many and varied combinations, and | At first the writer or scholar was give to our imaginations the means of obliged to make an effort in order to exercising it very pleasantly. This is affirm his originality, that is to say, in exercise. Real work, on the contrary, order to study the phenomena of life would be that of evoking these images according to his temperament and inin the mind without the exterior means tellectual inclinations; he was obliged of poetry, painting, sculpture, etc., to create his style, if an artist, and his exactly as the poet, painter, and sculp- method and system, if a scholar; in tor create the works which later set to brief, he was obliged to accustom his work the imagination of men. Every-mind to work in a certain way. When body reads books, but very few write the intellectual habits are formed, work them; and of those who do write, very becomes much easier, but also less few really work, that is, write original original. The work is better done, things, which are the result of personal more rapidly, but everything has a mental associations; the others imitate common character. Take the series of or copy, which, again, is but mental Spencer's works, "First Principles," exercise. Receptivity, that is, the "Principles of Biology," "Psycholfaculty of comprehending and assim- ogy," "Sociology," etc. You find here ilating ideas, is very common; but true the same fundamental principle, that creative power, on the contrary, is of evolution, applied to different phevery rare. nomena, and the same simple style, a But there is another, and still more little hard, but of a precision which decisive proof, in support of the theory has never been surpassed. Take all of the least effort. Not only is almost the romances of Balzac or of Zola; the all that which is commonly called work general construction, the framework, simply exercise, but real work tends the fundamental type of characters, the to become transformed into exercise. method of psychological analysis, the Every mental act, several times re-style, are the same. A few writers of peated, becomes automatic; thus, for more powerful genius have succeeded example, certain associations of ideas, in creating several types of art, as, for which become established in the mind, example, Shakespeare; but in general, finish, if often repeated, by being so all great writers have the one form of closely united, that one of these ideas art. Those who succeed in making an evokes all the others, without the least original creation of each work, write mental effort. Every one knows that very little and leave few works. Great each writer and each scholar has his philosophers remain prisoners of their own particular character; it would be systems, because, having once created impossible to coufound a romance of a grand theory, they are not capable of Zola with one of Dickens; a drama of another creative effort, and observe Shakespeare with one of Goethe; a facts according to the theory to which book of Spencer with one of Hegel. their minds are accustomed. The artist Now the character of a writer is only ends by having mannerisms, because the result of the transformation of accustomed to see and represent things creative work into mental exercise. in a certain way.

GUILLAUME FERRERO.

LONG DISTANCE SEEING MACHINE. It is said that Professor Andrew Graham Bell is now engaged in experiments looking to the perfecting of a machine harnessing electricity to light, so to speak, so that it will be possible for one's vision to be ex

tended to any distance desired. Professor Bell insists that the fact has already been demonstrated, and that it only remains to construct the apparatus necessary to bring the possibilities of the discovery into actual and practical use.

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GOOD-BYE! That word how oft we have Let's see, where was I? Oh, Park-lane! (The trees were white with rime and

Though far from friends, from home, and THOU and I for many a day,

Care, have trudged the self-same way.

Oh, may his arm preserve thee in all dan-Fast companions, I and thou,

A deathly blankness wraps our souls in And with the privilege of kin,

From Belgravia.

ROBERT BURNS.

IT has been said that "great men, great events, and great epochs, grow as we recede from them, and the rate at which they advance in the estimation of men is in some sort a measure of their greatness." Burns must be great indeed, tried by this standard, for during the time that has elapsed since his death, men's interest in the poet and their estimate of his genius have been steadily increasing. If the attainment of success most insures the sympathy of the public, Burns would have won but little notice; for in all save his poetry his was a sad and unsatisfactory life.

Mount Oliphant, and all the years the family spent there were one long, sore battle with untoward circumstances, ending in defeat. Yet education was not neglected, for Robert and his brother Gilbert were taught by a young man named Murdoch, who was paid a small salary by Burness and four of his neighbors to instruct their children. At that time Murdoch would have predicted that if either of the two boys ever became a great poet, Gilbert would be the one. "His were the mirth and liveliness,' " he says, "while Robert's countenance generally wore a grave and thoughtful look." Robert's voice was especially untunable, and his ear so dull, that it was with difficulty he could distinguish one note from another. Yet this was he who was to become the greatest song-writer that Scotland perhaps the world has known. When Murdoch's duties were over for the day, the father undertook the education of his children, and car

He was born on the 25th of January, 1759, about two miles from the town of Ayr, in a clay-built cottage, reared by his father's own hands. A few days after his birth, a storm blew down the gable of the cottage, and the poet and his mother were carried in the morning to the shelter of a neighbor's roof, ried it on at night. The readings of under which they remained until their own house was repaired. In after years he would often say, "No wonder that one ushered into the world amid such a tempest, should be the victim of stormy passions."

