And though no grassy mound
Or granite pile say 'tis heroic ground
Where my remains repose,

Still will I hope-vain hope, perhaps ! that those
Whom I have striven to bless,

The wanderer reclaimed, the fatherless,

May stand around my grave,

With the poor prisoner, and the poorest slave,
And breathe an humble prayer,

That they may die like him whose bones are mouldering there.

RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE the Vital Element of POETRY.-Carlyle. [An example of 'Expression' affected by noble sentiment and elevated diction.]*

Burns was born poor, and born also to continue poor; for he would not endeavour to be otherwise: this it had been well could he have once for all admitted, and considered as finally settled. He was poor, truly; but hundreds, even of his own class and order of mind, have been poorer, yet have suffered nothing deadly from it: nay, his own father had a far sorer battle with ungrateful destiny than his was; and he did not yield to it, but died courageously warring, and, to all moral intents, prevailing, against it.

True, Burns had little means, had even little time for poetry, his only real pursuit and vocation; but so much the more precious was what little he had. In all these external respects his case was hard; but very far from the hardest. Poverty, incessant drudgery, and much worse evils, it has often been the lot of poets and wise men to strive with, and their glory to conquer. Locke was banished as a traitor; and wrote his Essay on the Human Understanding, sheltering himself in a Dutch garret. Was Milton rich or at his ease, when he composed Paradise Lost? Not only low, but fallen; not only poor, but impoverished; 'in darkness and

* Passages like the above form useful elements for practice in the appropriate style of oratory on occasions such as those of literary anniversaries and similar festivals.

with dangers compassed round,' he sang his immortal song, and found 'fit audience, though few.' Did not Cervantes finish his work, a maimed soldier, and in prison? Nay, was not the Araucana, which Spain acknowledges as its Epic, written without even the aid of paper; on scraps of leather, as the stout fighter and voyager snatched any moment from that wild warfare?

And what then had these men, which Burns wanted? Two things; both which, it seems to us, are indispensable for such men. They had a true, religious principle of morals; and a single not a double aim in their activity. They were not self-seekers and self-worshippers; but seekers and worshippers of something far better than self. Not personal enjoyment was their object; but a high, heroic idea of religion, of patriotism, of heavenly wisdom, in one or the other form, ever hovered before them; in which cause, they neither shrunk from suffering, nor called on the earth to witness it as something wonderful; but patiently endured, counting it blessedness enough so to spend and be spent. Thus the 'goldencalf of self-love,' however curiously carved, was not their Deity; but the invisible goodness, which alone is man's reasonable service. This feeling was as a celestial fountain, whose streams refreshed into gladness and beauty all the provinces of their otherwise too desolate existence. In a word, they willed one thing, to which all other things were subor dinated, and made subservient; and therefore they accomplished it. The wedge will rend rocks; but its edge must be sharp and single: if it be double, the wedge is bruised in pieces, and will rend nothing.

Part of this superiority these men owed to their age; in which heroism and devotedness were still practised, or, at least, not yet disbelieved in: but much of it likewise they owed to themselves. With Burns, again, it was different. His morality, in most of its practical points, is that of a mere worldly man; enjoyment, in a finer or coarser shape, is the only thing he loves and strives for. A noble instinct sometimes raises him above this; but an instinct only, and acting

only for moments. He has no religion: in the shallow age where his days were cast, religion was not discriminated from the 'New' and 'Old Light' forms of religion; and was, with these, becoming obsolete in the minds of men. His heart, indeed, is alive with a trembling adoration; but there is no temple in his understanding. He lives in darkness and in the shadow of doubt. His religion, at best, is an anxious wish; like that of Rabelais 'a great Perhaps.'

