exhibited there.

An old Family Bible that had comforted the Poet's father, William Burns, in his heavy troubles, was bought for the Museum for £1500. It is sad to remember that Burns the elder went into death as poor as any beggar.

This poor tenant possessed the highest abilities, the best human and moral qualities. His character has very many traits in common with the old peasants in the west of Jutland living in my childhood: a deep, honest mind tending to melancholy; at the same time both strong and pious; with the sincerest respect for the words of Scripture, but always ready for a discussion of the values of life. His children loved him. In his few hours of leisure he told them the names of the flowers or other things in nature. And when a thunderstorm was coming on he left his work wherever he might be, and hastened to his little daughter who was tending the cattle on the moor, and who was greatly afraid of thunder. Her tiny hand in that of her father, and her eyes hidden in his blouse, she gained some of his tranquility while the storm was raging.

The old, clever William Burns could not make ends meet anywhere, though all the family worked-parents and children-so that the Poet at an early age got a stoop. Robert Burns threshed the corn when he was thirteen years old; he was head servant of the farm at the age of fifteen. There were seven children; the rent was much too high; they fasted, nay, they almost starved; Robert went often bare-headed and with naked feet; during several years meat was an unknown thing at their home. They could not afford to hire any servant, and the factor often sent the father letters that made the whole family weep. The Poet writes: "After three years' tossing and whirling in the vortex of litigation, my father was just saved from absorption in a jail by a phthysical consumption, which, after two years' promises, kindly stept in, and snatched him away." It certainly was hard times for the poor. The half of Burns's poetry is a grand, flaming defiance of the tyrants of the poor; they gave his father the choice

between death and jail; they made his own short life a dark, toiling night, that only now and then was brightened by his genius. Burns, who after the death of his father was the maintainer of the family, worked too hard, and always in vain. Farm after farm was tried and relinquished. The squires of that age were too greedy; the tools were heavy and rude, the farming methods were antiquated. The toiling of Burns procured him a constant headache that ended in heart disease, so that he, at a certain period of his life, had to keep a tub of cold water beside his bed during the night; to get into that was the sole thing that could mitigate his pains when the fits

came on.

No wonder he, having that sort of disposition, had to fight with melancholy like Jacob with the Angel, not to be overcome. But between the fits of despondency that almost grew to insanity, he had a humour that fascinated everybody. People liked very much to go with Burns to the moors for peats-for there was laughter there all the day. When late in the night he arrived at the inns to get a lodging, all the guests arose from their beds and opened the doors to overhear the wondrous stories of Burns. Once, when a youth, he had fallen vehemently in love, a thing not uncommon to him. The visits to the house of the beloved one swallowed up a good deal of his sleep, and the old decent father determined to give him a warning. One evening he sat down at the fire-place, stern and gloomy, awaiting the return of his son. Burns entered, and the old man began reproaching. Burns had recovered from the surprise, he began telling about the things that had belated him. He passed from tale to tale, describing in the most precious way the horrors of the night that had tempted him away from the beaten track-the will-o'-the-wisp, the unicorn, the werewolf, and even Auld Nick gambolled in his fantasies--first in prose, then in poetry, that surpassed everything the old. man hitherto had heard or seen.

At last

When

And the grave, decent father quite forgot to scold

him, and gave up a night's sleep that he, with tears of laughter in his eyes, might follow his jolly son on the fantastic ride through the elfish mist of the moors and the alluring witchery of the midnight hours.

The father of Burns had given his children an education as good as his money could procure. The poet-to-be hungered for knowledge, as all great poets do. The flame that is to burn brightly must, above everything, be sufficiently sustained.

Anybody that happened to enter this farmer's home during a meal would find the whole family eating with a book beside the plate. Burns borrowed books wherever possible. As he had to live on seven pounds a year, of course he could not buy any himself. He had a collection of Scotch popular ballads that was with him night and day; it lay in his pocket when he went ploughing he read in it when the horses were resting; he hummed the airs while the plough-iron cut the soil. Burns liked ploughing. He made his rhythms while the plough dangled in his hand. When he came home he first went to a small attic; there, with candle-light, he copied fair what had become a song in the field. Do you know any greater contrast to the common academical poetry? Is it not like the dew-spangled flowers of the dales beside old bed-straw!

