that time, beyond the bounds of moderationwhereas the chiefs of literature and fashion drank themselves into insensibility with the finest Bordeaux and the richest sherry. An immense difference this!-and in many things the principle of this distinction is not unknown at the present time. So the great Edinburgh authors, and talkers, and dancers, and flirters were delighted when they heard that the rustic puzzle had come up to the great city to arrange for a new edition of his poems. What amusement they anticipated from his awkward manners, and what superiority they expected to feel over the prodigiously strong man, who ploughed, and harrowed, and flailed, and drank whisky, and perhaps had never tasted claret in his life. But they met with a barbarian, says Allan Cunningham, who was not at all barbarous. "His air was easy and unperplexed; his address was perfectly well-bred and elegant in its simplicity; he felt neither eclipsed by the titled, nor struck dumb before the learned and the eloquent, but took his station with the ease and grace of one born to it. In the society of men alone he spoke out; he spared neither his wit, nor his humour, nor his sarcasm; he seemed to say to all, I am a man and you are no more, and why should I not act and speak like one? It was remarked, however, that he had not learned, or did not desire, to conceal his emotions; that he commended with more rapture than was courteous, and contradicted with more bluntness than was thought polite. It was thus with him in the company of men. When women approached, his look altered, his eye beamed milder; all that was stern in his nature underwent a change, and he received them with deference, but with a consciousness that he could win their attention as he had won that of others who differed from them indeed only in the texture of their kirtles. This natural power of rendering himself acceptable to women had been observed and envied by Sillar, one of the dearest of his early comrades; and it stood him in good stead now, when he was the object to whom the Duchess of Gordon --the loveliest as well as the wittiest of women -directed her discourse. Burns, she afterwards said, won the attention of the Edinburgh ladies by a deferential way of address-by an ease and natural grace of manners, as new as it was unexpected; that he told them the stories of some of his tenderest songs or liveliest poems in a style quite magical, enriching his little narratives, which had, one and all, the merit of being short, with personal incidents of humour or of pathos." When a duchess had said this of the ploughman, what more was to be said? And when the eyes of duchesses and beauties had filled with tears at the simple narrative of some of his early griefs, what more was wanted to his triumph as a man of society as well as a poet? In one of those glittering assemblages, where wealth and refinement spread themselves out before the unaccustomed eyes of the Ayrshire peasant, he began a description to a sympathetic few of the sad incidents of his attachment to Highland Mary. Gradually the circle widened, the music stopped, conversation in nooks and corners came to a close, and all gathered round the simple countryman; first they were interested with his description, then they entered into the hopes of happiness that were opening before him, and finally, fine ladies, and fine gentlemen too, perhaps, were melted into tears when they heard the melancholy ending. Highland Mary was a beautiful girl, to whom he became attached at a very early period. He was poor, and she had only her half-year's fee, for she was in the condition of a servant; but thoughts of gear never darkened their dream; they resolved to wed, and exchanged vows of constancy and love. Young people are romantic, but not the less sincere on that account. They plighted their vows on the Sabbath, to make them more sacred; they made them by a burn where they had courted, that open Nature might be a wit ness; they made them over an open Bible, to show the solemnity of their thoughts in this mutual act; and when they had done, they both took water in their hands and scattered it in the air, to intimate that as the stream was pure, so were their intentions. They parted when they did this; but they never met again. She died in a burning fever, during a visit to her relations to prepare for her marriage; and all that he had of her was a lock of her long bright hair and her Bible, which she exchanged for his. Now let us see what uses he turned this incident to in the education of his poetic power. Long after this, the anniversary of his loss was a day of gloom, and the lines now quoted give the finishing stroke to the delicate narrative of his sweetheart's death. It is addressed to "Mary in Heaven": Thou ling'ring star, with less'ning ray, Again thou usherest in the day My Mary from my soul was torn. O Mary! dear departed shade! Where is thy place of blissful rest? See'st thou thy lover lowly laid ? Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast? That sacred hour can I forget, Can I forget the hallowed grove, Where by the winding Ayr we met, To live one day of parting love! Eternity cannot efface Those records dear of transports past; Ah! little thought we 'twas our last! Ayr, gurgling, kiss'd his pebbled shore, Still o'er these scenes my mem'ry wakes, Where is thy place of blissful rest ? Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast? We are now getting to perceive that the Muse will admit no vile companions in the heart where she fixes her seat. Poetry, depend upon it, is a purifying power in spite of its occasional waywardness; and if Burns forgot these noble influences sometimes, we are to look for his excuse to the peculiarities of his position. There he was—the idol for a time of the highest circles in his native land, recognised as an honour to his country, his words sounding in all dwell |