He loved poetry warmly, and in his heart; could he but have loved it purely and with his whole undivided heart, it had been well. For poetry, as Burns could have followed it, is but another form of wisdom,-of religion; is itself wisdom and religion. But this, also, was denied him. His poetry is a stray, vagrant gleam, which will not be extinguished within him, yet rises not to be the true light of his path, but is often a wildfire that misleads him. It was not necessary for Burns to be rich, to be, or to seem, independent; but it was necessary for him to be at one with his own heart; to place what was highest in his nature, highest also in his life; 'to seek within himself for that consistency and sequence, which external events would forever refuse him.' He was born a poet; poetry was the celestial element of his being, and should have been the soul of all his endeavours. Lifted into that serene ether, whither he had wings given him to mount, he would have needed no other elevation.

Poverty, neglect, and all evil, save the desecration of himself and his art, were a small matter to him: the pride and the passions of the world lay far beneath his feet; and he looked down alike on noble and slave, on prince and beggar, and all that wore the stamp of man, with clear recognition, with brotherly affection, with sympathy, with pity. Nay, we question whether for his culture as a poet, poverty, and much suffering for a season, were not absolutely advantageous. Great men, in looking back over their lives, have testified to that effect. I would not for much,' says Jean Paul, 'that I had been born richer.' And yet Paul's birth was poor enough; for, in another place, he adds: the prisoner's allowance is

bread and water; and I had often only the latter.' But the gold that is refined in the hottest furnace, comes out the purest; or, as he himself has expressed it, 'the canary-bird sings sweeter the longer it has been trained in a darkened cage.'

A man like Burns might have divided his hours between poetry and virtuous industry; industry which all true feeling sanctions, nay prescribes, and which has a beauty, for that cause, beyond the pomp of thrones: but to divide his hours between poetry and rich men's banquets, was an ill-starred and inauspicious attempt. How could he be at ease at such banquets? What had he to do there, mingling his music with the coarse roar of altogether earthly voices, and brightening the thick smoke of intoxication with fire lent him from Heaven? Was it his aim to enjoy life? To-morrow he must go drudge as an Exciseman! We wonder not that Burns became moody, indignant, and at times an offender against certain rules of society; but rather that he did not grow utterly frantic, and 'run a muck' against them all. How could a man, so falsely placed, by his own or others' fault, ever know contentment, or peaceable diligence, for an hour? What he did, under such perverse guidance, and what he forbore to do, alike fill us with astonishment at the natural strength and worth of his character.

Doubtless there was a remedy for this perverseness: but not in others; only in himself; least of all in simple increase of wealth and worldly respectability.

EMBLEMS.-James Montgomery.

[An example of Expression' and 'Variation,' as produced by vivid sentiment. The successive stages of the style of elocution, in the reading of this piece, are those which indicate seriousness, solemnity, and awe.] An evening-cloud, in brief suspense,

Fading and lessening,- till behind
It left no speck in heaven's deep blue.

Amidst the marshalled host of night,
Shone a new star supremely bright:
With marvelling eye, well-pleased to err,
I hailed the prodigy ;-anon,

It fell;-it fell like Lucifer,

A flash, a blaze, a train-'twas gone!
And then I sought in vain its place
Throughout the infinite of space.

Dew-drops, at day-spring, decked a line
Of gossamer so frail, so fine,

A fly's wing shook it: round and clear,
As if by fairy-fingers strung,
Like orient pearls, at Beauty's ear,

In trembling brilliancy they hung
Upon a rosy brier, whose bloom
Shed nectar round them and perfume:

Ere long, exhaled in limpid air,

Some mingled with the breath of morn, Some slid down singly, here and there,

Like tears, by their own weight overborne ;
At length the film itself collapsed; and where
The pageant glittered, lo! a naked thorn.

What are the living? Hark! a sound
From the grave and cradle crying,
By earth and ocean echoed round, —
'The living are the dying!'

From infancy to utmost age,
What is man's line of pilgrimage?

The pathway to Death's portal:

The moment we begin to be,

We enter on the agony ;

The dead are the immortal; They live not on expiring breath, They only are exempt from death.

Cloud-atoms, sparkles of a falling star,
Dew-drops, or films of gossamer we are :
What can the state beyond us be?

Life?-Death? —Ah! no,

a greater mystery ;

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