esolution should be brought forward. On the appointed day, however, for moving the reduction, the Chancellor of the Exchequer accosted More O'Ferrall in the lobby, and told him frankly that the majority of the Scottish members were too formidable to be provoked. He would therefore merely propose the resolution, as he was bound by his promise, but must leave it an open question to the friends of the government to take what side they pleased. The notice was a short one; and on looking through the House, the member for Kildare found a strong muster from the "Land of Cakes," and a very thin sprinkling of Irish members. Fortunately he knew where the latter were to be found; for he had been invited to join a large party of them in a white-bait excursion to Greenwich; and he took the resolution of setting out immediately and bringing them up for the division. But then how to keep the question afloat all the time that must elapse during his absence? He almost despaired; but seeing old Ruthven, and well knowing of what leathern quality his lungs were compact, he briefly explained to him the true state of the case, and begged of him to keep the House amused till he should return. "If you don't come back till the cows come home," said the hearty old fellow, "you shall find me here upon my two legs." So away O'Ferrall started down the river from Westminster Bridge, with two pair of oars; and in less than an hour and a half walked into the House again, with about twenty truants in his train. Ruthven was true to his word, sawing the air and talking of worts and barley, oats and agriculture, protection and native produce, heedless of the cries of "Question, question," which issued from two dozen Scottish throats all around him. He had just begun a new sentence, trusting to his motherwit for the end of it. The nominative case had been launched with an adjective or two, to give time for making out a verb, and he was on the point of enunciating a relative pronoun, to be followed, perhaps, by half-a-dozen parentheses, when More O'Ferrall whispered, as he walked past "You may stop as soon as you like." "Faith and I'd like it now," said the honourable and learned member for Dublin, sitting down without waiting to finish his period. The object was gained; Irish whisky beat the Ferintosh by a majority of ten: a national triumph which never could have been achieved, had not Edward Southwell Ruthven studied verbiage in the Historical Society. CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN BURNS AND CLARINDA.-PART II. (Concluded from page 764 of our No. for December, 1843.) poet's admiration, had not in time suggested to her, that a love at first sight-but neither, as she well knew, a first nor yet a fiftieth love-that a violent and instantaneously-conceived passion for a woman fettered by law and opinion, if not by moral obligation, was liable to very great suspicion on the score of sincerity, as well as of constancy and propriety. We know well, That Love will venture in Whar it daurna weel be seen; Whar Wisdom aince has been; OF Burns it is impossible to say too much; but | better knowledge of the nature and license of a are we not, in these Clarinda Letters, giving undue importance to what was at best little more than a brief episode in his passionate life; one transient flame of the many that burnt fiercely, but fitfully, in his heart, or played around his fancy, and then for ever passed away from the thoughts of one whose "loves were as short and rapturous as his lyrics?" Between the time that he appeared in Edinburgh (towards the close of the year 1786) and the Spring of 1788, in which he married, or re-married, Jean Armour, the susceptible bard, by his own account, had been more or less scathed by the bright eyes, or won by the amiable manners, of at least a dozen beauties of the south, the north, and the metropolis. Of these, Clarinda chanced to be the last, and the only one, that appeared disposed to give him sigh for sigh. Had any one of the ladies to whom he paid court, or to whom he addressed the love-songs of which they were presumed to be the inspiration, entered into so frank and sympathetic a correspondence with him, is there a doubt that we should have had, with the Bonny Lass of Ballochmyle, The Fairest Maid on Devon's Banks, Bonny Lesley Baillie, Charming lovely Davis, and a dozen more of Phillises and Chlorises, a series of letters as glowing and rapturous, though more naturally and respectfully expressed, than that correspondence into which he was precipitated with Mrs. M'Lehose? It was unfortunate for that lady, that a more modest estimate of her own attractions and talents, and a but we know of few such fiery ungovernable outbreaks of passion as this on the sober side of the Alps, or among the fogs of Britain; and Clarinda, if not the most vain, must have been the most selfdeluded of women, not to follow the line of conduct adopted by those other modest charmers, who were content to receive the rapturous adoration of the poet as the natural homage of genius to beauty. Had she possessed a truer and more modest selfappreciation, the