He then breaks off in celebration of "M'Lauchlan, thairm-inspiring sage," that is, "a well-known performer of Scottish music on the violin," and returns, at his leisure, to the fairies!

The other passage which we have called magnificent is a description of a spate. But in it, it is true, he personates the Auld Brig, and is inspired by wrath and contempt of the New.

"Conceited gowk! puff'd up wi' windy pride!
This monie a year I've stood the flood an' tide;
And tho' wi' crazy eild I'm sair forfairn,
I'll be a Brig, when ye're as hapeless cairn!
As yet ye little ken about the matter,
But twa-three winters will inform you better,
When heavy, dark, continued, a'-day rains,
Wi' deepening deluges o'erflow the plains;
When from the hills where springs the brawling Coil,
Or stately Lugar's mossy fountains boil,

Or where the Greenock winds his moorland course,
Or haunted Garpal draws his feeble source,
Arous'd by blust'ring winds an' spotting thowes,
In mony a torrent down his sna-broo rowes;
While crashing ice, borne on the roaring speat,
Sweeps dams, an' mills, an' brigs, a' to the gate;
And from Glenbuck, down to the Ratton-key,
Auld Ayr is just one lengthen'd, tumbling sea;
Then down ye'll hurl, deil nor ye never rise!

And dash the gumlie jaups up to the pouring skies.”

Perhaps we have dwelt too long on this point; but the truth is that Burns would have utterly despised most of what is now dignified with the name of poetry, where harmlessly enough

"Pure description takes the place of sense;"

but far worse, where the agonizing artist intensifies himself into genuine convulsions at the shrine of nature, or acts the epileptic to extort alms. The world is beginning to lose patience with such idolators, and insists on being allowed to see the sun set with her own eyes, and with her own ears to hear the sea. Why, there is often more poetry in five lines of Burns than any fifty volumes of the versifiers who have had the audacity to criticise him-as by way of specimen

""When biting Boreas, fell and doure,
Sharp shivers thro' the leafless bow'r;
When Phoebus gies a short-liv'd glow'r
Far south the lift,

Dim-dark'ning thro' the flaky show'r
Or whirling drift:

"Ae night the storm the steeples rock'd,
Poor labor sweet in sleep was lock'd,
While burns, wi' snawy wreeths up-chock'd,
Wild-eddying swirl,

Or thro' the mining outlet bock'd,

Down headlong hurl."

"Halloween" is now almost an obsolete word-and the liveliest of all festivals, that used to usher in the winter with one long night of mirthful mockery of superstitious fancies, not unattended with stirrings of imaginative fears in many a simple breast, is gone with many other customs of the good old time, not among town-folks only, but dwellers in rural parishes far withdrawn from the hum of crowds, where all such rites originate and latest fall into desuetude. The present wise generation of youngsters can care little or nothing about a poem which used to drive their grandfathers and grandmothers half-mad with merriment when boys and girls, gathered in a circle round some choice reciter, who, though perhaps endowed with no great memory for grammar, had half of Burns by heart. Many of them, doubtless, are of opinion that it is a silly affair. So must think the more aged march-of-mind men who have outgrown the whims and follies of their ill-educated youth, and become instructors in all manner of wisdom. In practice extinct to elderly people it survives in poetry; and there the body of the harmless superstition, in its very form and pressure, is embalmed. "Halloween was thought, surely you all know that, to be a night "when witches, devils, and other mischief-making beings, are all abroad on their baneful midnight errands; particularly those aerial people, the fairies, are said on that night to hold a grand anniversary." So writes Burns in a note; but in the poem evil spirits are disarmed of all their terrors, and fear is fun. It might have begun well enough, and nobody would have found fault, with

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but Burns, by a few beautiful introductory lines, brings the festival at once within the world of poetry.

"Upon that night, when fairies light,

On Cassilis Downans dance,

Or owre the lays, in splendid blaze,
On sprightly coursers prance;
Or for Colean the route is ta'en,

Beneath the moon's pale beams;
There, up the cove, to stray an' rove
Amang the rocks and streams

To sport that night.

66 Amang the bonnie winding banks,

Where Doon rins, wimpling clear,

Where Bruce ance rul'd the martial ranks
And shook his Carrick spear."

