poverty to its lot, toil to its taskwork, care to its burden--nay, I
would say even--grief to its grave? And by one Immortal Song has
sanctified for ever the poor man's Cot--by such a picture as only
genius, in the inspiring power of piety, could have painted; has given
enduring life to the image--how tender and how true!--of the Happy Night
passing by sweet transition from this worky world into the Hallowed Day,
by God's appointment breathing a heavenly calm over all Christian
regions in their rest--nowhere else so profoundly--and may it never be
broken!--as over the hills and valleys of our beloved, and yet religious
land!

It cannot be said that the best biographers of Burns, and his best
critics, have not done, or desired to do, justice to his character as
well as to his genius; and, according as the truth has been more
entirely and fearlessly spoken, has he appeared the nobler and nobler
man. All our best poets, too, have exultingly sung the worth, while they
mourned the fate of him, the brightest of the brotherhood. But above,
and below, and round about all that they have been uttering, has all
along been heard a voice, which they who know how to listen for it can
hear, and which has pronounced a decision in his favour not to be
reversed; for on earth it cannot be carried to a higher tribunal. A
voice heard of old on great national emergencies, when it struck terror
into the hearts of tyrants, who quaked, and quailed, and quitted for aye
our land before "the unconquered Caledonian spear"--nor, since our union
with noblest England, ever slack to join with her's and fervid Erin's
sons, the thrice-repeated cry by which battle-fields are cleared; but
happier, far happier to hear, in its low deep tone of peace. For then it
is like the sound of distant waterfalls, the murmur of summer woods, or
the sea rolling in its rest. I mean the Voice of the People of
Scotland--the Voice of her Peasantry and her Trades--of all who earn
their bread by the sweat of their brow--her Working Men.

I presume not to draw their character. But this much I will say, that in
the long run they know whom it is fitting they should honour and love.
They will not be dictated to in their choice of the names that with
them shall be household words. Never, at any period of their history,
have they been lightly moved; but, when moved, their meaning was not to
be mistaken; tenacious their living grasp as the clutch of death; though
force may wrench th