memory of Burns would have been spared some reproach; while she would have been spared the catastrophe which, we should hope, caused her much humiliation and heart-burning. It is said Love is blind; but that Vanity is blinder still, is evident from the whole tenor of this correspondence. The account which Burns gives of a sentimenta flirtation, or "love-scrape," into which he fel with a young woman, his " Montgomery's Peggy," who received his addresses coldly, sufficiently, to us at least, explains the nature of his feelings for Mrs. M'Lehose at the commencement of the correspondence. "She," the lady, "had been bred in a style of life rather elegant; but as Vanburgh says, 'my wicked star found me out there too. For though I began the affair merely in gaieté de cœur; or to tell the truth, which will scarcely be believed, a vanity of showing my parts in courtship, particularly my abilities at a billet doux, on which I always piqued myself, made me lay siege to her; and when, as I always do in my foolish gallantries, I had battered myself into a very warm affection for her," &c. We need not pursue what fully explains the rise and progress of many of Burns' fitful and transient passions. In the same strain, though in more complimentary language, a passage occurs in a letter to a young lady, his "little idol," "the charming lovely Davis," the "Bonnie wee thing" of his lyrics, whom he gallantly proposes to add to the multitude of beauties of all ages and conditions that filled the seraglio-chambers of a poet's imagination. He says, "When I meet with a person after my own heart, I positively feel what an orthodox Protestant would call a species of idolatry, which acts on my fancy like inspiration; and I can no more resist rhyming on the impulse, than an Eolian harp refuse its tones to the streamy air. A distich or two would be the consequence, though the object of my fancy were grey-beard age; but when my theme is youth and beauty-a young lady whose personal charms, wit, and sentiment, are equally striking and unaffected-by Heavens! though I had lived three score years a married man, and three score years before I was a married man, my imagination would hallow the very idea." Most unhappily, Mrs. M'Lehose could not, or would not, understand what was instinctively felt by all these ladies, whether married or single. She persisted in believing that the rich tribute which inspired genius paid to womanly beauty and attraction, was the sober, steadfast homage of the heart. She well knew that Burns had been a lover and a rover long before they had met; and now, construing his poetic flights as vanity and growing passion prompted, she must have flattered herself that she alone had power to fix his wandering affections; that his love had concentrated upon her in defiance of "impossibilities." Severe judges will say that Burns was inveigled into this correspondence by one who, strangely self-deluded, misconstrued her own motives as much as she did his vapouring professions. But Clarinda may have believed, that though fiction has an allowed place in poetry, a poet's prose run-mad may be sincere. Besides admiring his genius, she had the high motive of wishing to convert him, and of weaning him from his evil ways; and in the dangerous process, found in him that ideal" lover-friend" for whom her susceptible heart had long yearned. If we can understand one who did not very well understand herself, it was not love for Burns that gave birth to this desire; but the sentimental long "male-friend long sought," and unfound. "Heaven sent the blessing in my Sylvander." Had any of the other more prudent charmers, the goddesses who lighted up his heart, taken, like Clarinda, the Poet at his first word, and invited a correspondence of sentiment and gallantry, the laughing gods best know whither they might have led so harum-scarum Will-o'-the-Wisp a personage as he rather fondly loves to describe himself. It is certain, as we have said, that we should have had many more loveletters, or series of love-letters. Only one other lady is reported to have had the indiscretion of showing about his songs written in praise of her charms, or rather of the living loveliness which was ever the poet's immediate inspiration; and from her, "The lassie wi' the lint white locks," he, according to Allan Cunningham, endeavoured to retrieve the consequences of his imprudence, by empowering a common friend to claim the manuscripts, which "Chloris" unwillingly restored. Nor does he seem to have been at all ambitious of the éclat attendant on Clarinda's favoured lover. Immediately before he left Edinburgh he wrote To-morrow evening I shall be with you about eight, probably for the last time till I return to Edinburgh. In the meantime, should any of these two unlucky friends question you respecting me, whether I am the man, I do not think they are entitled to any information. As to their jealousy and spying, I despise them. Mrs. M'Lehose had so many gentlemen, confidential friends, that one gets confused among them; but Burns was not at all ambitious to be known as the man, who came to visit her, at