'With joy unfeigned, brothers and sisters meet,
And each for other's weelfare kindly spiers:
The social hours, swift-wing'd, unnoticed fleet;
Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears:
The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years;
Anticipation forward points the view.

The mother, wi' her needle and her shears,

Gars auld claes look amaist as weel 's the new:

The father mixes a' wi' admonition due.

'But, hark! a rap comes gently to the door;

Jenny, wha kens the meaning o' the same,
Tells how a neibor lad cam o'er the moor,
To do some errands, and convoy her hame.
The wily mother sees the conscious flame

Sparkle in Jenny's e'e, and flush her cheek;
With heart-struck anxious care inquires his name,
While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak;

Weel pleased, the mother hears it's nae wild, worthless rake.

'Wi' kindly welcome, Jenny brings him ben;

A strappin' youth, he taks the mother's eye; Blithe Jenny sees the visit's no ill-ta'en;

The father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye. The youngster's artless heart o'erflows wi' joy, But blate an' lathefu', scarce can weel behave; The mother, wi' a woman's wiles, can spy

What makes the youth sae bashfu' and sae grave: Weel pleased to think her bairn 's respected like the lave.

'But now the supper crowns their simple board, The halesome parritch, chief o' Scotia's food;

The soupe their only hawkie does afford,

That 'yont the hallan snugly chows her cood:

The dame brings forth, in complimental mood,
To grace the lad, her weel-hain'd kebbuck, fell,
An' aft he's prest, an' aft he ca's it guid;

The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell,

How 't was a towmond auld, sin' lint was i' the bell.

'The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face,
They, round the ingle, form a circle wide;
The sire turns o'er, with patriarchal grace,
The big ha' Bible, ance his father's pride;
His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside,

His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare;
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,
He wales a portion wi' judicious care;

And 'Let us worship God!' he says, with solemn air.

'They chant their artless notes in simple guise;
They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim:
Perhaps Dundee's wild-warbling measures rise,
Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name,
Or noble Elgin beets the heavenward flame,
The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays :
Compared with these, Italian trills are tame;

The tickled ear no heartfelt raptures raise;
Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise."

Burns's poetical epistles to his friends are admirable, whether for the touches of satire, the painting of character, or the sincerity of friendship they display. Those to Captain Grose, and to Davie, a brother-poet, are among the best, they are the true pathos and sublime of human life.' His prose letters

are sometimes tinctured with affectation. They seem written by a man who has been admired for his wit, and is expected on all occasions to shine. Those in which he expresses his ideas of natural beauty in reference to Alison's Essay on Taste, and advocates the keeping up the remembrances of old customs and seasons, are the most powerfully written. His English serious odes and moral stanzas are, in general, failures, such as the Lament,'' Man was made to Mourn,' etc.; nor do I much admire his 'Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled.' In this strain of didactic or sentimental moralizing, the lines to Glencairn are the most happy and impressive. His imitations of the old humorous ballad style of Ferguson's songs are no whit inferior to the admirable originals, such as 'John Anderson, my Jo,' and many more. But of all his productions, the pathetic and serious love-songs which he has left behind him, in the manner of the old ballads, are perhaps those which take the deepest and most lasting hold of the mind. Such are the lines to Mary Morison, and those entitled 'Jessy: '

'Here's a health to ane I lo'e dear!
Here's a health to ane I lo'e dear!

Thou art sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet,
And soft as their parting tear - Jessy!

Although thou maun never be mine,

Although even hope is denied, 'Tis sweeter for thee despairing,

Than aught in the world beside — Jessy ! '

The conclusion of the other is as follows:

'Yestreen when to the trembling string,

The dance gaed through the lighted ha',
To thee my fancy took its wing,

I sat, but neither heard nor saw.
Though this was fair, and that was braw,
And yon the toast of a' the town,

I sighed, and said, among them a'
Ye are na' Mary Morison.'

That beginning, 'Oh gin my love were a bonny red rose,' is a piece of rich and fantastic description. One would think that nothing could surpass these in beauty of expression and in true pathos; and nothing does or can, but some of the old Scotch ballads themselves. There is in them a still more original cast of thought, a more romantic imagery, the thistle's glittering down, the gilliflower on the old garden-wall, the horseman's silver bells, the hawk on its perch; a closer intimacy with Nature, a firmer reliance on it, as the only stock of wealth which the mind has to resort to, a more infantine simplicity of manners, a greater strength of affection, hopes longer cherished and longer

deferred, sighs that the heart dare hardly heave, and thoughts that often lie too deep for tears.' We seem to feel that those who wrote and sang them (the early minstrels) lived in the open air, wandering on from place to place with restless feet and thoughts, and lending an ever-open ear to the fearful accidents of war or love floating on the breath of old tradition or common fame, and moving the strings of their harp with sounds that sank into a nation's heart. How fine an illustration of this is that passage in' Don Quixote,' where the knight and Sancho, going in search of Dulcinea, inquire the way of the countryman, who was driving his mules to plough before break of day, singing the ancient ballad of Roncesvalles.' Sir Thomas Overbury describes his country girl as still ac companied with fragments of old songs. One of the best and most striking descriptions of the effects of this mixture of national poetry and music is to be found in one of the letters of Archbishop Herring, giving an account of a confirmation tour in the mountains of Wales:

'That pleasure over, our work became very arduous, for we were to mount a rock and, in many places of the road, over natural stairs of stone. I submitted to this, which they told me was but a taste of the country, and to prepare