HIGHLAND MARY. "For dear to me as light and life, It is the privilege of genius to confer immortality on things mortal, and give to beauty a fame which can die only with the language in which that fame is bestowed. All the true songs of our nation have been written from the heart, and addressed not to creatures of fancy, but to beings of flesh and blood-warm and real. This is known to the world, who have shown at all times a lively curiosity to learn the history of those who have given life to poetry, and to whose charms we are indebted for the finest productions of the muse. Who would be unwilling to hear the story of the Rosalind of Spenser, the Sacharissa of Waller, or the Highland Mary of Robert Burns? Mary Campbell, for such is the name of the most famous of the heroines of northern song, was a mariner's daughter, a native of Ardrossan, in Ayrshire; and lived, when she won the heart of the poet, in the humble situation of Dairy-maid in the " Castle of Montgomery." All who have written of her, have spoken of her beauty, the swarm of admirers which her loveliness brought, and the warmth yet innocence of her affection for the poet of her native hills. A single song is all that the prolific muse of Burns addressed to her before" hungry ruin had him in the wind ;" and he was about to quit the banks of the Ayr, of the Irvine, and of the Doon, for the burning shores of the West Indies. It was then that he addressed to her the farewell song :— "Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary, And leave auld Scotia's shore? - Across th' Atlantic's roar?" And it would seem that she had accepted the poet as her husband, and was preparing to depart for the land of the lime and the orange, when the hand of death was upon her. But all this has been told by the poet himself. "After a pretty long trial," says Burns, "of the most ardent reciprocal affection, we met, by appointment, on the second Sunday of May, in a sequestered spot on the banks of the Ayr, where we spent a day in taking a farewell, before she should embark for the West Highlands, to arrange matters among her friends for our projected change of life. At the close of the autumn following, she crossed the sea to meet me at Greenock, where she had scarce landed when she was seized with a malignant · fever, which hurried my dear girl to her grave in a few days, before I could even learn of her illness." The poet has pictured those touching moments in verse. "How sweetly bloom'd the gay green birk, How rich the hawthorn's blossom, As underneath their fragrant shade, Flew o'er me and my dearie; Was my sweet Highland Mary." Another hand has added to the picture. "This adieu was performed," says Cromek, " in a striking and moving way; the lovers stood on each side of a small brook, they laid their hands in the stream, and holding a Bible between them, pronounced their vows to be faithful to each other. They parted never to meet again." The spot where this farewell took place is still pointed out. The Bible on which they plighted their faith was long in the possession of the sister of Mary Campbell. On the first volume is written by the hand of Burns: “And ye shall not swear by my name falsely; I am the Lord. - Leviticus, chap. xix. ver. 12." On the second volume, the same hand has written: "Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths.— St. Matthew, chap. v. ver. 33.” And on the blank leaves of both volumes is impressed his mark as a mason, and also signed below, "Robert Burns, Mossgiel." Burns's affection for the early object of his love died only with him. More than three years after the death of Mary Campbell," whose bosom," to use his own language, was fraught with truth, honor, constancy, and love," he wrote one of the most exquisite of his poems the address "To Mary in Heaven." Sweetly and well has Campbell sung in his Ode to the Memory of Burns :— "Who that has melted o'er his lay, The nephew of Highland Mary, by name William Anderson, is the present possessor of the Bible of Burns, which, with a tress of her hair, very long, and very light and shining, he preserves and values. DEATH AND DOCTOR HORNBOOK. "Ye ken Jock Hornbook i' the clachan THE popular and happy satire of Death and Doctor Hornbook is at once very personal and very poetic. The hero of the tale is of the West of Scotland, and the scene of the strange colloquy lies in the same land. It sometimes happens that men, when they least look for it, attain an eminence from which it is not easy to descend, while it is equally unpleasant to remain. Something of this kind happened to worthy Dominie Wilson - the Doctor Hornbook of the poem. He was schoolmaster of Tarbolton, Burns himself says, in a note accompanying a copy of his poems to Dr. Geddes; and having some scholarcraft and a little vanity, set up as an apothecary, and promised advice to the poor, gratis. Burns, who had no wish to be physicked but by a regular practitioner, resented the presumption of the schoolmaster, and it is said, meeting him in the mason lodge of Tarbolton, sat regarding him - while he descanted on his own knowledge, in language stiffened with pedantry — with flashing eyes which witnessed his scorn and contempt. The poet's patience failed him at length, and he exclaimed, "Have done, Dr. Hornbook! have done, Dr. Hornbook!" The command was disregarded, and Burns sat brooding, it is supposed, over his future lampoon, till the hour of separation, which happened to be a late one. At those meet ings of the brethren, drink mingled largely with the "mystic word and grip;" and Cromek, a curious inquirer, was told on the spot in 1806, that the poet, who "was na fou, but just had plenty," walked slowly homeward, composing the poem as he went. He became weary, and sitting carelessly down to rest and think, fell asleep, but when awoke by the morning sun, he found his seat was the parapet of a bridge. He went home, committed Death and Dr. Hornbook to paper, and went to bed. Such is the tradition; but though tradition too often desires to do wonderful things in as wondrous a way, some of these circumstances were confided next day to his brother Gilbert, when he repeated the poem. “I was holding the plough," he adds, " and Robert was letting the water off the field beside me." That Burns had written this, the most poetic of his lampoons, was soon known, for he made no secret of his studies; but as he did not print it in the first edition of his poems, it is likely that for a time he reckoned it too personal. This belief, if indeed he ever entertained it, went off in the air of Edinburgh, for it appeared in the second edition of his works. One of his best productions, “The Jolly Beggars ;" and one of his worst, "The Holy Tulzie," were excluded while he lived, from print. The lampoon of Death and Doctor Hornbook was a punishment too severe for the offence. Wilson, a scholar, a good teacher, and a little vain of his acquirements, soon found that Burns had thrust him too much into sunshine; and quitting Tarbolton, removed to Glasgow, where he engaged in commercial pursuits, and forgot, or seemed to forget, that bad eminence on which his brother of the mystic level had placed him. "At Glasgow," says Cromek in 1806, "I heard that the hero of this exqusite satire |