tic is their unswerving and
perfect truth. The poetry of Shakspeare is the mirror of life--that of
Burns the expressive and richly modulated voice of human nature.

CHAPTER VIII.

"Burns was a poor man from his birth, and an exciseman from
necessity; but--I _will say_ it!--the sterling of his honest
worth, poverty could not debase; and his independent British
spirit oppression might bend, but could not subdue."--_Letter
to Mr. Graham_.

I have been listening for the last half hour to the wild music of an
Eolian harp. How exquisitely the tones rise and fall!--now sad, now
solemn--now near, now distant. The nerves thrill, the heart softens, the
imagination awakes as we listen. What if that delightful instrument be
animated by a living soul, and these finely-modulated tones be but the
expression of its feelings! What if these dying, melancholy cadences,
which so melt and sink into the heart, be--what we may so naturally
interpret them--the melodious sinkings of a deep-seated and hopeless
unhappiness! Nay, the fancy is too wild for even a dream. But are there
none of those fine analogies, which run through the whole of nature and
the whole of art, to sublime it into truth? Yes, _there have_ been such
living harps among us; beings, the tones of whose sentiments, the melody
of whose emotions, the cadences of whose sorrows, remain to thrill, and
delight, and humanize our souls. They seem born for others, not for
themselves. Alas, for the hapless companion of my early youth! Alas, for
him, the pride of his country, the friend of my maturer manhood!--But my
narrative lags in its progress.

My vessel lay in the Clyde for several weeks during the summer of 1794,
and I found time to indulge myself in a brief tour along the western
coasts of the kingdom, from Glasgow to the Borders. I entered Dumfries
in a calm, lovely evening, and passed along one of the principal
streets. The shadows of the houses on the western side were stretched
half-way across the pavement, while, on the side opposite, the bright
sunshine seemed sleeping on the jutting irregular fronts, and high
antique gables. There seemed a world of well-dressed company this
evening in town; and I learned, on inquiry, that all the aristocracy of
the adjacent country, for twenty miles round, had come in to attend a
county ball. They went fluttering along the sunny side of the street,
gay as butterflies--group succeeding group. On the opposite