ship, on the other hand, I can easily imagine to have come from his hand as pregnant with the ludicrous as that "Holy Fair" itself. The family prayers of the Saturday's night, and the rural celebration of the Eucharist, are parts of the same system-the system which has made the people of Scotland what they are-and what, it is to be hoped, they will continue to be. And when men ask of themselves what this great national poet really thought of a system in which minds immeasurably inferior to his can see so much to venerate, it is surely just that they should pay more attention to what he has delivered under the gravest sanction. In noble natures, we may be sure, the source of tears lies nearer the heart than that of smiles. Mr. Hamilton Paul does not desert his post on occasion of the "Holy Fair;" he defends that piece as manfully as "Holy Willie ;" and, indeed, expressly applauds Burns for having endeavoured to explode "abuses discountenanced by the General Assembly." The General Assembly would no doubt say, both of the poet and the commentator, non tali auxilio. "Hallowe'en," a descriptive poem, perhaps even more exquisitely wrought than the "Holy Fair," and containing nothing that could offend the feelings of anybody, was produced about the same period. Burns's art had now reached its climax; but it is time that we should revert more particularly to the personal history of the poet. He seems to have very soon perceived, that the farm of Mossgiel could at the best furnish no more than the bare means of existence to so large a family; and wearied with the "prospects drear," from which he only escaped in occasional intervals of social merriment, or when gay flashes of solitary fancy, for they were no more, threw sunshine on everything, he very naturally took up the notion of quitting Scotland for a time, and trying his fortune in the West Indies, where, as is well known, the managers of the plantations are, in the great majority of cases, Scotchmen of Burns's own rank and condition. His letters show that on two or three different occasions, long before his poetry had excited any attention, he had applied for, and nearly obtained appointments of this sort, through the intervention of his acquaintances in the sea-port of Irvine.1 Petty acci ['It can scarcely fail to strike an informed reader that the author is here laying a convenient, although probably a very hollow, groundwork to afford him a means of escape from a dilemma that he must now approach, but which he has hardly the nerve to encounter fairly. There is not a shadow of authority for the allegation he starts with, namely, that several of the bard's letters, written long before his poetry had excited any attention, show that he had applied for, and nearly obtained, appointments in the West Indies. Mr. Lockhart is here about to make the first public announcement of the recent discovery of a relic of Burns of more than usual importance. It was found in the hands of then existing near relatives of the poet's " Highland Mary," universally understood to have been a very early" sweetheart of the poet, whose untimely death while they were betrothed lovers, he never ceased to bewail, and whose memory he had embalmed in at least two published lyrics of surpassing beauty. This relic was a pocket-bible in two small volumes, a parting gift to the deceased, bearing an inscription in the bard's own easily identified penmanship, giving the donor's name and address—“ Mossgiel' with masonic emblems of secrecy attached, but undated. Each volume is also inscribed with a verse from Scripture, indicating that the parties were solemnly sworn to the performance of certain vows. How did the biographer acquit himself in the blaze of light thus suddenly let in upon the veiled mystery of this part of the poet's history? Not certainly with the candour one would have expected from such an author. In the order of chronology he had now to discuss the love-story of Jean Armour, which here he is pleased to designate "the last of the poet's Ayrshire love-stories." When that story reached its hapless close, Burns had been only two years a tenant of Mossgiel,-where then was room to be found for the love-story of Mary Campbell? That central episode in the poet's career could not be omitted from a biography intended to rank as a standard one of its class. He could not shut his eyes, or the eyes of his readers, to the bard's own account of his brief intercourse with Highland Mary, which in all its phases is inextricably mixed up with the arrangements to emigrate to the West Indies. And neither could he hide from himself the circumstance that the unfortunate outcome of the dents, not worth describing, interfered to disappoint him from time to time: but at last a new burst of misfortune rendered him doubly anxious to escape from his native land; and, but for an accident, which no