what the douce folks of her little Court must have deemed most untimeous hours. He was nevertheless known to her remonstrating friends. But now the hour was come He mounts and rides away. However feverish was the passion of Burns during the last few weeks of his stay in Edinburgh, it appears to have been cooled down, if not blown to the winds, as he passed over by the Kirk of Shotts or Carnwath Moor, on his way to Glasgow. Some few letters, much lowered in tone, and appearing at longer and longer intervals, were received by the languishing if not forsaken Clarinda, who wrote frequently. Yet Burns felt the" sacrifices" to which Mrs. M'Lehose had been subjected for "his sake;" and one way or other, she must now have caused him no little perplexity. He tells her of his present plans for the Excise and farming, and adds— If I settle on the farm I propose, I am just a day and a half's ride from Edinburgh. We shall meet: don't you say, "Perhaps too often!" The very day after this letter was written, if the dates are accurate, his second pair of twin children were born; and now he might well regret not having pondered in time the good old song, which we recommend to all young poets— "It's gude to be merry and wise, On the 34 of March, the birthday of the twins, ing was gratified when he appeared, the phoenix he wrote his young friend Ainslie :-" I have becik through some tribulation and much buffeting of the wicked One, since I came to this country. Jean I found banished, forlorn, destitute, and friendless. I have reconciled her to her fate; and I have reconciled her to her mother. I shall be in Edinburgh the middle of next week. I got a letter from Clarinda yesterday; and she tells me she has got of mine but one. Indeed, she is the only person I have written in Edinburgh till this day." He tells he had written her four letters, which appear to have all been received at last; and, in the meanwhile, he answered Clarinda's reproaches and complaints of silence and neglect, kindly and gently, and defended himself by pleading Could not you, my ever dearest Madam, make a little allowance for a man, after long absence, paying a short visit to a country full of friends, relations, and early intimates? Cannot you guess, my Clarinda, what thoughts, what cares, what anxious forebodings, hopes and fears, must crowd the breast of the man of keen sensibility, when no less is on the tapis than his aim, his employment, his very existence through future life? | Blind Dr. Moyse, she had first seen the beautiful Miss Burnet, and asks Burns, "How could you celebrate any other Clarinda? Oh, I would have adored you, as Pope of exquisite taste and refinement, had you loved, sighed, and written upon her for ever! breathing your passion only to the incorporeal, more than others. My dear Sylvander, to woods and streams. But Poets, I find, are not quite be serious, I really wonder you ever admired Clarinda, after beholding Miss Burnet's superior charms. If Í don't hear to-morrow, I shall form dreadful reasons. God forbid! Bishop Geddes was within a foot of me, too. What field for contemplation-both! Good night: God bless you! Did you ever feel that sickness of heart which arises from "hope deferred"? that, the cruelest of pains, you have inflicted on me for eight days by-past. I hope I can make every reasonable allowance for the hurry of business and dissipation. Yet, had I been ever so engrossed, I should have found one hour out of the twenty-four to write you. I have been under unspeakable obligations to your friend, Mr. Ainslie. I had not a mortal to whom I could speak of your name, but him. He has called often; and, by sympathy, not a little alleviated my anxiety. I tremble lest you should have devolved, what you used to term your "folly," upon Clarinda more 's the pity. To be overtopped in anything else, I can bear; but in the tests of generous love, I defy all mankind! Not even Mary I have not once set eyes on, since I wrote to to the tender, the fond, the loving Clarinda-she whose strength of attachment, whose melting soul, may vie with you. Oh, that I should be formed susceptible of kindEloisa and Sappho, not even she can overpay the affec-ness, never, never to be fully, or, at least, habitually returned! "Trim," (said my Uncle Toby,)" I wish, Trim, I were dead." tion she owes me! Now that, not my apology, but my defence is made, I feel my soul respire more easily. I know you will go along with me in my justification: would to Heaven you could in my adoption, too! I mean an adoption beneath the stars—an adoption where I might revel in the imme diate beams of "She the bright sun of all her sex." I would not have you, my dear Madam, so much hurt at Miss N[immo]'s coldness. "Tis placing yourself below her, an honour she by no means deserves. We ought, when we wish to be economists in happiness, we ought, in the first place, to fix the standard of our own character; and when, on full examination, we know where we stand, and how much ground we occupy, let us contend for it as property; and those who seem to doubt, or deny us what is justly ours, let us either pity their prejudices, or despise their judgment. There was not-how could there be ?