Burnes," says the simple-minded, tender-hearted Murdoch, "as by far the best of the human race that ever I had the pleasure of being acquainted with, and many a worthy character I have known. He was a tender and affectionate father; he took pleasure in leading his children in the paths of virtue, not in driving them, as some people do, to the performance of duties to which they themselves are averse. He took care to find fault very seldom; and, therefore, when he did rebuke, he was listened to with a kind of reverential awe. I must not pretend to give you a description of all the manly qualities, the rational and Christian virtues, of the venerable William Burnes. I shall only add that he practised every known duty, and avoided everything that was criminal; or, in the apostle's words, 'herein did he exercise himself, in living a life void of offence towards God and towards man.' Although I cannot do justice to the character of this worthy man, yet you will perceive, from these few particulars, what kind of a person had the principal part in the education of the poet.' Burns was as happy in a mother, whom, in countenance, it is said he resembled; and as sons and daughters were born, we think of the "auld clay biggin " more and more alive with cheerfulness and peace.

His childhood, then, was a happy one, secured from all evil influences and open to all good, in the guardianship of religious parental love. Not a boy in Scotland had a better education. For a few months, when in his sixth year, he was at a small school at Alloway Miln, about a mile from the house in which he was born; and for two years after under the tuition of good John Murdoch, a young scholar whom William Burnes and four or five neighbors engaged to supply the place of the schoolmaster, who had been removed to another situation, lodging him as is still the custom in some country places, by turns in their own houses. "The earliest composition I recollect taking pleasure in, was the Vision of Mirza, and a hymn of Addison's, beginning 'How are thy servants bless'd, O Lord!' I particularly remember one half stanza which was music to my boyish

ear,

For though on dreadful whirls we hang,
High on the broken wave'

I met with these pieces in Mason's English Collection, one of my school-books. The two first books I ever read in print, and which gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read since, were the Life of Hannibal, and the History of Sir William Wallace. Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn that I used to strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum and bagpipe, and wished myself tall enough to be a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a tide of Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest." And speaking of the same period and books to Mrs. Dunlop, he says, "For several of my earlier years. I had few other authors; and many a solitary hour have I stole out, after the laborious vocations of the day, to shed a tear over their glorious but unfortunate stories. In these boyish days, I remember, in particular, being struck with that part of Wallace's story, where these lines occur—

'Syne to the Leglen wood, when it was late,

To make a silent and a safe retreat.'

I chose a fine summer Sunday, the only day my line of life allowed, and walked half a dozen miles to pay my respects to the Leglen wood, with as much devout enthusiasm as ever pilgrim did to Loretto; and explored every den and dell where I could suppose my heroic countryman to have lodged." Murdoch continued his instructions until the family had been about two years at Mount Oliphant, and there being no school near us, says Gilbert Burns, and our services being already useful on the farm, "my father undertook to teach us arithmetic on the winter nights by candle-light; and in this way my two elder sisters received all the education they ever had." Robert was then in his ninth year, and had owed much, he tells us, to "an old woman who resided in the family, remarkable for her ignorance, credulity, and superstition. She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witchies, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantrips, giants and enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of poetry; but had so strong an effect

on my imagination, that to this hour, in my nocturnal ambles, I sometimes keep a sharp look-out on suspicious places; and though nobody can be more sceptical than I am in such matters, yet it often takes an effort of philosophy to shake off these idle terrors."

We said, that not a boy in Scotland had a better education than Robert Burns, and we do not doubt that you will agree with us; for, in addition to all that may be contained in those sources of useful and entertaining knowledge, he had been taught to read, not only in the Spelling Book, and Fisher's English Grammar, and The Vision of Mirza, and Addison's Hymns, and Titus Andronicus (though on Lavinia's entrance "with her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out," he threatened to burn the book); but in THE NEW TESTAMENt and the Bible, and all this in his father's house, or in the houses of the neighbors; happy as the day was long, or the night, and in the midst of happiness; yet even then, sometimes saddened, no doubt, to see something more than solemnity or awfulness on his father's face, that was always turned kindly towards the children, but seldom wore a smile.

Wordsworth had these memorials in his mind when he was conceiving the boyhood of the Pedlar in his great poem, the Excursion.

