prized above life. He calls upon him early in the forenoon, and finds him "in a small house of one story (it happened to have two), on a window-seat reading, with the doors open, and the family arrangements going on in his presence." After eight years' absence from Scotland, did not his heart leap at the sight of her greatest son sitting thus happy in his own humble household? Twenty years after, did not his heart melt at the rising up of the sanctified image? No-for the room was “altogether without that appearance of snugness and seclusion which a student requires!" The poet conducted him through some of his beautiful haunts, and for his amusement let off some of his electioneering squibs, which are among the very best ever composed, and Whiggish as they are, might have tickled a Tory as they jogged along; but Jos thought them "inferior to his other pieces," and so no doubt they were to the "Cottar's Saturday Night," and "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled." Perhaps they walked as far as Lincluden-and the bard repeated his famous fragment of an "Ode to Liberty "—with "marked and peculiar energy." The listener ought to have lost his wits, and to have leapt sky-high. But he who was destined to "The Defence of Order," felt himself called by the voice that sent him on that mission, to rebuke the bard on the banks of his own river-for " he showed a disposition which, however, was easily repressed, to throw out political remarks, of the same nature with those for which he had been reprehended," three years before by the Board of Excise! Mr. Walker was not a Commissioner. Burns, it is true, had been told "not to think ;" but here was a favorable opportunity for violating with safety that imperial mandate. Woods have ears, but in their whispers they betray no secrets-had Burns talked treason, 'twould have been pity to stop his tongue. This world is yet rather in the dark as to "the political remarks for which he had been reprehended," and as he "threw out some of the same nature," why was the world allowed to remain unenlightened? What right had Josiah Walker to repress any remarks made, in the confidence of friendship, by Robert Burns? And what power? Had Burns chosen it, he could as easily have squabashed Josiah as thrown him into the Nith. He was not to

be put down by fifty such; he may have refrained, but he was not repressed, and in courtesy to his companion, treated him with an old wife's song.

The record of the second day is shameful. To ask any person, however insignificant, to your inn, and then find fault with him in a private letter for keeping you out of bed, would not be gentlemanly; but of such an offence twenty years after his death publicly to accuse Burns! No mention is made of dinner-and we shrewdly suspect Burns dined at home. However, he gave up two days to the service of his friend, and his friend's friend, and such was his reward. Why did not this dignified personage "repress' "Burns's licentious wit as well as his political opinions? If it was "not more licentious than is unhappily too venial in higher circles," why mention it at all? What were "the excesses" of which he was unnecessarily free in the avowal? They could not have regarded unlawful intercourse with the sex-for "they were not sufficient to account for the mysterious insinuations against his character," all of which related to wo

men.

Yet this wretched mixture of meanness, worldliness, and morality, interlarded with some liberal sentiment, and spiced with spite, absolutely seems intended for a vindication!

There are generally two ways at least of telling the same story; and 'tis pity we have not Burns's own account of that long sederunt. It is clear that before midnight he had made the discovery that his right and his left hand assessor were a couple of solemn blockheads, and that to relieve the tedium, he kept ply. ing them with all manner of bams. Both gentlemen were probably in black, and though laymen, decorous as deacons on religion and morality—and defenders of the faith-sententious champions of Church and State. It must have been amusing to see them gape. Nobody ever denied that Burns always conducted himself with the utmost propriety in presence of those whom he respected for their genius, their learning, or their worth. Without sacrificing an atom of his independence, how deferential, nay, how reverential was he in his behavior to Dugald Stewart! Had he and Dr. Blair entertained Burns as their guest in that ian, how delightful had been the evening's record! No such "licentious wit as is unhappily too venial in higher circles,"

would have flowed from his lips-no "unnecessarily free avowal of his excesses." He would have delighted the philosopher and the divine with his noble sentiments as he had done of old-the illustrious Professor would have remembered and heard again the beautiful eloquence that charmed him on the Braid-hills. There can be nothing unfair surely in the conjecture, that these gentlemen occasionally contributed a sentence or two to the stock of conversation. They were entertaining Burns, and good manners must have induced them now and then "here to interpose with a small smart remark-sentiment facete-or unctuous an. ecdote. Having lived in "higher circles," and heard much of the "licentious wit unhappily too venial there," we do not well see how they could have avoided giving their guest a few specimens of it. Grave men are often gross--and they were both grave as ever was earthenware. Such wit is the most contagious of any; and "budge doctors of the Stoic fur" then express "Fancies" that are anything but "Chaste and Noble.” Who knows but that they were driven into indecency by the desperation of self-defence took refuge in repartee--and fought the gauger with his own rod? That Burns, in the dead silence that ever and anon occurred, should have called for "fresh supplies of liquor," is nothing extraordinary. For there is not in nature or in art a sadder spectacle than an empty bottle standing in the centre of a circle, equidistant from three friends, one of whom had returned to his native land after a yearning absence of eight years, another anonymous, and the third the author of Scotch Drink and the Earnest Cry. Josiah more than insinuates that he himself shy'd the bottle. We more than doubt it-we believe that for some hours he turned up his little finger as frequently as Burns. He did right to desist as soon as he had got his dose, and of that he was not only the best but the only judge; he appears to have been sewn up "when it began to grow late;" Burns was sober as a lark "about three in the morning." It is likely enough that "about two months after, Burns was better supported by his companions at a similar revel”—so much better indeed in every way that the revel was dissimilar; but still we cling to our first belief, that the two gentlemen in black drank as much as could have been rea

