Scottish author of the first rank in all the long period which intervened between Buchanan and Hume. The removal of the chief nobility and gentry, consequent on the legislative union, appeared to destroy our last hopes as a separate nation, possessing a separate literature of our own; nay, for a time to have all but extinguished the flame of intellectual exertion and ambition. Long torn and harassed by religious and political feuds, this people had at last heard, as many be lieved, the sentence of irremediable degradation pronounced by the lips of their own prince and parliament. The uni versal spirit of Scotland was humbled; the unhappy insurrections of 1715 and 1745 revealed the full extent of her internal disunion; and England took, in some respects, merciless advantage of the fallen.

Time, however, passed on; and Scotland, recovering at last from the blow which had stunned her energies, began to vindicate her pretensions, in the only departments which had been left open to her, with a zeal and a success which will ever distinguish one of the brightest pages of her history. Deprived of every national honour and distinction which it was possible to remove -all the high branches of external ambition lopped off-sunk at last, as men thought, effectually into a province, willing to take law with passive submission, in letters as well as in polity, from her powerful sister-the old kingdom revived suddenly from ber stupor, and once more asserted her name in reclamations, which England was compelled not only to hear but to applaud, and wherewith all Europe rung from side to side, at the moment when a national poet came forward to profit by the reflux of a thousand half-forgotten sympathies - amid the full joy of a national pride revived and re-established beyond the dream of hope."

This is an admirable mixture of history, philosophy, and criticism. But we must complete Mr. Lockhart's view by one more extract.

"On one point there can be no controversy; the poetry of Burns has had most powerful influence in reviving and strengthening the national feelings of his countrymen. Amidst penury and labour, his youth fed on the old minstrelsy and traditional glories of his nation, and his genius divined that what he felt so deeply must belong to a spirit that might be smothered around him but could not be extinguished. The political circumstances of Scotland were, and had been, such as to starve the flame of patriotism;

the popular literature had striven, and not in vain, to make itself English; and, above all, a new and cold system of speculative philosophy had begun to spread widely among us. A peasant appeared, and set himself to check the creeping pestilence of this indifference. Whatever genius has since then been devoted to the illustration of the national manners, and sustaining thereby of the national feelings of the people, there can be no doubt that Burns will ever be remembered as the founder, and, alas! in his own person as the martyr, of this reformation.

"That what is now-a-days called, by solitary eminence, the wealth of the nation, had been on the increase ever since our incorporation with a greater and wealthier state; nay, that the laws had been improving, and, above all, the administration of the laws, it would be mere bigotry to dispute. It may also be conceded easily, that the national mind had been rapidly clearing itself of many injurious prejudices-that the people, as a people, had been gradually and surely advancing in knowledge and wisdom, as well as in wealth and security. But all this good had not been accomplished without rude work. If the improvement were valuable, it had been purchased dearly. The spring fire,' Allan Cunningham says beautifully somewhere, 'which destroys the furze, makes an end also of the nests of a thousand songbirds; and he who goes a trouting with lime leaves little of life in the stream.' We were getting fast ashamed of many precious and beautiful things, only for that they were old and our own.

"Burns did not place himself only within the estimation and admiration of those whom the world called his superiors -a solitary tree emerging into light and air, and leaving the parent underwood as low and dark as before. He, as well as any man, knew his own worth, and reverenced the lyre;' but he ever announced himself as a peasant, the representative of his class, the painter of their manners, inspired by the same influences which ruled their bosoms; and whoever sympathised with the verse of Burns had his soul opened, for the moment, to the whole family of man. If, in too many instances, the matter has stopped there, the blame is not with the poet, but with the mad and unconquerable pride and coldness of the worldly heart-'man's inhumanity to man.' If, in spite of Burns and all his successors, the boundary lines of society are observed with increasing strictness among us-if the various orders of men still, day by day, feel the chord of sympathy relaxing, let us lament over symptoms of a disease in the body poli

tic, which, if it goes on, must find, sooner or later, a fatal ending: but let us not undervalue the antidote which has all along been checking this strong poison. Who can doubt, that at this moment thousands of the first-born of Egypt' look upon the smoke of a cottager's chimney with feelings which would never have been developed within their being had there been no Burns."

These are true and noble sentiments, and admirably expressed. But one point there is of primary importance, which lies even beyond the source of these remarks, untouched; and which Allan Cunninghain ought to have taken up, stated, and illustrated, as his peculiar province: how did it chance that a peasant was the only representative and reviver of Scottish nationality and independence? This Allan Cunningham must, or at least ought to know; and if he knew, why not come forward, like a man, and boldly state his sentiments? And if there be any sufficient answer to that question, may it not be susceptible of a further application, and serve to explain the cause of the neglect under which Burns struggled and died? Perhaps our friend Allan had an opinion on the subject, but was afraid to express it. Well, we also have an opinion; and, like the old chief, our motto shall be," We dare."