-one syllable of Jean Armour in this correspondence; and now, sincerely, we begin to pity the deserted Clarinda, pining in absence, if not in solitude, and suddenly dashed down from the giddy pinnacle of pride, to which the seeming devotion of the Poet had raised her. Little could she have guessed what was waiting her, when, rallying her spirits on the receipt of his comforting epistle, she says Why should I not keep it up? Admired, esteemed, beloved, by one of the first of mankind? Not all the wealth of Peru could have purchased these. Oh, Sylvander, I am great in my own eyes, when I think how high I am in your esteem! You have shown me the merit I possess; I knew it not before. Even Joseph trembled t'other day in my presence. "Husbands looked mild, and savages grew tame !" Love and cherish your friend Mr. Ainslie. He is your friend indeed. I long for next week; happy days, I hope, yet await us. When you meet young Beauties, think of Clarinda's affectionof her situation-of how much her happiness depends on you. Farewell, till we meet. God be with you! Clarinda's letters, however, now that she was languishing under the absence and silence of Sylvander, and indulging anxious forebodings, assume more the character of love-letters, even to the melancholy whine of anticipated neglect. At a lecture given by from you. You would see, by my last, how anxious I Mr. Ainslie called just now to tell me he had heard was, even then, to hear from you. 'Tis the first time I thoughts were yours both Sunday nights at eight. Why ever had reason to be so I hope 'twill be the last. My should my letter have affected you? You know I count all things (Heaven excepted) but loss, that I may win and keep you. I supped at Mr. Kemp's on Friday. Had you been an invisible spectator with what perfect ease I acquitted myself, you would have been pleased, highly pleased with me. I hope you have not forgotten to kiss the little cherub for me. Give him fifty, and think Clarinda blessing him all the while. I pity his mother sincerely, and wish a certain affair happily over. I never see Miss Nimmo. Her indifference wounds me; but all these things make me fly to the Father of Mercies, who is the inexhaustible Fountain of all kindness. How could you ever mention “postages"? Mrs. M'Lehose was then aware of the condition of "Jean ;" but neither could she nor Mr. Ainslie, from anything communicated by Burns, have anticipated the line of conduct that he had pursued. That tenderness for the feelings of Clarinda, which betrayed him into passive deception, became, at last, culpable weakness, injurious to her he vainly tried to spare, and most injurious to his own character. On the 6th, he writes, in dismal spirits :— Yesterday I dined at a friend's at some distance: the savage hospitality of this country spent me the most part of the night over the nauseous potion in the bowl. This day-sick-headache-low spirits-miserablefasting, except for a draught of water or small beer. Now eight o'clock at night; only able to crawl ten minutes' walk into Mauchline, to wait the post, in the pleasurable hope of hearing from the mistress of my soul. But, truce with all this! When I sit down to write to you, all is happiness and peace. A hundred times aday do I figure you before your taper,-your book or work laid aside as I get within the room. How happy have I been! and how little of that scantling portion of time, called the life of man, is sacred to happiness, much less transport. I could moralize to-night, like a death's-head. "O what is life, that thoughtless wish of all! Nothing astonishes me more, when a little sickness clogs the wheels of life, than the thoughtless career we run in the hour of health. "None saith, where is God, my Maker, that giveth songs in the night ?" Next day he sent the explanation or apology for silence, adverted to above; and she was comforted, and replied, as we have seen, "Why should I not keep it up?" Burns was again called to Edinburgh by his Excise appointment; and from one of his subsequent letters to Mrs. Dunlop, and other letters, we learn, that before this time he had again joined with his Jean in that joint declaration which in Scotland legalizes a marriage. From this time he speaks of her to his male correspondents as his wife fondly beloved; and begins to tell those ladies whose rage and jealousy he did not apprehend, of the step he had taken, and the generous motives which led to it. But until some months later, the church ceremony was not performed, and his secret was not divulged to Clarinda. The sober realities of life, the strong claims of duty, and the ties of a fond affection, suspended but not eradicated, had in a few days dispelled the feverish dream of the last two months. It is of this period in the Life of Burns that we find Mr. Lockhart saying " More than half the intervening months were spent in Edinburgh, where Burns found, or fancied, that his presence was necessary for the satisfactory completion of his affairs with the booksellers. It seems clear enough that one