeseparing or a withered crust; yet is it the rivalry that sustains the Chiffonier in his or her strange occupation. Go into what street he may, he is sure to find one of his own craft, and he who extracts most from the loathings and leavings of all other men, comes off victor, and pricks up his ear, and wags his tail, like a dog who has choused his fellow of the tit-bit of the shambles.

A history of this strange set of beings, and of the noble purposes to which their labours are turned by chemical process, would be one of the most interesting works ever writ

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I have spoken of the depot, where the Chiffonier deposits his store. Here are the accumulated gatherings of the tribe, which are sorted out and parcelled, before they undergo the process necessary to the making of new paper. This depot is kept by one of the richest men in Paris, who in early life had been himself a Chif fonier, then a Cantonnier, or worker on the roads, then a strolling player, then a keeper of a gambling house, and lastly a manufacturer and ope rator in the funds. This man has acquired immense wealth; his house is a perfect palace, stored with objects of art and vertu, but midst all the curiosities which he can present to "a wondering world," there are none to vie with the thousands of Chiffoniers, old, young, and middleaged, whom he has under his control, and in his employ, and who, from the "wreck of matter," and the sweepings of household life, bring forth the germ and seminal principle of new matter-of papier coleur de rose, papier doré, et papiero doré, on which pretty fingers pour forth the inspiration of feeling and loving hearts.

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It is to be observed, that the filth of Paris, the narrowness of its streets, and the inadequate supply of water, are all favourable to the trade of the Chiffonier. In London “ the occupation" of such a being would be 'gone;" for its admirable sewers and mighty river bear away the mounds of refuse matter midst which the Chiffonier revels and wallows in all the luxuriancy of blissful being.

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ROBERT BURNS.*

THE object of Constable's Miscellany that of furnishing the public with good books at a cheap rate is very praiseworthy; and those who love to see human genius bounding over every obstacle, and taking firm hold of immortality, even when the mortal casket, "strong by nature, strengthened more by toil," in which it is contained, is dissolving in the agonies of poverty and neglect, the most illiberal jealousy, and the most black-hearted ingratitude, will be thankful that, of those neat and cheap volumes, one is devoted to the Bard of Coila.

We are inclined to think that Robert Burns is the solitary individual of his genus, with no model going before, and no imitator coming after. That many men should write verses lines that join in chorus at the end, and in which there is a modulation of music-we do not at all dispute, even though they should not have formally got what is called "an intellectual education;" because a perception of the modulation of sounds is not the highest, and certainly not the most intellectual of human acquirements. But the singular part of the matter is that, with every disadvantage to struggle with, both from without and from within, Burns was, for practical purposes, the best educated man of his day, had his mind in the most perfect and constant discipline, had not only a much more keen and perfect perception of those subjects that came more immediately within his range, than the professional literati of his time, but could actually, and at once beat them with their own weapons. It was to this, we fear, more than to any thing else, that Burns owed his want of success in life. The literati and leading men of Edinburgh, at no time very much famed for their liberality, and not always for the depth and transparency of their perceptions, invited Burns

to come among them, as a plaything that they could "lift and let be seen;" but finding him too heavy to be lifted, and too dazzling to look at, they neglected him, or rather, shrank away from him as fast as they could.

Whether Burns was the burly boy, shoeless and bonnetless, driving the cattle to the pasture, or studying nature in the woodlands, whether he was the bold youth, turning the furrow or swinging the flail,-whether he was agonizing as a lover, or making the place of rustic carousal rock to the echoes of his glee, whether, solitary, amid the desolation of the storm, he mused upon the misery of man, or, turning his keen glance upon the crowd, he made folly and hypocrisy to run howling to their hiding places,-whether, to the booming of the wind and the rush of the water, he poured the whole witchery of song-humorous, gay, gloomy, terrific and sublime-into " Tam o' Shanter," or, laid upon the straw, with his dark eye riveted upon "the bright star of eve," poured out his own soul to Mary in heaven," whether, toiling wearily along in the tempestuous night, he concentrated the whole volume of patriotic and noble daring into the wildness of the Bruce, or whether, in gratitude for the wisdom and virtue which his pious parent had implanted in his mind, he made the mortal muse mount up to the very threshold of the "golden gates," and by one angelic touch turned this world into a paradise,

When kneeling down, to Heaven's Eternal
King,
The saint, the father, and the husband prays;
in every turn of life, at every touch
of time, under every shade of cir-
cumstances, the mind of Burns was
a machine that never stood still,-no
darkness could come from it-no ob-
scurity could hide,—what was seen
was known,-what was known was

* The Life of Robert Burns. By J. G. Lockhart, LL.B. Constable's Miscellany, Vol. 23, 35 Atheneum, vol. 9, 2d series.

remembered; and when the hour of inspiration came, the whole was poured forth in song, of which the truth is as powerful as the force is irresistible.