sonably expected of them—that is, as much as they could holdhad they attempted more, there is no saying what might have been the consequences. And we still continue to think, too, that none but a heartless man, or a man whose heart had been puffed up like a bladder with vanity, would have tagged to the tail of his pitiful tale of that night, that cruel statement of "cold without, and inebriety within," which was but the tittle-tattle of gossipping tradition, and most probably a lie.

This is the proper way to treat all such memorabilia-with the ridicule of contempt and scorn. Refute falsehood first, and then lash the fools that utter it. Much of the obloquy that so long rested on the memory of our great National Poet originated in frivolous hearsays of his life and conversation, which in every telling lost some portion of whatever truth might have belonged to them, and acquired at least an equal portion of falsehood, till they became unmixed calumnies-many of them of the blackest kind-got into print, which is implicitly believed by the million-till the simple story, which, as first told, had illustrated some interesting trait of his character or genius, as last told, redounded to his disgrace, and was listened to by the totally abstinent with uplifted eyes, hands, and shoulders, as an anecdote of the dreadful debaucheries of Robert Burns.

That he did sometimes associate, while in Edinburgh, with persons not altogether worthy of him, need not be denied, nor wondered at, for it was inevitable. He was not for ever beset with the consciousness of his own supereminence. Prudence he did not despise, and he has said some strong things in her praise; but she was not, in his system of morality, the Queen of Virtues. His genius, so far from separating him from any portion of his kind, impelled him towards humanity, without fear and without suspicion. No saint or prude was he to shun the society of "Jolly companions every one." Though never addicted to drinking, he had often set the table in a roar at Tarbolton, Mauchline, Kirkoswald, Irvine and Ayr, and was he all at once to appear in the character of dry Quaker in Edinburgh? Were the joys that circle round the flowing bowl to be interdicted to him alone, the wittiest, the brightest, the most original, and the most eloquent of all the men of his day? At

or

Ellisland we know for certain, that his domestic life was temperate and sober; and that beyond his own doors, his convivialities among gentle and semple," though not unfrequent were not excessive, and left his character without any of those deeper stains with which it has been since said to have been sullied. It is for ever to be lamented that he was more dissipated at Dumfries-how much more-and under what stronger temptations, can be told in not many words. But every glass of wine " stouter cheer" he drank-like mere ordinary men too fond of the festive hour-seems to have been set down against him as a separate sin; and the world of fashion, and of philosophy too, we fear, both of which used him rather scurvily at last, would not be satisfied unless Burns could be made out-a drunkard! Had he not been such a wonderful man in conversation, he might have enjoyed unhurt the fame of his poetry. But what was reading his poetry, full as it is of mirth and pathos, to hearing the Poet! When all were desirous of the company of a man of such genius and such dispositions, was it in human nature to be always judicious in the selection or rejection of associates? His deepest and best feelings he for the most part kept sacred for communion with those who were held by him in honor as well as love. But few were utterly excluded from the cordiality of one who, in the largeness of his heart, could sympathize with all, provided he could but bring out by the stroke of the keen-tempered steel of his own nature, some latent spark of humanity from the flint of theirs; and it is easy to see with what dangers he thus must have been surrounded, when his genius and humor, his mirth and glee, his fun and frolic, and all the outrageous merriment of his exhilarated or maddened imagination came to be considered almost as common property by all who chose to introduce themselves to Robert Burns, and thought themselves entitled to do so because they could prove they had his poems by heart. They sent for the gauger, and the gauger came. A prouder man breathed not, but he had never been subjected to the ceremonial of manners, the rule of artificial life; and he was ready, at all times, to grasp the hand held out in friendship, to go when a message said come, for he knew