great object was the society of his jovial intimates in the capital." We see no ground for this assumption. His affairs with Creech, who had exasperated him by delay, and hopes of obtaining an appointment in the Excise, were sufficient reasons to keep him hanging on in town; of which otherwise he seems to have been heartily sick. But Mr. Lockhart continues-Nor was he without the amusement of a little romance to fill up what vacant hours they [the intimates] left him. He lodged that winter in Bristo Street, on purpose to be near a beautiful widow-the same to whom he addressed the song, Clarinda, Mistress of my Soul,' &c., and a series of prose epistles, which have been separately published, and which present more instances of bad taste, bombastic language, and fulsome sentiment, than could be produced from all his other writings beside." We know not on what authority Mr. Lockhart locates Burns in Bristo Street, and in the immediate vicinity of Clarinda. He lived, beyond dispute, in St. James' Square, with Mr. Cruickshank, during the fervour of the Clarinda correspondence; though he may have left his friend's house for a short time before he went back to Ayrshire, or have lodged in Bristo Street during that shorter subsequent visit to Edinburgh, when Burns must have had the remorseful consciousness that Clarinda's professed lover was now, at all events, a married man. Like every other memoir of the Poet that we have seen, Mr. Lockhart's, generally true and fine in spirit, is defective in accuracy as to dates and points of fact, to an extent for which no mercy would be given at the tribunal of The Quarterly Review. That Burns, now the husband of Jean Armour, kept up the deception with Clarinda, after his return to Edinburgh, no one dare justify. The intercourse, the correspondence was renewed in the former style, though Burns sometimes seems as if he were preparing his mistress for what was impending; and also sometimes in the mood of saying, "How happy could I be with either, In looking forward to the terms of their future intercourse, the husband of "Bonnie Jean" says,-and now we are really constrained, for the moment, to wish that these letters had never seen the light,— Life, my Clarinda, is a weary, barren path; and woe be to him or her that ventures on it alone! For me, I have my dearest partner of my soul: Clarinda and I will make out our pilgrimage together. Wherever I am, I shall constantly let her know how I go on, what I observe in the world around me, and what adventures week, or, at least, every fortnight, a packet, two or three I meet with. Will it please you, my love, to get, every sheets, full of remarks, nonsense, news, rhymes, and old songs? Will you open, with satisfaction and delight, a letter from a man who loves you, who has loved you, and Oh Clarinda! what do I owe to Heaven for blessing me who will love you to death, through death, and for ever? with such a piece of exalted excellence as you! I call over your idea, as a miser counts over his treasure! Tell me, were you studious to please me last night? I am sure you did it to transport. How rich am I who have such a treasure as you! You know me; you know how to make me happy, and you do it most effectually. God bless you with "Long life, long youth, long pleasure, and a friend!" To-morrow night, according to your own direction, I shall watch the window: 'tis the star that guides me to paradise. The great relish to all is, that Honour, that Innocence, that Religion, are the witnesses and guarantees of our happiness. Some of the Poet's letters written at this critical period, are supposed to be lost, and none of Clarinda's are preserved save one. Before leaving town he presented her, still unconscious of what was awaiting her, with the famous pair of wine-glasses, which she preserved as the Musgraves do the Luck of Eden Hall, and the verses which give them all their value. The interval of almost a year presents a great gap in the Correspondence, abruptly broken off, in all probability, by the treachery of Sylvander having become apparent to the mortified and angry Clarinda. She had sent him an indignant letter, the nature of which we only make out from his reply; which was not written till long after he had received her epistle. Burns sturdily pleads not guilty to the indictment which his angry quondam mistress preferred against him, though, we fear, not very successfully. If she was the first cause of whatever was amiss, yet his plea of perfect innocence will not sustain the slightest touch of the test of truth. He says: As I am convinced of my own innocence, and, though conscious of high imprudence and egregious folly, can lay my hand on my breast and attest the rectitude of my heart, you will pardon me, Madam, if I do not carry my complaisance so far, as humbly to acquiesce in the name of Villain, merely out of compliment to your opinion; much as I esteem your judgment, and warmly as I regard your worth. I have already told you, and I again aver it, that, at the period of time alluded to, I was not under the small est moral tie to Mrs. B.