Whatever be the subject which inspires the muse of Burns, one never finds a particle of verbiage, or any one subject introduced, of which his knowledge is not complete. There is no mere noise making,—no heavy passages for the purpose of "sething" the gems, and showing them off to advantage, no gilding or polishing of the surface; the whole is virgin from the rock-unbroken and untarnishable; and yet the circumstances under which he lived were, as ordinary men would think, little calculated to produce a keen observer and a profound thinker, or indeed, any

observer or thinker at all.

No doubt, in the years of his infancy, he enjoyed advantages greater than those, who have not felt the effects of similar ones, are aware of. The circumstances and character of his father saved him from those temptations to idleness and infant luxury, by which the talents of so many of the richer classes are nipt in the bud; while the feeling, then universal among the Scottish peasantry, to live upon their own earnings, however small, ove no man any thing, and either stand in their own strength, or fall, imparted that sturdy independence, which made his mind, and probably tended to mar his fortunes. In the short time that he was at school, too, he seems to have acquired not a little of that very best part of education, the art of getting more for himself; and this was further augmented by the readings and explanations of his father. Many people acquire the form of education without the substance; but Burus had the substance without much of the form: the early bias towards inquiry and reflection which this gave, se conded as it was by the absence of temptation, till he had reached rather an advanced period of youth, was, next only to his natural powers, the cause of his greatness-his support,

and also his torture, under those reverses and misfortunes, that so thickly chequered his life.

Burns was not one of those precocious prodigies, which the wondering world is, ever and anon, finding out for itself. We hear of none of his odes at eight, and tales at ten, years of age, which, when they do occur, are merely patchwork out of the thoughts of others. His muse gave not forth one note, till inspired by that passion which calls all the children of nature into song. It was the buxom lass, who shared the labours of the harvest field more immediately with the bard, who first kindled another fire; and it was the desire of making her warble to the praise of her own charms, that first made him attempt the practice of poetry; and we believe there are very few young rustics, of perfectly pure minds, and with any fancy at all, that do not make similar attempts in "the first young love of gay fifteen."

These first love songs of the bard were, as might be supposed, neither very vigorous in the conception, nor very accurate in the expression; and so far as one may judge from the specimens, (and we remember seeing a good many of them, which have never appeared in print, in the hands of a gentleman in Kilmarnock, only two years after the death of the poet,) so far as one may judge from these, the merit which they had, was the merit of thought and not of fancy,they evinced that the author was a reflective and sensible youth, rather than that he was a poetical one.

Nature had given to Burns both a mind and a body of the most robust description; and adversity had kept hammering them on her anvil, till they had, at a very early period of life, acquired the firmness and the elasticity of beaten steel: and when his passions, which were equally strong, would no longer allow him to rest contented with his humble fare and his hard labour, they burst forth by the only outlet that was open to them the song of his native district. Even after the fame of Burns

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had "sealed his destruction," he showed an universal thirst for information, and busied himself in the formation and management, of libraries; and in his early years he gave sufficient proofs that, had his desires been seconded by means, his aim would have been to wanton in the whole field of knowledge. The success with which he studied the elements of mathematics, at the school of Kirkoswald, when in his nineteenth year although love distracted the doctrines of sines and tangents not a little clearly proves, that, un der other discipline and circum. stances, he might have probably, stood as high among the philosophers, of his country, as he now does among the poets. :

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Severely as he did toil, and expert as he was at all the labours of the farm, his mind was too mighty for being wholly occupied by these du ties; and the fields of science and literature, in which other young spirits of the same wing work off their superabundant energies, were to him, to use his own emphatic quotation, "a spring shut up and a fountain, sealed; the few books in the "auld clay biggin" were soon exhausted; the world around him became the only book of the ardent and insatiable student; and the keenness of his satire, the accuracy of his description, the warmth of his, feeling, and the glorious flow of his pathos and sublimity, show how closely and how well he studied.

That the strong passions of Burns betrayed him into indiscretions, and that oppressed and resourceless as he was, his merry talents-the keen perception, and the powerful expres sion, which made him so great in company-were in so far snares to him, we do not mean to deny; but that these or any other causes made Burns permanently, or mentally at all, dissipated, or caused him to neglect his duty either to society, or to those who more immediately had claims on him, is wholly and utterly false.

