what he thought the just rights of another people, he gave as a toast: "May our success in the present war be equal to the justice of our cause.' When somebody proposed the health of Pitt, I think then the Prime Minister, he gave this: "Here is to the health of a better man, George Washington." Just after our revolution he wrote an ode for General Washington's birthday, of which the first stanza is :

"No Spartan tube, no Attic shell,
No lyre Æolian I awake,
'Tis Liberty's bold note I swell;

Thy harp, Columbia, let me take!
See gathering thousands, while I sing,
A broken chain exulting bring
And dash it in a tyrant's face,

And dare him to his very beard,

And tell him he no more is feared,

No more the despot of Columbia's race!

A tyrant's proudest insults braved,

They shout a People freed! They hail an Empire saved."

What has he not done for Scotland? I suppose that romantic story which Walter Scott tells so admirably in the Tales of a Grandfather—a book which should be in the hands of every ingenuous boy-the story of Wallace, and the Bruce, and Randolph, and the good Lord James of Douglas, of Bannockburn, of Montrose, of Argyll, of Claverhouse, of Fifteen and Forty-five, the genius of Campbell, of Allan Ramsay, and of Dr. John Brown would have made their way into the knowledge, and even without Burns or Scott, the heart of mankind. Yet, but for Burns, and one other, we should have known Scotland but as we know Wales or Denmark or Norway. I should be disloyal to the greatest single benefactor of my boyhood if I did not claim for Walter Scott a share in this achievement.

Aye me! Aye me! It is lang syne. It is three-score years and ten ago, almost, since I used to kneel with a book by a chair- I was not big enough for a table-to drink in with mouth and eyes open wide those wondrous stories in the Tales of a Grandfather they did not let little boys read novels in those days of Stirling Brig and the gallant exploits of Wallace and his treacherous betrayal when Menteith turned the loaf, and his dauntless bearing at the trial, and his tragic death; of Randolph and the good Lord James Douglas, who loved better to hear the lark sing than the mouse squeak; of the Bruce and his landing on the shore of Carrick; and the story of the spider that failed six times to swing himself to the beam overhead, and got there the seventh, which led King Robert in his cabin to remember that he had been beaten six times too, and might succeed the seventh, as the spider did; and the taking of Edinburgh Castle by scaling the precipice; and the getting Douglas Castle back three times from the English; and Bannockburn, where the Scottish army knelt in prayer and King Edward thought they were asking forgiveness; and the striking down of the English knight,

Sir Henry de Bohun, on the evening before the battle; and the death of Douglas in Spain. and the pilgrimage with the Bruce's heart, when the Spanish warriors wondered that so brave a warrior had no scar on his face, and he told them he thanked God that he had always enabled his hands to keep his face; and the casting of the Bruce's heart in its silver case into the Moorish ranks. "Pass thou first, thou dauntless heart, as thou wert wont of yore, and Douglas will follow thee or die ;" and the finding the bones of Bruce five hundred years after in a marble tomb in the church at Dunfermline; and the great concourse of people-“and as the church would not hold the numbers, they were allowed to pass through it one after another, that each one, the poorest as well as the richest, might see all that remained of the great King Robert, who restored the Scottish monarchy. Many people shed tears, for there was the wasted skull which once was the head that thought so wisely and boldly for his country's deliverance; and there was the dry bone which once had been the sturdy arm that killed Sir Henry de Bohun, between the two armies, at a single blow, on the evening before the battle of Bannockburn;" and then afterward the story of the six Jameses and of the beautiful Mary and the fatal flight into England, and the scaffold at Fotheringay. Then, later still. though yet a boy, I read the stories of Bothwell Brig and of Claverhouse— I was perfectly impartial between Cavalier and Roundhead--and of John, Duke of Argyll, who, when Queen Caroline told him she would make a hunting-ground of Scotland, answered, "In that case, madam, I must go down and get my hounds ready!" and of the death of Montrose on the scaffold, who "climbed the lofty ladder as 'twere the path to heaven."

These two immortal spirits, Scott and Burns, made this obscure country, smaller than an average American State, another Greece, and made of its capital another Athens, revealed to the world its romantic history, taught men the quality of its people, and associated their own names with every hill and rock and river and glen. They dwell for ever in a mighty companionship, the eternal and presiding genii of the place.

"Their spirits wrap the dusky mountain;
Their memories sparkle o'er the fountain;
The meanest rill, the mightiest river,

Rolls mingling with their names for ever."

The message Burns brought to mankind was something more than a message of liberty or democracy, or the equality of man in political rights. Those doctrines were rife already. Locke and Algernon Sidney and the men of the great rebellion and the English Revolution had preached them. Our fathers of the Revolution had given to the world their incomparable state papers. Samuel Adams and Jefferson had surrounded these doctrines with an impregnable fortress when Burns was an unknown ploughboy. The theoretical doctrines of liberty were held by the great Whig houses in England and Scotland. Russell and Sidney and Hampden had died for them. They were preached by men who would have regarded the contact of a peasant's garment with their own as contamination. Our own revolutionary leaders had a high sense of personal dignity. The differ

ences of rank, though not based on birth, were perfectly understood and rigorously enforced among them. But Burns revealed to mankind the dignity of humility. His heart went out to the poor peasant because of his poverty. He never doffed his bonnet in reverence to any man because of his accidents. He never seems to have had a taste for grandeur, whether physical or social. He was born and dwelt for a great part of his life in Ayr, on the seashore. His daily walk was in sight of that magnificent ocean view, fit to be compared, according to those who know them both, to the Bay of Naples itself. And yet he has not, so far as I now remember, left a line which indicates that he was moved by the grandeur and glory of the sea. The great sublimities which Homer and Milton and Shakespeare picture and interpret to us were not for him.

