questions asked with such determination to be answered, that the very mutes, whose business was silence and repose, were obliged to interfere with tongue and hand between the visitors and the dust of the poet. In contemplation of such a scene, some of the trappings which were there on the first day were removed on the second, and this suspicion of the good sense and decorum of the multitude called forth many expressions of displeasure, as remarkable for their warmth as their propriety of language. By five o'clock the people were all ejected— man and woman-and the rich coffin bore tokens of the touch of hundreds of eager fingers-many of which had not been overclean.

The multitude who accompanied Burns to the grave went step by step with the chief mourners; they might amount to ten or twelve thousand. Not a word was heard; and, though all could not be near, and many could not see, when the earth closed on their darling poet for ever, there was no rude impatience shown, no fierce disappointment expressed. It was an impressive and mournful sight to see men of all ranks and persuasions and opinions mingling as brothers, and stepping side by side down the streets of Dumfries, with the remains of him who had sung of their loves and joys and domestic endearments, with a truth and a tenderness which none perhaps have since equalled. I could, indeed, have wished the military part of the procession away— for he was buried with military honours-because I am one of those who love simplicity in all that regards genius. The scarlet and gold-the banners displayed— the measured step, and the military array-with the sound of martial instruments of music, had no share in increasing the solemnity of the burial scene; and had no connection with the poet. I looked on it then, and I consider it now, as an idle ostentation, a piece of superfluous state which might have been spared, more especially as his neglected and traduced and insulted spirit had

experienced no kindness in the body from those lofty people who are now proud of being numbered as his coevals and countrymen. His fate has been a reproach to Scotland: but the reproach comes with an ill grace from England. When we can forget Butler's fate-Otway's loaf-Dryden's old age-and Chatterton's poisoncup, we may think that we stand alone in the iniquity of neglecting pre-eminent genius. I found myself at the brink of the poet's grave, into which he was about to descend for ever. There was a pause among the mourners, as if loath to part with his remains; and when he was at last lowered, and the first shovelful of earth sounded on his coffin lid, I looked up and saw tears on many cheeks where tears were not usual. The volunteers justified the fears of their comrade, by three ragged and straggling volleys. The earth was heaped up, the green sod laid over him, and the multitude stood gazing on the grave for some minutes' space, and then melted silently away. The day was a fine one, the sun was almost without a cloud, and not a drop of rain fell from dawn to twilight. I notice this, not from my concurrence in the common superstition, that "happy is the corpse which the rain rains on," but to confute a pious fraud of a religious magazine, which made heaven express its wrath at the interment of a profane poet, in thunder, in lightning, and in rain. I know not who wrote the story, and I wish not to know; but its utter falsehood thousands can attest. It is one proof out of many, how divine wrath is found by dishonest zeal in a common commotion of the elements, and that men whose profession is godliness and truth, will look in the face of heaven and tell a deliberate lie.

A few select friends and admirers followed Lord Byron to the grave. His coronet was borne before him, and there were many indications of his rank; but, save the assembled multitude, no indications of his genius. conformity to a singular practice of the great, a long train

In

of their empty carriages followed the mourning coaches, mocking the dead with idle state, and impeding the honester sympathy of the crowd with barren pageantry. Where were the owners of those machines of sloth and luxury? Where were the men of rank among whose dark pedigrees Lord Byron threw the light of his genius, and lent the brows of nobility a halo to which they were strangers? Where were the great whigs? Where were the illustrious tories? Could a mere difference in matters of human belief keep those fastidious persons away? But, above all, where were the friends with whom wedlock had united him? On his desolate corpse no wife looked, and no child shed a tear. I have no wish to set myself up as a judge in domestic infelicities, and I am willing to believe they were separated in such a way as rendered conciliation hopeless; but who could stand and look on his pale manly face, and his dark locks, which early sorrows were making thin and gray, without feeling that, gifted as he was, with a soul above the mark of other men, his domestic misfortunes called for our pity as surely as his genius called for our admiration.

When the career of Burns was closed, I saw another sight a weeping widow and four helpless sons; they came into the streets in their mournings, and public sympathy was awakened afresh. I shall never forget the looks of his boys, and the compassion which they excited. The poet's life had not been without errors, and such errors, too, as a wife is slow in forgiving; but he was honoured then, and is honoured now, by the unalienable affection of his wife, and the world repays her prudence and her love by its regard and esteem.

Burns, with all his errors in faith and in practice, was laid in hallowed earth, in the churchyard of the town where he resided; no one thought of closing the church gates against his body, because of the freedom of his poetry, and the carelessness of his life. And why was not Byron laid among the illustrious men of England, in

Westminster Abbey? Is there a poet in all the Poet's Corner who has better right to that distinction? Why was the door closed against him, and opened to the carcases of thousands without merit and without name? Look round the walls, and on the floor over which you tread, and behold them encumbered and inscribed with memorials of the mean and the sordid and the impure, as well as of the virtuous and the great. Why did the Dean of Westminster refuse admission to such an heir of fame as Byron? If he had no claim to lie within the consecrated precints of the Abbey, he has no right to lie in consecrated ground at all. There is no doubt that the pious fee for sepulture would have been paid-and it is not a small one. Hail to the Church of England, if her piety is stronger than her avarice!

LOVE CAN KILL AND CURE.

AT Smyrna, in the summer of 1825, I was one evening much affected by the sight of a young man stretched out upon a sofa, in the vestibule of an inn, and apparently in the last stage of debility. His name was W- and his father, a gentleman in opulent circumstances, is still resident in Dublin, where he was himself originally destined for the profession of medicine, in the preparatory studies for which he had made considerable advancement. It happened that the hospital in which he was in the habit of attending clinical lectures, and where a considerable portion of his time was spent, adjoined a private establishment for the cure of insane patients, and the garden of the one was separated from the grounds of the other by a wall of inconsiderable height. One day, whilst lingering in the walks in the rear of the hospital, his ear was struck with the plaintive notes of a voice in the adjacent garden, which sang the melancholy Irish air of " Savourneen Deelish." Curiosity prompted him to see who the

minstrel was, and, clambering to an aperture in the dividing wall, he saw, immediately below him, a beautiful girl, who sat in mournful abstraction beneath a tree, plucking the leaves from a rose-bud as she sang her plaintive air. As she raised her head and observed the stranger before her, she smiled and beckoned him to come to her. After a moment's hesitation, and reflection on the consequence, he threw himself over the wall, and seated himself beside her. Her mind seemed in a state of perfect simplicity; her disorder appeared to have given her all the playful gentleness of childhood; and as she fixed her dark expressive eyes on his, she would smile and caress him, and sing over and over the song she was trilling when he had first heard her. Struck with the novelty of such a situation, and the beauty of the innocent and helpless being before him, W stayed long enough to avoid detection, and then returned by the same means he had entered the garden, but not till she had induced him to promise to come again and see her.

The following day he returned and found her at the same spot, where she said she had been singing for a long time, in hopes to attract his car again. He now endeavoured to find out her story, or the cause of her derangement, but his efforts were unavailing, or her words so incoherent as to convey no connected meaning. She was, however, more staid and melancholy while he remained with her, and smiled and sighed, and wept and sang by turns, till it was time for him to bid her adieu.

W- felt an excitement in her presence which he had never known before; she appeared to him a pure child of nature, in the extreme of nature's loveliness. She seemed not as one whom reason had deserted, but as a being who had never mingled with the world, and dwelt in the midst of its vice and deformity in primeval beauty and uncontaminated innocence and affection. His visits were now anxiously repeated, and as eagerly anticipated