O! we are far too happy while they last;

We have our good things first, and they cost naught;

Then the new splendor comes unfathomed, vast,
A costly trouble, aye, a sumptuous thought,
And will not wait, and cannot be possessed,
Though infinite yearnings fold it to the breast.
And time, that seemed so long, is fleeting by,

And life is more than life; love more than love;
We have not found the whole-and we must die-
And still the unclasped glory floats above.
The inmost and the utmost faint from sight,
Forever secret in their veil of light.
-Margaret in the Xebec.

ROBERT BURNS.

OBERT BURNS, the son of a small farmer,

ROBE

was born near Ayr, Scotland, in 1759, and died in 1796. He manifested at an early age an eager appetite for learning; but his opportunities for gratifying it were few: in the country school he gained the rudiments of an education in English branches, and in later life learned something of French, Latin, and the higher mathematics. It is worthy of note that one of his favorite books, in boyhood, was Shakespeare's Plays. At the age of sixteen he began to write verses, striving to express in rhyme the emotions excited by his first affair of the heart. These youthful compositions were circulated in manuscript among his acquaintances, and finally came to the notice of some persons of literary taste, who persuaded Burns to publish a volume. The venture brought him fame at once, and twenty pounds (one hundred dollars) in money. He visited Edinburgh on invitation of Dr. Blacklock, and was well received in the brilliant society of that city. A second edition of his poems, published in 1787, yielded him a profit of seven hundred pounds. But his gain in fame and money from his visit to the Scottish capital was more than offset by his acquisition of the dissolute habits which were destined to impede his literary progress and ultimately to bring him to an early grave. His rank among poets it is not easy to determine, though Lord Byron and Allan Cunningham placed him among the first. It is probable that in their estimate they regarded his promise rather than his performance. But it may safely be said that of all poets who have sprung from the people, receiving almost no aid from education, he was surely the greatest. He was the poet of passion and feeling; but his utterances were simple and natural, and owed none of their force or beauty to art. His poems glow with tenderness and the love of freedom, and are rich in a rare, pure humor that none have known how to imitate. G. R. C.