these hurried tours the Poet sought and found copious springs of inspiration for that grand song-making enthusiasm which was destined to henceforth almost entirely engross his muse, and under which he gave to mankind the rich fruits of his peerless lyric genius. Among the dozen or so of pieces produced during this period of hard, fatiguing travel, hasty sight-seeing, and widely varied, unsettling experiences, these may be specially noted:-"Lines at Kenmore," "Bruar Water," " Macpherson's Farewell," "The Banks of Devon," and that lovely, lightsome lyric, “The Birks o' Aberfeldy."

Without claiming for Burns the praise of perfect sagacity, we must say that his Excise and farm scheme does not seem to us a very unreasonable one; that we should be at a loss, even now, to suggest one decidedly better. It reflects credit on the manliness and sound sense of Burns, that he felt so early on what ground he was standing, and preferred selfhelp, on the humblest scale, to dependence and inaction, though with hope of far more splendid possibilities.

CARLYLE.

WHAT is known as the Poet's Second Winter in Edinburgh began on his return, October 20, from the Devon Valley excursion. He found a pleasant lodgment at the house of William Cruikshank, in St. James's Square. Cruikshank was a genial, cultured man, for whom Burns cherished a deep regard. It is an attractive scene in which we see the Poet seated beside his landlord's lovely young daughter, the Rosebud, listening with keenest enjoyment to her masterly playing of the old Scotch airs he loved so well.

After his return from that summer's touring, his absorbing devotion to the cause of Scottish minstrelsy becomes more and more clearly marked. During the winter months, what time remained after meeting his varied social engagements was chiefly spent in this, to him, most congenial pursuit collecting old songs and melodies,

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improving and supplementing what he found rude or fragmentary, and enriching with his own finished contributions our unsurpassed heritage of national song..

Robert Ainslie, the Poet's travelling companion in his Border tour, was still his intimate friend and associate. In connection with this intimacy, there is given, on Ainslie's authority, an incident most creditable to the Poet:- "Mr. Ainslie at this time had a lodging on the north side of the same square, so that the two friends were very ready to each other's call. . . . On Burns calling for him one afternoon, Ainslie proposed that they should spend the afternoon over a bottle; but Burns said, 'No, my friend-we'll have no wine to-day-to sit dozing in the house on such a fine afternoon as this would be insufferable. Besides, you know that you and I don't require wine to sharpen our wit, nor its adventitious aid to make us happy. No; we'll take a ramble over Arthur's Seat, to admire the beauties of nature, and come in to a late tea.' The two friends adopted this plan; and Mr. Ainslie used to declare that he had never known the Poet's conversation so amusing, so instructive, and altogether delightful, as during the cheerful stroll they had over the hill, and during the sober tea-drinking which followed."

During this period, too, Burns seems to have derived a constant pleasure from his acquaintance with the Harvieston family-an acquaintance which he cultivated by a series of letters to Miss Chalmers, noteworthy among all his epistolary effusions for their fine style, sense, and feeling. Though it is not clear whether he ever admired this lady as an actual lover, it is abundantly clear, from various letters and poems, that he held her in the very highest esteem as a friend and confidant. To her he more freely and simply unbosomed himself than to any other of his correspondents, save, perhaps, Mrs. Dunlop.

Meantime, the season wore on into mid-winter, yet the avowed object of his second sojourn in Edinburgh-settlement with Creech the publisher was still vexatiously delayed. Chafing under this delay, and, doubtless, at the

altered manner of his reception by the "society" of the city, an alteration for which, however, he himself was not entirely irresponsible, he became more and more moody in spirit and unsettled in purpose. Turning serious thoughts towards the future, he at length resolved to bid farewell to Edinburgh early in December. But the carrying out of this resolve was frustrated through his sustaining a severe injury in the leg, occasioned by his being thrown from a coach driven by a drunken coachman.

Shortly before this accident, the Poet had met Mrs. M'Lehose, whose worthless husband had deserted her and gone off to Jamaica, leaving his wife in poor circumstances to support herself and three little children.

Agnes Craig was come of good family. Only a few months younger than Burns, then twenty-eight, she was clever, cultured, good-looking, and possessed of no mean literary and poetic gifts. At their very first meeting, there sprang up a strong mutual attraction. To her the Poet wrote, "Of all God's creatures I ever could approach in the beaten way of friendship, you struck me with the deepest, the strongest, the most permanent impression," which warm avowal Mrs. M'Lehose, in reply, as warmly reciprocated. The evening of that day on which he was thrown from the coach he had arranged to spend at her house; but being by his accident confined for a considerable time to his room, he began those remarkable communications which went on between them (sometimes at but a few hours interval) for over three months. After a week or two, they adopted towards each other the fanciful names Sylvander and Clarinda, and so they carried on a correspondence quite unique in the history of letterwriting. We further gather that after he was able to move about again, Burns paid Clarinda about a dozen visits, before he left Edinburgh in the spring of 1788. Mrs. M'Lehose lived until 1841, her eighty-third year, thus surviving Burns for forty-five years. After various ups and downs of fortune, she attained to better circumstances, and moved for many years in the best Edinburgh literary and social circles. Until her dying day she fondly

cherished the memory of the Poet-" that great genius as she refers to him in her diary, under date January 25th 1813.

Another entry, dated December 6th 1831, was found"This day I can never forget. Parted with Burns in 1791, never more to meet in this world. May we meet in heaven!" Here we shall only add that, after a careful and candid study of this remarkable episode, we are able to believe that, though the position which Burns and Clarinda took up towards each other was, to say the least, a somewhat equivocal and dangerous one, it passed off free from actual moral stain.

Clarinda's letters, being much pervaded by an unquestionably earnest religious tone, drew from Burns sundry statements of his ideas on religion, of which we reproduce one passage in particular:

I am delighted, charming Clarinda, with your honest enthusiasm for religion. Those of either sex, but particularly the female, who are lukewarm in that most important of all things, "O my soul, come not thou into their secrets!" I feel myself deeply interested in your good opinion, and will lay before you the outlines of my belief. He who is our Author and Preserver, and will one day be our Judge, must be (not for His sake in the way of duty, but from the native impulse of our hearts) the object of our reverential awe and grateful adoration: He is Almighty and all-bounteous, we are weak and dependent; hence prayer and every other sort of devotion." He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to everlasting life;" consequently it must be in every one's power to embrace His offer of "everlasting life;" otherwise He could not, in justice, condemn those who did not. A mind pervaded, actuated, and governed by purity, truth, and charity, though it does not merit heaven, yet is an absolutely necessary pre-requisite, without which heaven can neither be obtained nor enjoyed; and, by divine promise, such a mind shall never fail of attaining "everlasting life:" hence the impure, the deceiving, and the uncharitable, extrude themselves from eternal bliss, by their unfitness for enjoying it. The Supreme Being has put the immediate administration of all this, for wise and good ends known to Himself, into the hands of Jesus Christ-a great personage, whose relation to Him we cannot comprehend, but whose relation to us is a guide and Saviour; and who, except for our own obstinacy and misconduct, will bring us all, through various ways, and by various means, to bliss at last.

These are my tenets, my lovely friend; and which, I think, cannot be