in the midst of my pupils, and see how the unfortunate beings emerge by degrees from darkness→→→→ how they become animated by the first beam of heavenly light-how they, step by step, discover their powers, impart their ideas to each other, and form around me an interesting family, of which I am the happy father. Yes, there are many more brilliant delights-many more easily attained -but I doubt whether in universal nature there is one more real. THE PASSAGES TRANSCRIBEED FROM BURN'S LETTERS.* By John Evans, A. M. appellation of a Scottish Bard is by far my highest pride, to continue to deserve it is my most exalted ambition. Scottish scenes and Scottish stories are the themes I could wish to sing. I have no dearer aim than to have it in my power, unplagued with the routine of business, for which, heaven knows, I am unfit, enough to make leisurely pilgrimages through Caledonia; to sit on the fields of her battles-to wander on the romantic banks of the rivers-and to muse by the stately towers, or venerable ruins, once the honoured abodes of her heroes! The most placid good-nature and sweetness of disposition, a warm heart gratefully devoted with all its powers to love me, vigorous health and *It was the opinion of Dr. Robertson, the celebrated historian, that the prose of Burns was still more extraordinary than even his poetry. sprightly cheerfulness set off to the best advantage by a more than commonly handsome figure, these, I think, in a woman, may make a good wife, though she should never have read a page, but the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, nor have danced in a brighter assembly than a penny-pay wedding. I shall transcribe you a few lines I wrote in an hermitage belonging to a gentleman in my Niths dale neighbourhood. They are almost the only favours the muses have conferred on me in that country. Thee whom chance may hither lead, Be thou clad in rustic weed; Be thou deck'd in silken støle, Life is but a day at most, Make content and ease thy aim. Guard wherever thou canst guard; But thy utmost duty done, Welcome what thou canst not shun. Follies past give thou to air, Reverence, with lowly heart, Him whose wond'rous works thou art ; ́ After all that has been said on the other side of the question, MAN is by no means a happy creature. I do not speak of the selected few, favoured by partial heaven, whose souls are tuned to gladness amid riches and honours, and prudence and wisdom. I speak of the neglected many, whose nerves, whose sinews, whose days are sold to the minions of fortune. It is this way of thinking, it is these melancholy truths, that made religion precious to the poor miserable children of men. If it is a mere phantom, existing only in the heated imagination of enthusiasm "What truth on earth so precious as the lie!" My idle reasoning sometimes make me a little sceptical, but the necessities of my heart always give the cold philosophisings the lie. Who looks for the heart weaned from earth-the soul affianced to her God-the correspondence fixed with heaventhe pious supplication and the devout thanksgiving, constant as the vicissitudes of even and morn, -who thinks to meet these in the court, the palace, in the glare of public life! No; to find them in their precious importance and divine efficacy, we must search among the obscure recesses of disappointment, affliction, poverty, and distress. I approve of set times and seasons of more than ordinary acts of devotion, for breaking in on that habituated routine of life and thought, which is so apt to reduce our existence to a kind of instinct, or even sometimes, and with some minds, to a state very little superior to mere machinery. We know nothing, or next to nothing, of the substance or stricture of our souls, so cannot account for those seeming caprices in them, that one should be particularly pleased with this thing, or struck with that, which, on minds of a different cast, makes no extraordinary impression. I have some favourite flowers in spring, among which are the mountain-daisy, the hare-bell, the fox-glove, the wild brier-ro e, the budding-birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight. I never hear the loud solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of grey-plovers in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like, the enthusiasm of devotion, or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the Eolian harp, passive takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own myself partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities a God that made all things-man's immaterial and immortal natureand a world of weal or woe beyond death and the grave! Often as I have glided with humble stealth through the pomp of Prince's-street, (Edinburgh), it has suggested itself to me as an improvement on the present human figure, that a man in proportion to his own conceit of his consequence in the world, could have pushed out the longitude of his common size as a snail pushes out his horns, or as we draw out a perspective. This trifling alteration, not to mention the prodigious saving it would be in the tear and wear of the neck, limbs, and sinews of many of his majesty's liege subjects, in the way of tossing the head, and tiptoe-strutting, would evidently turn out to vast advantage, in enabling us at once to adjust the ceremonials in making a bow, or making way to a great man, and that too within a second of the precise spherical angle of reverence, or an inch of the particular point of respectful distance which the important creature itself requires-as a measuring glance at its towering altitude, would determine the affair like instinct ! O frugality! thou mother of ten thousand bless-> ings-thou cook of fat beef and dainty greens! -thou manufacturer of warm Shetland hose and comfortable surtouts ;-thou old housewife darning thy decayed stockings with thy ancient spectacles on thy aged nose!-lead me, hand me in thy, clutched, palsied fist, up those heights, and through those thickets hitherto inaccessible and impervious to my anxious weary feet:-not those Parnassian: crags, bleak and barren, where the hungry worshippers of fame are breathless, clambering, hanging between heaven and hell; but those glittering cliffs of Potosi, where the all-sufficient, all-powerful deity wealth, holds his immediate court of joys and pleasures; where, the sunny exposure of plenty and the hot walls of profusion produce those blissful fruits of luxury, exotics in this world and natives of paradise!-Thou withered sylph, my sage conductress, usher me into the refulgent and adored presence!-the power splendid and potent as he now is, was once the puling nursling of thy faithful care and tender arms!-Call me thy son, thy Cc |