sence of the
proudest nobles of their land, when they remember that from them, and
not from the privileged orders of society, our greatest national genius
was destined to arise. And, in fact, the most striking, and perhaps the
most valuable feature in the poetical character of Burns, is the marked
ascendancy which the spirit and habits of the peasant, the genius of the
man, as it were, continued to exercise on the genius of the poet, even
during the most brilliant periods of his subsequent career. Even amid
that rich variety of subjects, in the treatment of which his instinctive
refinement and delicacy of taste enabled him to combine, with all the
higher powers of the man, the courtly graces of the gentleman and
scholar--still his happiest effort, the masterpiece of his genius, in
which his own mind is displayed in the most agreeable light, and his
inspiration breathes forth with the greatest brilliancy and beauty, will
be found to be dictated by the associations of his early rustic days.
When I reflect, therefore, how copious, how graphic, how true are his
own descriptions of the character of the Scottish peasantry, in all its
varieties of grave or of gay, of light or of shadow, I cannot but feel
it is a sort of presumption to offer in a company, who must be all so
familiar with these descriptions, any crude remark of my own, on the
more interesting features of those to which they refer. I shall,
however, do my best to season the few comments which I am in some degree
bound to offer on the subject allotted to me, by taking the poet's works
as my text-book. Were I called upon, therefore, to name the virtues of
our peasantry, which chiefly claim our respect and admiration, I should
point first to their industry, frugality, and contentment, as those
which prominently adorn their own class of society above all others, and
also to their piety and their patriotism, as shared, I would fain hope
equally, or at least largely, by the mass of our fellow-citizens. Where,
then, shall we find a more spirited picture of the influence and effects
of the three former qualities--above all, of that most inestimable
blessing, contentment--than in the brilliant little poem which bears the
humble title of the "Twa Dogs," where, after so graphically describing
the honest toils, often the severe hardships, inseparable from the
peasant's lot, he goes on to say, that yet

"They're nae sae wretched's ane wad think,
Though constantly on p