But the bad fortune that always followed him, now began in earnest to knit her brows against him. In spite of his toiling and straining and economy he always was unfortunate in his farming business. Furthermore, he had moral misfortunes. His sensible poetical mind always had some goddess whom he adored and whom he wove in an enthralling network of songs which nowadays are sung in all Scotland. In that way he had made the acquaintance of a mason's daughter in Mauchline--Jean Armour. They loved each other as young people do; they wished to marry as soon as possible. But the father of Jean apparently was not so charmed by Scotch poetry as his daughter was. He would not assent-nay, more than

that, he threatened to summon Burns before the court ; to put him, who possessed nothing, in a debtor's prison until he had procured money for the subsistence of the child to which his sweetheart before long would give birth.. It was a thing that looked very much like blackmail. Burns saw everything break down around him; the father of his sweetheart kept him away; and he was threatened with imprisonment and disgrace. He saw

no other way out of it than fleeing from his farm, which was a poor bargain at best. He hid himself as well as possible while he prepared for an escape for good from his native country. He already had hired himself to a man in Jamaica. Burns was to receive £30 a year, but then he must hire himself for three years. £30 no very great pay, but better at any rate than a stay in one of Scotland's prisons. He was to be an overseer of slaves in a plantation over there. So dreadfully low was his situation that he could not pay his fare for the voyage, but had to let the "purchaser" lay out the carriage of his person, almost as if he were a unit of a cattle consignment. One of the biographers of Burns, wondering at the father-in-law's churlish behaviour to a youth who, even then, was known and honoured in his parish on account of his wit and genius, asked a contemporary :

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What kind of man was old Armour ? surely a person of consequence in Mauchline, judging from his treatment of Burns?"

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'Ow, he was only a bit mason body, wha used to snuff a guid deal and gey af'en tak' a bit dram!'

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Proud, was he? or why did he object to Burns so strongly?"

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The truth was, he hated him, and would rather hae seen the deil himsel' comin' to the hoose to coort his dochter than him! He cudna bear the sicht o' 'm, and that was the way he did!

I admit it: the love affairs of Burns were somewhat complicated, and they have given the Scotch moralists

many problems on which to break their teeth. The only excuse is that most of these affairs have been poetised by him in songs now sparkling as crown jewels in the poetical treasury of Scotland. Poems of that noble brightness never can be of base origin. Finer love lyrics than those written of Highland Mary are scarcely to be found in the literature of the world. Who, then, was this woman who by these poems has won a fame hardly surpassed by any queen? O! a poor servant who nursed the children of one of the friends of Burns. Otherwise her personality is wrapt up in mysticism. We only know that when Burns felt himself disappointed by Jean he sought for consolation by Mary; but the consolation was short-livedhe was sold, you know, to the slave merchant in Virginia. He just awaited the ship's departure in order to get away from the pursuers. The lovers must part, and it is told that they made the parting hour very solemn by a kind of private wedding ceremony that must have been traditional in this deeply religious country. They met at a small lonely brook; he stood on one side, she on the other side of it. With a promise of never forgetting each other he handed her, and she handed him, across the stream, a Scotch Bible. When they had changed Bibles in this way, she turned round, and went away weeping to her native home in the Highlands; for a long time he stood there, looking after her, and then he went away for his exile. They never met again. Shortly after Mary had gone home she turned ill. The sorrow of their tragic parting surely was one of the causes. She died. One of Burns's younger sisters has told how one day a letter suddenly was handed in. Burns went to the low window to read it; a deathly paleness spread over his face, and he went out without uttering a word. the news of the death of Highland Mary.

It was

This poor, low-born woman became the genius of his poetry. Never has his instrument such soft strokes, such deep notes, as when he invokes her shadow or seeks her home in the night among the stars.