- ; nor did I, nor could I then know, all the powerful circumstances that omnipotent necessity was busy laying in wait for me. When you call over the scenes that have passed between us, you will survey the conduct of an honest man, struggling successfully with temptations the most powerful that ever beset humanity, and preserving untainted honour, in situations where the austerest virtue would have forgiven a fall situations that, I will dare to say, not a single individual of all his kind, even with half his sensibility and passion, could have encountered without ruin; and I leave you to guess, Madam, how such a man is likely to digest an accusation of perfidious treachery. Was I to blame, Madam, in being the distracted victim of charms which, I affirm it, no man ever approached with impunity? Had I seen the least glimmering of hope that these charms could ever have been mine; or even had not iron necessity-But these are unavailing words. I would have called on you when I was in town, indeed I could not have resisted it, but that Mr. Ainslie told me, that you were determined to avoid your windows while I was in town, lest even a glance of me should occur in the street. There is some truth in this defence. Yet if the accused conceived himself not under the "smallest moral tie" to Jean Armour during the first period of his sentimental flirtation with Clarinda, he could not have so deceived himself upon his return to Edinburgh from Ayrshire, where he had left Jean his wife. It was too bad. Or can we believe we do not-that he really was the passive or reluctant victim of necessity when he married. He wished to soothe Clarinda. What does Allan Cunningham, what does Professor Wilson, say of this much canvassed marriage? and, to use his own words, he moved homeward with as Allan Cunningham quotes the letters to Mrs. Dunlop and Miss Chalmers, in which Burns tells of his marriage, and fondly describes the simple and endearing qualities of his wife. Having given these letters, Allan thus proceeds : These letters, and others in the same strain, have misled Walker into the belief that Burns married Jean Armour from a sentiment of duty rather than a feeling of love: no belief can be more imaginary. I see nothing in these letters out of harmony with affection and love. And Allan maintains his point, though more fervently than logically, since he proves that Burns continued to love and adore " Bonnie Jean," because he had done so at a former period. He speaks more from the heart, and to the purpose, when he asks— But in what were the ladies of the polished circles of the land superior to a well-favoured, well-formed, wellbred lass of low degree, who had a light foot for a dance, a melodious voice for a song, two witching eyes, with wit at will, and who believed the man that loved her the greatest genius in the world? circles,' "In busiest street and loneliest glen, Are felt the flashes of his pen." The question has long been mooted, and is likely try maiden was more likely to understand the loveAllan Cunningham farther contends, that a counto be again raised by this Correspondence, whether, lays of Burns, than any lady in the land,—Clarinda, in marrying Jean Armour, Burns was actuated by of course, included: and it is quite true, that while unmingled affection, or generous and compassion-his songs are not, never were, those of “fashionable ate feelings, and the strong sense of duty prompting him at all hazards and sacrifices to repair the wrong he had done. Professor Wilson and Allan Cunningham, both well qualified judges, contend that his heart and judgment were at one on this most important step; and they probably were almost as well acquainted with the affair of Clarinda as we now are. Honest Allan, when bringing out, volume by volume, his spirited but crude, hasty, and inaccurate edition of the works of Burns, and hoping to obtain the Letters of Clarinda to grace his work, pays that lady many high compliments; but in the last written volume, his Life of the Poet, he says, [vol. i. page 184,] "This "Mistress of the Poet's soul, and queen of Poetesses,' could not be otherwise than tolerant in her taste, if she sympathized in the affected strains which he offered at the altar of her beauty. There is much more of it, in tone still more severe. And Allan Cunningham also quotes, as if from this Correspondence, poetical passages, (which do not appear in the edition of Mr. M'Lehose,) which Allan condemns as "audaciously bold," though he is unwilling to regard the composition as serious. Of the period when the Correspondence was at the hottest, Mr. Cunningham remarks :Burns now turned his steps westward. The thoughts of home, of a settled purpose in life, gave him a gladness of heart such as he had never before known; He theory of Professor Josiah Walker and others,— "Went sounding on, A dark and perilous way." Professor Wilson was, no doubt but partially it is, in our opinion, probable that the fullest knowinformed of this new episode of Clarinda; though tence thus solemnly pronounced :ledge would not one jot have changed the sen heartless villain. In making her his lawful wedded wife, |