"But eagerly he read and read again,

Whate'er the minister's old shelf supplied;
The life and death of martyrs, who sustained
With will inflexible, those fearful pangs
Triumphantly displayed in records left
Of persecution, and the covenant, times
Whose echo rings through Scotland to this hour;
And there, by lucky hap, had been preserved
A straggling volume, torn and incomplete,
That left half-told the preternatural tale,
Romance of giants, chronicle of fiends,
Profuse in garniture of wooden cuts

Strange and uncouth; dire faces, figures dire,
Sharp-knee'd, sharp-elbowed, and lean-ancled too,

With long and ghastly shanks-forms which once seen

Could never be forgotten. In his heart
Where fear sate thus, a cherished visitant,
Was wanting yet the pure delight of love

By sound diffused, or by the breathing air,
Or by the silent looks of happy things,
Or flowing from the universal face

Of earth and sky. But he had felt the power
Of nature, and already was prepared,
By his intense conceptions, to receive
Deeply the lesson deep of love, which he
Whom nature, by whatever means, has taught
To feel intensely, cannot but receive.

SUCH WAS THE BOY.

Such was the boy; but his studies had now to be pursued by fits and snatches, and, therefore, the more eagerly and earnestly, during the intervals or at the close of labor, that before his thirteenth year had become constant and severe. "The cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing moil of a galley-slave!" These are his own memorable words, and they spoke the truth. "For nothing could be more retired," says Gilbert, "than our general manner of living at Mount Oliphant; we scarcely saw any but members of our own family. There were no boys of our own age, or near it, in the neighborhood." They all worked hard from morning to night, and Robert hardest of them all. At fifteen he was the principal laborer on the farm, and relieved his father from holding the plough. Two years before he had assisted in thrashing the crop of corn. The two noble brothers saw with anguish the old man breaking down before their eyes; nevertheless assuredly, though they knew it not, they were the happiest boys "the evening sun went down upon." "True," as Gilbert tells us, "I doubt not but the hard labor and sorrow of this period of his life was in a great measure the cause of that depression of spirits with which Robert was so often afflicted* through his whole life afterwards. At this time he was almost constantly afflicted in the evenings with a dull head-ache, which at a future period of his life was exchanged for a palpitation of the heart, and a threatening of fainting and suffocation in his bed in the night-time." Nevertheless, assuredly both boys were happy, and Robert the happier of the two; for if he had not been so, why did he not go to sea? Because he loved his parents too well to be able to leave them, and because, too, it was his duty to stay by them, were he to drop down at midnight in

the barn and die with the flail in his hand. But if love and duty cannot make a boy happy, what can? Passion, genius, a teeming brain, a palpitating heart, and a soul of fire. These too were his, and idle would have been her tears, had Pity wept for young Robert Burns.

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Was he not hungry for knowledge from a child? During these very years he was devouring it; and soon the dawn grew day. My father," says Gilbert, "was for some time the only companion we had. He conversed familiarly on all subjects with us, as if we had been men; and was at great pains, while we accompanied him in the labors of the farm, to lead the conversation to such subjects as might tend to increase our knowledge, or confirm us in virtuous habits. He borrowed Salmon's

Geographical Grammar for us, and endeavored to make us acquainted with the situation and history of the different countries in the world; while from a book society in Ayr, he procured for us the reading of Durham's Physico and Astro Theology, and Ray's Wisdom of God in the Creation. Robert read all these books with an avidity and industry scarcely to be equalled. My father had been a subscriber to Stackhouse's History of the Bible. From this Robert collected a competent knowledge of ancient history; for no book was so voluminous as to slacken his industry, or so antiquated as to damp his researches." He kept reading too at the Spectator, Pope and Pope's Homer, some plays of Shakspeare, Boyle's Lectures, Locke on the Human Understanding, Hervey's Meditations, Taylor's Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin, the works of Allan Ramsay and Smollet, and A COLLECTION OF SONGS. "That volume was my Vade Mecum. I pored over them, during my work, or walking to labor, song by song, verse by verse, carefully noticing the true tender or sublime from affectation or fustian; and I am convinced I owe to this practice most of my critic-craft, such as it is."

So much for book-knowledge; but what of the kind that is born within every boy's own bosom, and grows there till often that bosom feels as if it would burst? To Mr. Murdoch, Gilbert always appeared to possess a more lively imagination, and to be more of a wit than Robert. Yet imagination or wit he had none. thee I mean to live; yet he was

His face said, "Mirth, with