HEAVENLY WISDOM. O HAPPY is the man who hears And who celestial Wisdom makes For she has treasures greater far And her rewards more precious are In her right hand she holds to view She guides the young with innocence, According as her labors rise. So her rewards increase; Her ways are ways of pleasantness, ROBERT BURNS. 1759-1796. ROBERT BURNS was born near Ayr, in the yet-venerated clay-built cottage which his father's hands had constructed. Reared amidst a religious and virtuous household's struggles with poverty and toil, he enjoyed little even of the ordinary education of a Scottish peasant. A smattering of French, a little mathematics, some half dozen English authors, some exercise in local debating clubs, the fireside religious instruction of his father, the songs of his mother, and the traditional legends of an old female domestic,-these constituted the early intellectual stock in trade of the ploughman poet. From his youth song burst from him incontrollably. A nature susceptible, wayward, impetuous, proud, and, even in youth, shadowed with hypochondria, could not give promise of a life of prudence and steadiness. His father had died in embarrassment and distress; a farm leased by Robert and his brother Gilbert was, like the family's former agricultural speculations, totally unsuccessful; this, combined with the consequences of the poet's own indiscretion or criminality, forced him to think of seeking a more propitious fortune in the West Indies. The publication of his poems at Kilmarnock had, however, blown his reputation to Edinburgh. On the point of embarking for Jamaica, he was advised to try what patronage and fame might do for him in the Scottish capital. He was received with unbounded applause by rank and learning; nor was his bearing or his conversation unworthy of the spheres in which he mingled; nobility owned the title of low-born genius to a patent to higher respect than birth can confer; and learning was amazed by the power of the gigantic judgment, the untaught eloquence, and the splendid wit, that enabled the unacademic rustic to cope with her acquirements. The Edinburgh edition of his poems yielded the poet, it is said, nearly £900. Rescued thus from poverty, he retired to the farm of Elliesland on the Nith in Dumfriesshire, with his wife (formerly Miss Armour-"Bonnie Jean") and her four children. The disadvantages of his farm, added to his own careless management, compelled him in two or three years to throw up his lease, and rely on the prospect of promotion in the excise, in which he had procured an humble situation. The jealousy excited by some parts of his conduct, by former satires on the royal family, and by imprudent political jeux-d'esprit, prevented his advancement. Meanwhile, his health was daily undermined by dissipation-a dissipation no doubt increased by the nature of his profession, and by the importunities of hundreds who sought him for the charms of his conversation. He died at Dumfries in utter poverty, but without one farthing of debt. The sorrow of his country was universal. The mausoleums erected to his memory would have amply "stowed his pantry;" the patronage denied to the unfortunate poet has been generously extended to his family. Professor Wilson, in his eloquent Essay on the Life and Genius of Burns, speaking of his closing days, remarks:-"But he had his Bible with him in his lodgings, and he read it almost continually-often when seated on a bank, from which he had difficulty in rising without assistance, for his weakness was extreme, and in his emaciation he was like a ghost. The fire of his eye was not dimmed-indeed fever had lighted it up beyond even its natural brightness; and though his voice, once so various, was now hollow, his discourse was still that of a poet. To the last he loved the sunshine, the grass, and the flowers; to the last he had a kind look and word for the passers-by, who all knew it was Burns. Laboring men, on their way from work, would step aside to the two or three houses called the Brow, to know if there was any hope of his life; and it is not to be doubted that devout people remembered him, who had written the Cotter's Saturday Night in their prayers. His sceptical doubts no longer troubled him; they had never been more than shadows; and he had at last the faith of a confiding Christian.” Let not ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys and destiny obscure, The short and simple annals of the poor.-GRAY. My lov'd, my honor'd, much respected friend! My dearest meed, a friend's esteem and praise; To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays, The lowly train in life's sequestered scene; The native feelings strong, the guileless ways, What Aiken in a cottage would have been: Ah! though his worth unknown, far happier there, I ween! November chill blaws loud wi' angry sough; The shortening winter-day is near a close; This night his weekly moil is at an end, Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend, And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend. At length his lonely cot appears in view, Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty wifie's smile, The lisping infant prattling on his knee, Does a' his weary carking cares beguile, And makes him quite forget his labor and his toil. Belyve the elder bairns come drappin' in, At service out amang the farmers roun'; Some ca' the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin A cannie errand to a neebor town: |