The effect of the union in unnation

alising the Scottish nobility and gentry, cannot be better described than it has been done by Lockhart, in one of the preceding extracts, so far as the view he has taken goes. But it had still more pernicious consequences. The Scottish nobility, not content with themselves aping the customs of England, were anxious to introduce them into Scotland, however unsuited to the character of the nation. Success in trivial points encouraged them to make one great effort for the subversion of the national church, and the establishment of episcopacy in its stead. This attempt was happily frustrated by the patriotic firmness of the Scottish peasantry, resisting to the utmost, though assailed by all the terrors of combined tyranny and persecution. This was the first effectual barrier against the floodtide of reckless innovation. In this light it was viewed even by Burns, as Cunningham informs us.

"On hearing a gentleman sneering at the Solemn League and Covenant, and calling it ridiculous and fanatical, Burns eyed him across the table, and exclaimed,

The Solemn League and Covenant Cost Scotland blood-cost Scotland tears

But it sealed Freedom's sacred cause ;If thou'rt a slave, indulge thy sneers!""

Had he habitually thought thus, and acted upon principles akin to such thoughts, very different, in all probability, would have been his career, and especially its melancholy close. It is well known that the nobility and gentry in general were any thing but favourable to the Solemn League and Covenant; and though it secured to the nation the possession of civil and religious liberty, in which they unthankfully participated, it was long before it eradicated the slavish principles from their minds; we say slavish principles, because no man can be a thorough tyrant who is not in his heart a slave; and he who tramples on the rights of others is always base enough to be ready sneakingly to barter away his own. They had sunk generally into a state of complete political sycophancy-slaves at London, and tyrants at home. It was perfectly evident, therefore, that if ever the spirit of Scottish national independence of character revived, its restorer could not be one of the degraded yet haughty aristocracy, but must spring from among the peasantry, who alone retained the free spirit of their fathers. In this view Lockhart concurs with us; but he does not tell us how the peasantry retained that independence of character of which lords and literary men were equally destitute. Allan Cunningham does not go even so far as Lockhart; though, being himself a peasant, as he has sufficient manliness to own, he ought to have been able to solve the problem. Our unhesitating conviction is, that it is to be ascribed entirely to the influence of the Church of Scotland, with its appendage, the system of parochial schools, wherewith the whole land was instructed in the duties they owed to their God, their neighbour, and themselves. Their own strong theology gave additional strength and elevation to their native sagacity and boldness; and accustomed as they were morn and even to commune with their Creator, they feared not to lift an independent brow in the presence of any fellow-creature. This the Anglicised nobility could not understand; and when they and the Edinburgh literati expected to have met with deep and

almost adoring gratitude from the ploughman whom they condescended to admit to their presence, they were astonished to find themselves encountered, matched, and mastered, in the wide and varied arena of intellectual conversation by one of scarcely less general information than their own, pointed and urged home by the lightning-strength of genius. The excitement of such a novelty was pleasing for a time; but their disturbed selfcomplacency soon began to take the alarm, and they gave the gifted intruder to understand, by no equivocal tokens, that it was time for him to retire from the monotonous smoothness of their polished circles, and resume his former occupations and companionships.

In an evil hour for himself, Burns had embraced the meagre Arminianism which made a noise in the west of Scotland about that time, under the name of the New-light; which, however pleasing in the sunny hours of prosperity, or pure in the absence of strong passions or strong temptation, is incapable of sustaining the soul amid the storms of adverse fortune, and yields, the sport of every vice, in the giddy whirl of its intoxicated strength. The stains of his early manhood were part of the fruits of the unhappy preference which Burns gave to those delusive doctrines; and when the titled and the wealthy left him to his own resources, in the bitterness of his mortification he fell into the usual error of those who seek release from anxiety and vexation by the temporary oblivion of dissipation. Yes, let the truth be stated. He sought to deaden the pangs of wounded pride and mortified ambition by casting off all conventional restraints, and daring to say or to do whatever the wild strength, or wilder anguish, of his reckless spirit prompted. Men of all classes and all parties stood aloof; every vice of the darkest kind and the deepest dye was charged against him; he scorned, except in one or two instances, to vindicate himself from even the most outrageous fabrications, met the storm of obloquy with a scowling but a fearless brow, till, consumed no less by the fever of the mind than the fever of the body, he died, undaunted, unsubdued, and, in spite of his many miseries, wearing his poetic wreath not only unfaded, but with all its leafy honours thickening and extending.

Perhaps we had better briefly restate our theory. The national religion

of Scotland had preserved the national independence of character of her peasantry, while her aristocracy had sunk into a state of complete political subserviency. The poetry of Burns gave embodied form to the surviving patriotic spirit of the undegenerate portion of his countrymen; but, in his heady and neglected pride, he outraged their pure morality and lofty religious feelings, and they stood aloof from the man whose genius they loved, but whose misconduct they could not tolerate. He perished; but a still greater successor arose to complete the work. Sir Walter Scott took up the spirit of Scottish nationality where it had been left by Burns, and carried it upwards through all the higher grades of society, till from the cottage to the palace, from John O'Groat's to the Mull of Galloway, Scotland became populous with the great men of other days, and breathed afresh the spirit of her former independence. This has been of incalculable advantage to both countries, though we cannot stay at present to discuss the point; but woe to both if Scotland be ever degraded into a mere province of England.

