the neglect or contempt of native worth. They love
him for his independence. What wonder! To be brought into contact with
rank and wealth--a world inviting to ambition, and tempting to a
thousand desires--and to choose rather to remain lowly and poor, than
seek an easier or a brighter lot, by courting favour from the rich and
great--was a legitimate ground of pride, if any ground of pride be
legitimate. He gave a tongue to this pride, and the boast is inscribed
in words of fire in the Manual of the Poor. It was an exuberant feeling,
as all his feelings were exuberant, and he let them all overflow. But
sometimes, forsooth! he did not express them in sufficiently polite or
courteous phrase! And that too was well. He stood up not for himself
only, but for the great class to which he belonged, and which in his
days--and too often in ours--had been insulted by the pride of superior
station, when unsupported by personal merit, to every bold peasant a
thing of scorn. They love him, because he vindicated the ways of God to
man, by showing that there was more genius and virtue in huts, than was
dreamt of in the world's philosophy. They love him for his truthful
pictures of the poor. Not there are seen slaves sullenly labouring, or
madly leaping in their chains; but in nature's bondage, content with
their toil, sedate in their sufferings, in their recreations full of
mirth--are seen Free Men. The portraiture, upon the whole, is felt by
us--and they know it--to demand at times pity as a due; but challenges
always respect, and more than respect, for the condition which it
glorifies. The Land of Burns! What mean we by the words? Something more,
surely, than that Fortune, in mere blindness, had produced a great poet
here? We look for the inspiring landscape, and here it is; but what
could all its beauties have availed, had not a people inhabited it
possessing all the sentiments, thoughts, aspirations, to which nature
willed to give a voice in him of her choicest melody? Nothing
prodigious, after all, in the birth of such a poet among such a people.
Was any thing greater in the son than the austere resignation of the
father? In his humble compeers there was much of the same tender
affection, sturdy independence, strong sense, self-reliance, as in him;
and so has Scotland been prolific, throughout her lower orders, of men
who have made a figure in her literature and her history; but to Burns
nature gave a finer organization, a more powe