The relations of the lady whom, he married caused her to burn a

written promise of marriage, which he had given to her when he was in the depth of his poverty, and before the first publication of his poems. But notwithstanding this, which was a legal absolvement according to the law of Scotland, and would have been a moral absolvement, even to those who affect to put on saintly looks when the name of Burns is mentioned, the poet no sooner heard that the lady herself had been illused-turned out of doors in fact→→→ upon his account, than he started from a sick bed, and flew to her aid. And what were the circumstances under which this deed of generosity and justice, was done? Was it when his fortunes ran low? No such thing. It was after he had been introduced, to the notice and the admiration of the learned and the titled in the Scottish capital, had made the tour of that end of the island, and was certainly, of all Scotchmen then living, the foremost in fame. Nort was this done as a mere impulse of the moment; for it was a calm, steady, and calculated purpose; and, Burns-though the office into which he was degraded forced him to be both from home, and in the ale-house professionally-continued a regular family man, instructing his children and bearing up against extreme por verty, till persecution the most un just, and neglect the most disgraceful, broke his heart; and, even then, though his family was six persons, and his income never more than seventy pounds a year, and seldom so much, he died without being in debt.

All men of the present day, and Englishmen of almost any day, would wonder why a man who was thus highly talented, and thus resolutely determined to be virtuous, could be: "the man cast away," in any coun try, and especially in a country like Scotland, where the sounds of patriotism, and patronage, and encouragement to literature are so loud. This wonder increases, when one consi ders, that Burns was exactly the man of whom Scotland, at that time, stood much in need. This part of the case

is put with so much force and truth by Mr. Lockhart, that we shall quote his words:

et.

"Darkly as the career of Burns was destined to terminate, there can be no doubt that he made his first appearance at a period highly favourable for his reception as a British, and especially as a Scottish po Nearly forty years had elapsed since the death of Thomson :-Collins, Gray, Goldsmith, had successively disappeared:-Dr. Johnson had belied the rich promise of his early appearance, and confined him self to prose, and Cowper had hardly begun to be recognised as having any considerable pretensions to fill the long-vacant throne in England. At home without derogation from the merits either of Douglas or the Min strel, be it said—men must have gone back at least three centuries to find a Scottish poet at all entitled to be considered as of that high order to which the generous criticism of Mackenzie at once admitted the Ayrshire Ploughman.' Of the form and garb of his composition, much, unquestionably and avowedly, was derived from his more immediate predecessors, Ramsay and Ferguson: but there was a bold mastery of hand in his picturesque descriptions, to produce any thing equal to which it was necessary to recall the days of Christ's Kirk on the Green, and Peebles to the Play: and in his more solemn pieces, a depth of inspiration, and a massive energy of language, to which the dialect of his country had been a stranger, at least since Dunbar the Mackar.' The Muses of Scotland had never indeed been silent, and the ancient minstrelsy of the land, of which a slender portion had as yet been committed to the safeguard of the press, was handed from generation to generation, and preserved in many a fragment, faithful images of the peculiar tenderness, and peculiar humour, of the national fancy and character-precious representations, which Burns himself never surpassed in his happiest efforts. But these were fragments; and, with

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a scanty handful of exceptions, the best of them, at least of the serious kind, were very ancient. Among the numberless effusions of the Jacobite Muse, valuable as we now consider them for the record of manners and events, it would be difficult to point out half a dozen strains, worthy, for poetical excellence alone, of a place among the old chivalrous ballads of the Southern, or even of the Highland Border. Generations had passed away since any Scottish poet had appealed to the sympathies of his countrymen in a lofty Scottish strain." "It was reserved for Burns to interpret the inmost soul of the Scottish peasant in all its moods, and in verse exquisitely and intensely Scottish, without degrading either bis sentiments or his language with one touch of vulgarity. Such is the delicacy of native taste, and the power of a truly masculine genius."

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But though Burns was just the man who was wanting to give a beam of glory to his country, and though he came at the particular time, and found an introduction to those who had, as it were, the keeping of the country's honour, they had the folly, the cold-blooded cruelty, to throw him away; and however they may palter and shuffle, and equivocate about the matter, they threw him away for this little, and truly dirty reason that he was of nobler mind, and mightier powers than themselves. They may lecture, and they may lie; but the brand is on them, and all the labour even of their viscous tongues will never be able to lick it off.

It is hard that this should be the case; and that we should write it, or read it, or certify its truth, is gall and wormwood; but it stands upon the record, and no pigment will hide it, no tool will scrape it, and no de tergent will bleach it away. They may build monuments to their own vanity; and they may carve upon them what they please; but the words that will, in the judgment of every honest man, branden and blacken over the whole, are, “ Destroyed by an ungrateful country ;".

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