case as the "Scotch nobility" in that of Burns, for whose brows his youthful genius wove a wreath of scorn. "The rapt one of the godlike forehead, the heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth"but who among them cared for the long self-seclusion of the white-headed sage for his sick bed, or his grave?

Turn we then from the Impersonation named Scotland-from her rulers-from her nobility and gentry-to the personal friends of Burns. Could they have served him in his straits? And how? If they could, then were they bound to do so by a stricter obligation than lay upon any other party; and if they had the will as well as the power, 'twould have been easy to find a way. The duties of friendship are plain, simple, sacredand to perform them is delightful; yet, so far as we can see, they were not performed here-if they were, let us have the names of the beneficent who visited Burns every other day during the months disease had deprived him of all power to follow his calling? Who insisted on helping to keep the family in comfort till his strength might be restored? For example, to pay his house rent for a year? Mr. Syme, of Ryedale, told Dr. Currie, that Burns had "many firm friends in Dumfries,” who would not have suffered the haberdasher to put him into jail, and that his were the fears of a man in delirium. Did not those "firm friends " know that he was of necessity very poor? And did any one of them offer to lend him thirty shillings to pay for his three weeks' lodgings at the Brow? He was not in delirium-till within two days of his death. Small sums he had occasionally borrowed and repaid; but from people as poor as himself; such as kind Craig, the schoolmaster, to whom, at his death, he owed a pound--never from the more opulent townfolk or the gentry in the neighborhood, of not one of whom is it recorded that he or she accommodated the dying Poet with a loan sufficient to pay for a week's porridge and milk. Let us have no more disgusting palaver about his pride. His heart would have melted within him at any act of considerate friendship done to his family; and so far from feeling that by accepting it he had become a pauper, he would have recognized in the doer of it a brother, and taken him into his heart. And had he not in all the earth, one single such Friend? His brother Gilbert

was struggling with severe difficulties at Mossgiel, and was then unable to assist him; and his excellent cousin at Montrose had enough to do to maintain his own family; but as soon as he knew how matters stood, he showed that the true Burns' blood was in his heart, and after the Poet's death, was as kind as man could be to his widow and children.

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What had come over Mrs. Dunlop that she should have seemed to have forgotten or forsaken him? "These many months you have been two packets in my debt—what sin of ignorance I have committed against so highly valued a friend I am utterly at a loss to guess! Alas! Madam, ill can I afford, at this time, to be deprived of any of the small remnant of my pleasures. I had scarcely begun to recover from that shock (the death of his little daughter), when I became myself the victim of a most severe rheumatic fever, and long the die spun doubtful; until, after many weeks of a sick bed, it seems to have turned up life, and I am beginning to crawl across my room, and once, indeed, have been before my own door in the street." No answer came; and three months after he wrote from the Brow, "Madam—I have written you so often without receiving any answer, that I would not trouble you again but for the circumstances in which I am. An illness which has long hung about me, in all probability will speedily send me beyond that bourne whence no traveller returns. Your friendship, with which for many years you honored me, was a friendship dearest to my soul. Your conversation, and especially your correspondence, were at once highly entertaining and instructive. With what pleasure did I use to break up the seal! The remembrance yet adds one pulse more to my poor palpitating heart. Farewell. R. B." Currie says, "Burns had the pleasure of receiving a satisfactory explanation of his friend's silence, and an assurance of the continuance of her friendship to his widow and children; an assurance that has been amply fulfilled. That "satisfactory explanation" should have been given to the world-it should be given yet-for without it such incomprehensible silence must continue to seem cruel; and it is due to the memory of one whom Burns loved

and honored to the last, to vindicate on her part the faithfulness of the friendship which preserves her name.

Maria Riddel, a lady of fine talents and accomplishments, and though somewhat capricious in the consciousness of her mental and personal attractions, yet of most amiable disposition, and of an affectionate and tender heart, was so little aware of the condition of the Poet, whose genius she could so well appreciate, that only a few weeks before his death, when he could hardly crawl, he had by letter to decline acceding to her “desire that he would go to the birth-day assembly, on the 4th June, to show his loyalty!" Alas! he was fast "wearin' awa to the land o' the leal;" and after the lapse of a few weeks, that lady gay, herself in poor health, and saddened out of such vanities by sincerest sorrow, was struck with his appearance on entering the room. "The stamp of death was imprinted on his features. He seemed already touching the brink of eternity. His first salutation was—'Well, Madam, have you any commands for the next world ?" The best men have indulged in such sallies, on the brink of the grave. Nor has the utterance of words like these, as life's taper was flickering in the socket, been felt to denote a mood of levity unbecoming a creature about to go to his account. On the contrary, there is something very affecting in the application of such formulas of speech as had been of familiar use all his days, on his passage through the shadow of time, now that his being is about to be liberated into the light of eternity, where our mortal language is heard not, and spirit communicates with spirit through organs not made of clay, having dropped the body like a garment.

In that interview, the last recorded, and it is recorded wellpity so much should have been suppressed-" he spoke of his death without any of the ostentation of philosophy, but with firmness as well as feeling, as an event likely to happen very soon, and which gave him concern chiefly from leaving his poor children so young and unprotected, and his wife in so interesting a situation, in hourly expectation of lying in of a fifth." Yet, during the whole afternoon, he was cheerful, even gay, and disposed for pleasantry; such is the power of the human voice and the human eye over the human heart, almost to the re

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

n;

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