Then instantly he collects the company-the business of tne evening is set a-going-each stanza has its new actor and its new charm-the transitions are as quick as it is in the power of winged words to fly; female characters of all ages and dispositions, from the auld guid-wife "wha fuft her pipe wi' sic a lunt," to wee Jenny "wi' her little skelpie limmer's face "-Jean, Nell, Merran, Meg, maidens all—and "wanton widow Leezie figure each in her own individuality animated into full life, by a few touches. Nor less various the males, from hav'rel Will to "auld uncle John wha wedlock's joys sin' Mar's year did desire "-Rab and Jock, and "fechtin Jamie Fleck" like all bullies "cooard afore bogles; " the only pause in their fastfollowing proceedings being caused by garrulous grannie's pious reproof of Jenny for daurin to try sic sportin "as eat the apple at the glass —a reproof proving that her own wrinkled breast holds many queer memories of lang-syne Halloweens;—all the carking cares of the work-day world are clean forgotten; the hopes, fears and wishes that most agitate every human breast,

and are by the simplest concealed, here exhibit themselves without disguise in the freedom not only permitted but inspired by the passion that rules the night—"the passion," says the poet himself, "of prying into futurity, which makes a striking part of the history of human nature in its rude state, in all ages and nations; and it may be some entertainment to a philosophic mind, if any such should honor the author with a perusal, to see the remains of it, among the more unenlightened of our own."

But how have we been able to refrain from saying a few words about the Cottar's Saturday Night? How affecting Gilbert's account of its origin !

"Robert had frequently remarked to me that he thought there was something peculiarly venerable in the phrase, 'Let us worship God,' used by a decent sober head of a family introducing family worship. To this sentiment of the author the world is indebted for the Cottar's Saturday Night. The hint of the plan, and title of the poem, were taken from Ferguson's Farmer's Ingle. When Robert had not some pleasure in view in which I was not thought fit to participate, we used frequently to walk together, when the weather was favorable, on the Sunday afternoons (those precious breathing-times to the laboring part of the community) and enjoyed such Sundays as would make me regret to see their number abridged. It was on one of those walks that I first had the pleasure of hearing the author repeat the Cottar's Saturday Night. I do not recollect to have read or heard anything by which I was more highly electrified." No wonder Gilbert was highly electrified; for though he had read or heard many things of his brother Robert's of equal poetical power, not one among them all was so charged with those sacred influences that connect the human heart with heaven. It must have sounded like a very revelation of all the holiness for ever abiding in that familiar observance, but which custom, without impairing its efficacy, must often partially hide from the children of labor when it is all the time helping to sustain them upon and above this earth. And this from the erring to the steadfast brother! From the troubled to the quiet spirit! out of a heart too often steeped in the waters of bitterness, issuing, as from an unpolluted fountain, the inspiration of pious

song! But its effects on innumerable hearts is not now electrical— it inspires peace. It is felt yet, and sadly changed will then be Scotland, if ever it be not felt, by every one who peruses it, to be a communication from brother to brother. It is felt by us, all through from beginning to end, to be BURNS's Cottar's Saturday Night; at each succeeding sweet or solemn stanza we more and more love the man-at its close we bless him as a benefactor; and if, as the picture fades, thoughts of sin and of sorrow will arise, and will not be put down, let them, as we hope for mercy, be of our own-not his; let us tremble for ourselves as we hear a voice saying, "Fear God and keep his commandments."

There are few more perfect poems. It is the utterance of a heart whose chords were all tuned to gratitude, "making sweet melody" to the Giver, on a night not less sacred in His eye than His own appointed Sabbath.

"November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh;

The short'ning winter day is near a close;
The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh;
The black'ning trains o' craws to their repose;
The toil worn Cottar frae his labor goes,

This night his weekly moil is at an end,
Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes,

Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend,

And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend."

That one single stanza is in itself a picture, one may say a poem, of the poor man's life. It is so imagined on the eye that we absolutely see it; but then not an epithet but shows the condition on which he holds, and the heart with which he endures, and enjoys it. Work he must in the face of November; but God who made the year shortens and lengthens its days for the sake of his living creatures, and has appointed for them all their hour of rest. The "miry beasts" will soon be at supper in their clean-strawed stalls-"the black'ning train o' craws' invisibly hushed on their rocking trees; and he whom God made after his own image, that "toil-worn Cottar," he too may lie down and sleep. There is nothing especial in his lot wherefore he should be pitied, nor are we asked to pity him, as he "col