This view furnishes a complete vindication of Scotland from the charge of neglecting her greatest poet, so far as the middle classes and the majority of the nation are concerned - let the aristocracy vindicate themselves, if they can. Burns loved his country deeply, truly, fervently; and in this consisted his strength. He adopted the meagre Arminianism of the New-light divines; and in this consisted his weakness. He mingled among the Anglicised nobility, till they taught him a portion of their loose voluptuousness and love of intemperate revelry-their five-bottle jollities; and he violated the weak conventional decorum which they held in lieu of morality. Such habits might have been tolerated, perhaps even praised, if he had worn a star, or been worth a pluni; but were unpardonable in a peasant, thus daring to be as vicious as a noble or a wealthy cit. But his manly bearing and assumption of independence was still more displeasing to the Sir Archy Macsycophants of the day; and glad of an opportunity to throw him off, they gave currency to the grossest calumnies against the man whom they would not tolerate as an equal in virtue of his genius, and could not degrade into servility. At the same time the mass

of his countrymen, retaining the sound religious sentiments and pure morality of their fathers, were justly offended with his habits, so far as they were evil, or reported to be so; and though they continued to admire his poetry, they could not countenance what they were taught to consider his glaring licentiousness. Had Scotland in general known how untrue were most of the accusations which at that time were so insidiously and so extensively circulated to blacken his name, he would never have been allowed to perish, the calumniated victim of a haughty, jealous, intolerant, and mean-spirited aristocracy. He perished in his prime; but the peasantry and the middle classes of Scotland have no reason to blush on account of his early and hapless doom. Let the blame rest with those Anglicised nobles and gentry, who first corrupted, then forsook, maligned, and left him to his fate.

We are not speaking at randomwe (the writer of this article) can substantiate every important particular in the view thus given, on our own knowledge, or the most unexceptionable authority; and we put it to Allan Cunningham if he does not know it all to be strictly true. And knowing it, why did he not come boldly forth, and while he unhesitatingly censured the misconduct of Burns, state as fearlessly the true cause of his errors, brand the accusation on those who were the chief culprits, and vindicate the character of that noblest portion of the Scottish community, its high-souled and pureminded peasantry, who were so far blinded by slanderous misrepresentations as to leave their own beloved bard in his hour of darkness and death, but who never for a moment ceased to admire his glowing and independent strains, as they now cherish his memory and extol his fame? Why did not Allan Cunningham, himself a peasantbard, and no unworthy follower even of Burns, speak boldly out, and let the truth be known? Is he defective in moral courage? We grieve to say it; but such is the impression which the perusal of his work left on our mind. There are abundant indications throughout the volume that his sentiments are not greatly different from those which we have stated; but there is a weak and unmanly trimming, as if he were afraid of giving offence, and thought to manage so as to please all parties. In this manner he has done justice

neither to Burns nor to himself; and we cannot help considering the work as therefore comparatively a failure. Lockhart's is as yet the " Life of Burns;" but it, too, is defective. Who will say, "Come, I will write a better?" The last thirty or forty pages of Cunningham's memoir are well written, sometimes eloquently, and with a fine perception of Burns' merits as a poetonly it is somewhat of the latest to expect any thing very new on that point. In the notes on the poems in the second volume there are some amusing anecdotes, well told; but even in them Cunningham is in error in taking a side in the religious controversy, and we take the liberty of telling him so. He should treat the subject as a philosopher, and not as a

sectarian.

Our concluding remarks have assumed a more grave character than we had originally intended; yet not more so than the deep and melancholy interest of the subject may well bear. One word more, and we have done. We honour the aristocracy, when they honour themselves by behaving as they ought. Placed on an ideal elevation, and possessing every means, and sufficient leisure for the cultivation of every mental excellence, and every generous and manly virtue, it is their duty to exhibit to their fellow-men a bright example of that high eminence and refined dignity of which human nature is capable. But if they plunge into vicious indulgence, give a loose to mean and unworthy passions, and exercise a cold and selfish exclusiveness say tyranny-towards men on whom nature has liberally bestowed all her noblest endowments, they forfeit their right to that situation which they dishonour, and prepare their own irretrievable ruin. In times like the present, especially, let them be warned, and act as becomes their idealised position and character. Let them mingle generously with all classes of the community, spreading around them the purity and retinement by which they are, or ought to be, distinguished. Let them promote the civilisation of their less fortunate brethren by all the means in their power, particularly by caring for their education; and, above all, by strenuously securing a religious foundation for that intellectual culture, which, so founded and so conducted, will yet save the country, but which, left to its own spontaneous efforts,