substance or structure of our souls, so cannot account for those seeming caprices in them, that one should be particularly pleased with this thing, or struck with that, which, on minds of a different cast, makes no extraordinary impression. I have some favorite flowers in spring, among which are the mountain daisy, the harebell, the foxglove, the wild brier rose, the budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight. I never heard the loud solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild, mixing cadence of a troop of gray plover in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery, which like the Eolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own myself partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities—a God that made all thingsman's immaterial and immortal nature-and a world of weal or woe beyond death and the grave."

A fit comment on this and other passages of similar import in his letters is the following affecting poem, entitled "A Prayer in the Prospect of Death." It seems to us to utter the deep throbbings of the poet's spirit:

Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene?

Have I so found it full of pleasing charms?
Some drops of joy, with draughts of ill between;
Some gleams of sunshine 'mid renewing storms;

Is it departing pangs my soul alarms?

Or death's unlovely, dreary, dark abode ?
For guilt, for guilt, my terrors are in arms;
I tremble to approach an angry God,

And justly smart beneath his sin avenging rod.

Fain would I say, 'forgive my foul offence!'
Fain promise never more to disobey;

But should my Author health again dispense,
Again I might desert fair virtue's way;
Again in folly's path might go astray;

Again exalt the brute and sink the man.
Then how should I for heavenly mercy pray;
Who act so counter heavenly mercy's plan,
Who sin so oft have mourn'd, yet to temptation ran?

O thou great Governor of all below,

If I may dare a lifted eye to Thee,
Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow,
Or still the tumult of the raging sea;

With that controling power assist ev'n me,
Those headlong furious passions to confine,

For all unfit I feel my powers to be,

To rule their torrent in the allowed line;

O aid me with thy help, Omnipotence Divine!"

After writing thus far, we read for the first time, "The Genius and Character of Burns," by Professor Wilson, the richest garland yet wreathed around the poet's brow; and we are happy to find the views expressed above fully corroborated by that distinguished writer. It is true that Wilson delineates the character of Burns with enthusiastic admiration; but his views are so discriminating, and withal backed by such an array of facts, that no candid man can deny their correctness. We cannot therefore resist the temptation of making the following extract, in which the finest discrimi

nation is blended with the largest charity. Long may the Literature of Scotland be guarded by such a critic! But one thing must not be forgotten here, namely, that no one, and especially one personally unacquainted with Burns, can pronounce in regard to his actual spiritual state. Whether he was truly born of God,' and notwithstanding the errors of his life, died a Christian and went to heaven, is happily not a question which we are called to decide.

"We have said but little hitherto of Burns's religion. Some have denied that he had any religion at all—a rash and cruel denial-made in the face of his genius, his character, and his life. What man in his senses ever lived without religion? "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God" -was Burns an atheist ? We do not fear to say that he was religious far beyond the common run of men, even them who may have had a more consistent and better considered creed. The lessons he received in the "auld clay biggin" were not forgotten through life. He speaks-and we believe him of his "early ingrained piety" having been long remembered to good purpose-what he called his "idiot piety"-not meaning thereby to disparage it, but merely that it was in childhood an instinct. "Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name!" is breathed from the lips of infancy with the same feeling at its heart that beats towards its father on earth, as it kneels in prayer by his side. No one surely will doubt his sincerity when he writes from Irvine to his father-"Honor'd

sir-I am quite transported at the thought, that ere long, perhaps soon, I shall bid an eternal adieu to all the pains, and uneasinesses, and disquietudes of this weary life; for I assure you I am heartily tired of it, and, if I do not very much deceive myself, I could contentedly and gladly resign it. It is for this reason I am more pleased with the 15th, 16th, and 17th verses of the 7th chapter of Revelations, than with any ten times as many verses in the whole Bible, and would not exchange the noble enthusiasm with which they inspire me, for all that this world has to offer. 15. Therefore are they before the throne of God and serve him day and. night in his temple; and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. 16. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. 17. For the Lamb that is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."" When he gives lessons to a young man for his conduct in life, one of them is, "The great Creator to adore;" when he consoles a friend on the death of a relative, "he points the brimful grief-worn eyes to scenes beyond the grave;" when he expresses benevolence to a distressed family, he beseeches the aid of Him "who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb;" when he feels the need of aid to control his passions, he implores that of the "Great Governor of all below;" when in sickness, he has a prayer for the pardon of all his errors, and an expression of confidence

in the goodness of God; when suffering from the ills of life, he asks for the grace of resignation, "because they are thy will;" when he observes the sufferings of the virtuous, he remembers a rectifying futurity; he is religious not only when surprised by occasions such as these, but also on set occasions; he had regular worship in his family while at Ellisland-we know not how it was at Dumfries, but we do know that there he catechised his children every Saturday evening;-Nay, he does not enter a Druidical circle without a prayer to God.

He viewed the Creator chiefly in his attributes of love, goodness and mercy. "In proportion as we are wrung with grief, or distracted with anxiety, the ideas of a superintending Deity, an Almighty protector, are doubly dear." Him he never lost sight of, or confidence in, even in the depths of his remorse. An avenging God was too seldom in his contemplations-from the little severity in his own character--from a philosophical view of the inscrutable causes of human frailty-and most of all, from a diseased aversion to what was so much the theme of the sour Calvanism around him; but which would have risen up an appalling truth in such a soul as his, had it been habituated to profounder thought on the mysterious corruption of our fallen nature.

Sceptical thoughts as to revealed religion had assailed his mind, while with expanding powers it "communed with the glorious universe;" and in 1787 he writes from Edinburgh to a "Mr. James M'Candlish, student in physic, College, Glasgow,"