The sublime objects of art or nature, "the cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples," the everlasting sea, the mountain summits, the splendour of courts, the pride, pomp, and circumstances of glorious war did not stir him to poetical utterance. The field mouse, whose nest his furrow had laid bare, the daisy his plough had torn up by the roots, the cottage, the country ale-house, the humble thistle spreading wide among the bearded bear, the peasant and the peasant girl, the weans by the mother's knee, were the things dear to him. These were his inspirations. The strength of weakness, the wealth of poverty, the glory of humility are what he came in to the world to teach mankind. I cannot explain it. I do not know that I can describe it. I cannot reason about it. But I think you know what I mean when I say that we do not think of Burns as belonging to literature, but only as belonging to Nature. I do not care about finding him in books of specimens of poets, or in collections of poets, or on the rows of bookshelves. He belongs somehow to simple Nature. I should rather almost be tempted to put his picture and include him in Bewick or Audubon among the song birds. You might almost expect a mocking bird or a vesper sparrow, or a bobolink, or a hermit thrush to sing his music. Since he was born into the world you can hardly think of the world, certainly the world for the Scotsman, existing without him. You expect for him an eternity like that of Nature herself. While the morning and evening rejoice, while the brook murmurs, while the grass grows and the water runs, while the lark sings, and the bobolink carols, and the daisy blossoms, and the rose is fragrant, while the lily holds up its ivory chalice in the July morning, while the cardinal flower hangs out its red banner in August, while the heather blooms in Scotland or the barberry bush adorns the pasture in New England, so long the songs of Burns shall dwell in the soul, "nestling," as Lowell says, "nestling in the ear because of their music,, and in the heart because of their meaning."

A DOUBTFUL

EDITION OF

ROBERT BURNS.

A STORY which is now being circulated in the daily Press, full of exaggeration, is otherwise embedded in an article entitled "Some Books in My Library," in Chambers's Journal for November, 1900, by the editor thereof, Mr. C. E. S. Chambers, grandnephew of William Chambers, and grandson of Robert Chambers, by whom (the brothers William and Robert) the publishing firm of W. & R. Chambers was ultimately founded, Robert having, in 1818, when he was sixteen years of age, commenced business as a second-hand bookseller in Leith Walk, Edinburgh, in "a shop of a particularly humble kind, at a yearly rent of six pounds, with space for a stall in front," and William having, in 1819, when he was nineteen years of age, commenced in the same line, also in Leith Walk, in "a place of moderate dimensions," at "an annual rent of ten pounds," after he had completed a five years' apprenticeship with John Sutherland, bookseller, Calton Street, Edinburgh.

Mr. C. E. S. Chambers begins his article in words of somewhat striking character, as follows:-"William Hazlitt, essayist and critic, tells us that he does not think any the worse of a book for having survived a generation or two-he has more confidence in the dead than the living. My personal tastes agree with Hazlitt's, and many of my books belong to the category thus approved by lapse of time. My collections are miscellaneous; but I have always been ambitious of bringing together a complete series of works written and published by an ancestor of two generations back."

For myself, apart altogether from the matter of "tastes," I have, with respect to the life and writings of Robert Burns, far less "confidence" than others who are critics in the mass of work which has been accomplished since 1796 by numerous departed biographers and editors; and I have as little faith in much that has been added and superadded by even the best of their successors who are still alive.

There is, however, nothing invidious in this; but "prove all things" has ever been my motto; and, among other doings, I will sift the evidence that is available in the present particular case as to an alleged "very cheap edition of Burns which was printed by William Chambers," after I have made two or three further remarks of a cognate nature.

William Chambers, born in 1800, died in 1883. Robert Chambers, born in 1802, died in 1871. A Memoir of Robert Chambers, with Autobiographic Reminiscences of William Chambers, was published by W. & R. Chambers in 1872, when William was in his seventy-second year.

Between the "Autobiographic Reminiscences" of William, in chapter vi. of the "Memoir" (headed "Beginning Business -1819 to 1821")—and the statements of Mr. C. E. S. Chambers, in the fourth paragraph of his article (as to "some of the earliest works written and published by the Brothers Chambers"), there are serious irreconcilable differences, which those who may be more widely interested in the subject generally can fully find for themselves.

Mr. C. E. S. Chambers proceeds in his article thus:"We also learn from the same 'Memoir' of an edition of Burns's Poems printed and sold by William Chambers; but this I have never seen, and no copy is known to Burns's collectors. A well-known Edinburgh bookseller lately told me that he had searched for this book for forty years, so far without success. The publisher himself had no copy, but had been heard to say, years ago, that the work was bound in yellow wrappers, and sold, I think, at sixpence. Seven hundred copies were done up, and these seem to have been readily sold, and thus probably read out of existence. I give this information for the benefit of Burns enthusiasts and those who frequent the bookstalls. Should a copy ever turn up, I hope the fortunate purchaser will communicate with me."

This paragraph is teeming with inaccuracy, and the responsibility for undesignedly misleading public utterance rests with Mr. C. B. S. Chambers, whoever may be his undisclosed "wellknown Edinburgh bookseller," and whatever may have been said "years ago" by "the publisher himself," who died in 1883.

No edition of Burns's Poems was ever printed and sold by William Chambers. No Edinburgh bookseller could, I firmly