one will call petty, his arrangements would certainly have been completed. But we must not come quite so rapidly to the last of his Ayrshire love-stories. How many lesser romances of this order were evolved and completed during his residence at Mossgiel, it is needless to inquire; that they were many, his songs prove, for in those days he wrote no love-songs on imaginary heroines. "Mary Morison," "Behind yon hills where Stinsiar flows," "On Cessnock bank there lives a lass," belong to this period;" and there are three or four inspired by Mary Campbell-the object of by far the deepest passion that Burns ever knew, and which he has accordingly immortalized in the noblest of elegiacs. In introducing to Mr. Thomson's notice the song "Will you go to the Indies, my Mary, And leave auld Scotia's shore ? Will you go to the Indies, my Mary, poet's first attachment to Jean Armour, created this very resolution to go to Jamaica! Perhaps it was delicacy towards the feelings of the poet's widow-then still alive-that prevented Lockhart from "speaking out" on this subject, and on this occasion; or perhaps it had been an understood proviso with all the biographers, from Currie downwards, that inquiries into this very inviting theme, must, in the interests of propriety, be suppressed and treated as impertinent. Neither Cunningham, Hogg, Chambers, nor John Wilson, who succeeded Lockhart as biographers of Burns during the next twenty years, ventured to face the difficulty opened up by the recovery of Mary's bible; indeed, not one of them seems to have discerned the difficulty at all! Honest "Christopher North "" was the only consistent man among them, for he ignored altogether the circumstance of the recovered relic, and treated the Maryepisode as an event that happened before the poet's " twenty-third year."] ['Not so; all the songs here named belong to the Tarbolton period.] Burns 66 says, In my very early years, when I was thinking of going to the West Indies, I took this farewell of a dear girl;" and in a note on a similar composition of which the living Mary was the subject "For her I'll dare the billows' roar, For her I'll trace a distant shore, he says," This was a composition of mine in very early life, before I was known at all in the world. My Highland lassie was a warm-hearted, charming young creature as ever blessed a man with generous love. After a pretty long tract of the most ardent reciprocal affection, we met by appointment on the second Sunday of May, in a sequestered spot by the banks of 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 hear of her illness; and Mr. Cromek, speaking of the same "day of parting love," gives, though without mentioning his authority, some further particulars which no one would willingly believe to be apocryphal. "This adieu," says that zealous inquirer into the details of Burns's story, "was performed with all those simple and striking ceremonials, which rustic sentiment has devised to prolong tender emotions, and to inspire awe. The lovers stood on each side of a small purling brook-they laved their hands in the limpid stream—and, holding a Bible between them, pronounced their vows to be faithful to each other. They partednever to meet again." ("Reliques," p. 238). It is proper to add, that Mr. Cromek's story, which even Allan Cun ningham was disposed to receive with suspicion, has been confirmed very strongly by the accidental discovery of a Bible, presented by Burns to "Mary Campbell," which was found in the possession of her sister at Ardrossan. Upon the boards of the first volume is inscribed, in Burns's handwriting,—" And ye shall not swear by my name falsely, I am the Lord.-Levit. chap. xix. v. 12." On the second volume,-"Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths.-St. Matth. chap. v. 33." And, on a blank leaf of either-" Robert Burns, Mossgiel," with his mason-mark.1 How lasting was the poet's remembrance of this pure love, and its tragic termination, will be seen hereafter. Highland Mary, however, seems to have died ere her lover had made any of his more serious attempts in poetry. In the Epistle to Mr. Sillar, the very earliest, according to Gilbert, of these Essays, the poet celebrates "his Davie and his Jean." 2 This was Jean Armour, the daughter of a respectable man, a mason in the village of Mauchline, where she was at the time the reigning toast,3 and who afterwards became 1 [On 25th January, 1841, this interesting pair of volumes, together with a lock of Mary's fair shining hair, were deposited in the Poet's Monument at Alloway. A handsome monument also was erected over the grave of Mary, in the West Churchyard at Greenock, in 1842. date nor year of her death is inscribed thereon.] 2 See Appendix C-Burns's " Highland Mary." 3 "In Mauchline there dwells six proper young belles, "Miss Miller is fine, Miss Markland's divine, Neither |