His father, William Burness, or Burnes, for so he spelt his name, was a native of Kincardineshire, where he had been brought up on a farm belonging to the estate of the noble but attainted house of Keith-Marischal. At nineteen he left this place and settled in Ayrshire, and at the time when Robert was born, he rented some land, about seven acres, near the Brig o' Doon, which he cultivated as a nurserygarden. He was a man of stern principles, strong temper, and thoughtful piety. His wife was much younger than himself, and had a memory stored with old ballads, songs, and traditions, which she told or sang to amuse her children.

the household were wide and various. Some one entering the house at mealtime found the whole family seated, each with a spoon in one hand and a book in the other. Above all, they had a collection of songs, of which Burns says, "This was my vade meсит. I pored over them driving my cart or walking to labor, song by song, verse by verse; carefully noting the true, tender, or sublime, from affectation and fustian. I am convinced I owe to this practice much of my criticcraft, such as it is." The books which fed his young intellect were devoured only during intervals snatched from toil. That toil was no doubt excessive, and this early over-strain showed itself soon in the stoop of his shoulders, in nervous disorder about the heart, and in frequent fits of despondency.

In 1777, William Burness removed from Mount Oliphant to Lochlea, an upland, undulating farm, on the river Three places will always be known Ayr. This was the home of Burns and as the successive homes of Burns; his family from his eighteenth till his these were Mount Oliphant, Lochlea, twenty-fifth year. For a time their and Mossgiel. Robert was in his sev- life was more comfortable than before, enteenth year when his father left probably because several of the chil

Yestreen, when to the trembling string,
The dance gaed thro' the lighted ha',
To thee my fancy took its wing,
I sat, but neither heard nor saw;
Tho' this was fair, and that was braw,
And yon the toast of a' the town,
I sigh'd, and said, amang them a',
"Ye are nae Mary Morison."
Oh, Mary, canst thou wreck his peace,

dren were able to assist their parents | ful love-lyric "Mary Morison," and in in farm labor. Here the poet wrote these lines the lyric genius of Burns "The Death and Dying Words of Poor was for the first time undeniably reMailie," "My Nannie, O," and one or vealed: two more of his most popular songs. It was at Lochlea that Burns first followed the promptings of his social instincts, and he resolved to attend a dancing-school, that he might there meet companions of either sex, and give his rustic manners "a brush," as he called it. The next year he went to learn mensuration and surveying from | the schoolmaster of Kirkoswald, and there he was introduced to smugglers and adventurers, in whose society he visited scenes of what he describes as "swaggering riot" and "roaring dissipation."

From this time for several years to come, love-making was the chief amusement, or rather, the most serious business of Robert Burns. There was not a comely girl in Tarbolton on whom he did not compose a song, and then he made one which included all. "When he was thus inly moved," says his brother Gilbert, "the agitations of his mind and body exceeded anything of the kind I ever knew in real life. He had always a particular jealously of people who were richer than himself, or had more consequence. His love was, therefore, rarely settled on persons of this description."

Wha for thy sake wad gladly die?
Or canst thou break that heart of his,
Whase only faut is loving thee?
If love for love thou wilt na gie,

At least be pity to me shown;
A thought ungentle canna be

The thought o' Mary Morison.

Irvine was at this time a centre of the flax-dressing art, and as Robert and his brother raised flax on their farm, they hoped that if they could dress, as well as grow flax, they might double their profits. Burns started for Irvine at midsummer, 1781, but unfortunately there "he contracted acquaintances of a freer manner of thinking and living than he had been used to, whose society prepared him for over-leaping the bounds of rigid virtue which had hitherto restrained him." The migration to Irvine was the descent to Avernus, from which he never afterwards, in the actual conduct of life, however often in his hours of inspiration, escaped to breathe again the pure upper air.

But these first three or four years at Lochlea, if not free from peril, were still with the poet times of innocence, and "his conduct was governed by the strictest rules of virtue and modesty, Burns was robbed by his partner, his from which he never deviated till he flax-dressing shop was burned to the reached his twenty-third year." At ground during the carousal of a New last he set his affections on a young Year's morning, and he returned, poor woman named Ellison Begbie, the and broken down by misfortune, to daughter of a small farmer, and asked find his father lying on his death-bed. her to be his wife; but he could not Consumption had set in, and as the old prevail on her to marry him, and this man's last hour arrived, he said that disappointment had a malign influence there was one of his children of whose over the poet. Long afterwards, when future he could not think without fear. he had seen much of the world, Burns Robert, who was in the room, came up spoke of this girl as, of all those on to his bedside and asked, "Oh, father, whom he ever fixed his fickle affec- is it me you mean?" The old man tions, the one most likely to have made said it was. Robert turned to the wina pleasant partner for life. It was to dow, with tears streaming down his her he addressed the pure and beauti-cheeks, and his bosom swelling, from