among the congregation as he entered the House of God. There has been many a rueful tragedy in houses that in after times "seemed asleep." How many good and happy fathers of families, who, were all their past lives to be pictured in ghastly revelation to the eyes of their wives and children, could never again dare to look them in the face! It pleased God to give them a long life; and they have escaped, not by their own strength, far away from the shadows of their misdeeds that are not now suffered to pursue them, but are chained down in the past no more to be let loose. That such things were is a secret none now live to divulge; and though once known they were never emblazoned. But Burns and men like Burns showed the whole world their dark spots by the very light of their genius; and having died in what may almost be called their youth, there the dark spots still are, and men point to them with their fingers, to whose eyes there may seem but small glory in all that effulgence.

Burns now took possession at Whitsuntide (1788) of the farm of Ellisland, while his wife remained at, Mossgiel, completing her education in the dairy, till brought home next term to their new house, which the poet set a-building with alacrity, on a plan of his own which was as simple a one as could be devised,-kitchen and dining-room in one, a doublebedded room with a bed-closet, and a garret. The site was pleasant, on the edge of a high bank of the Nith, commanding a wide and beautiful prospect,-holms, plains, woods, and hills, and a long reach of the sweeping river. While the house and offices were growing, he inhabited a hovel close at hand, and though occasionally giving vent to some splenetic humours in letters indited in his sooty cabin, and now and then yielding to fits of despondency about the "ticklish situation of a family of children," he says to his friend Ainslie, "I am decidedly of opinion that the step I have taken is vastly for my happiness." He had to qualify himself for holding his excise commission by six weeks' attendance on the business of that profession at Ayr-and we have seen that he made several visits to Mossgiel. Currie cannot let him thus pass the summer without moralising on his mode of life. "Pleased with surveying the grounds he was about to cultivate, and with the rearing of a building that should give shelter to his wife and children, and, as he fondly hoped, to his own

grey hairs, sentiments of independence buoyed up his mind, pictures of domestic comfort and peace rose on his imagination; and a few days passed away, as he himself informs us, the most tranquil, if not the happiest, which he had ever experienced." Let us believe that such days were not few, but many, and that we need not join with the good Doctor in grieving to think that Burns led all the summer a wandering and unsettled life. It could not be stationary; but there is no reason to think that his occasional absence was injurious to his affairs on the farm. Currie writes as if he thought him incapable of self-guidance, and says, "it is to be lamented that, at this critical period of his life, our poet was without the society of his wife and children. A great change had taken place in his situation; his old habits were broken; and the new circumstances in which he was placed were calculated to give a new direction to his thoughts and conduct. But his application to the cares and labours of his farm was interrupted by several visits to his family in Ayrshire; and as the distance was too great for a single day's journey, he generally slept a night at an inn on the road. On such occasions he sometimes fell into company, and forgot the resolutions he had formed. In a little while temptation assailed him nearer home." This is treating Burns like a child, a person of so facile a disposition as not to be trusted without a keeper on the king's highway. If he was not fit to ride by himself into Ayrshire, and there was no safety for him at Sanquhar, his case was hopeless out of an asylum. A trustworthy friend attended to the farm as overseer, when he was from home; potatoes, grass, and grain grew though he was away; on September 9th, we find him where he ought to be,-"I am busy with my harvest;" and on the 16th,-"This hovel that I shelter in is pervious to every blast that blows, and every shower that falls, and I am only preserved from being chilled to death by being suffocated with smoke. You will be pleased to hear that I have laid aside idle eclat, and bind every day after my reapers." Pity 'twas that there had not been a comfortable house ready furnished for Mrs Burns to step into at the beginning of summer, therein to be brought to bed of "little Frank, who, by the by, I trust will be no discredit to the honourable name of Wallace, as he has a fine manly countenance, and a figure that might do credit to a little fellow two months

older; and likewise an excellent good temper-though, when he pleases, he has a pipe only not quite so loud as the horn that his immortal namesake blew as a signal to take the pin out of Stirling bridge."

Dear good old blind Dr Blacklock, about this time, was anxious to know from Burns himself how he was thriving, and indited to him a pleasant epistle.

"Dear Burns, thou brother of my heart,
Both for thy virtues and thy art;
If art it may be call'd in thee,
Which Nature's bounty, large and free,
With pleasure in thy heart diffuses,
And warms thy soul with all the Muses.
Whether to laugh with easy grace,
Thy numbers move the sage's face,
Or bid the softer passions rise,

And ruthless souls with grief surprise,
"Tis Nature's voice distinctly felt
Through thee her organ, thus to melt.

Most anxiously I wish to know,

With thee of late how matters go;

How keeps thy much-loved Jean her health?
What promises thy farm of wealth?
Whether the muse persists to smile,
And all thy anxious cares beguile?
Whether bright fancy keeps alive?

And how thy darling infants thrive?"

It appears, from his reply, that Burns had intrusted Heron with a letter to Blacklock, which the preacher had not delivered, and the poet exclaims,

Currie says in a note, "Mr Heron, author of the History of Scotland lately published, and, among various other works, of a respectable life of our poet himself." Burns knew his character well: the unfortunate fellow had talents of no ordinary kind, and there are many good things, and much good writing, in his Life of Burns; but respectable it is not, basely calumnious, and the original source of many of the worst falsehoods even now believed too widely to be truths, concerning the moral character of a man as far superior to himself in virtue as in genius. Burns then tells his venerated friend that he has absolutely become a gauger.

"Ye glaikit, gleesome, dainty damies,
Wha by Castalia's wimplin streamies,
Loup, sing, and lave your pretty limbies,
Ye ken, ye ken,

That strang necessity supreme is

’Mang sons o men.

I hae a wife and twa wee laddies,

They maun hae brose and brats o' duddies;
Ye ken yoursels my heart right proud is,
I needna vaunt,

But I'll sned besoms-thraw saugh woodies,
Before they want.

Lord help me through this warld o' care!
I'm weary sick o't late and air!

Not but I hae a richer share

Than mony ithers;

But why should ae man better fare,

And a' men brithers?

Come, FIRM RESOLVE, take thou the van,
Thou stalk o' carl-hemp in man!

And let us mind, faint heart ne'er wan
A lady fair:

Wha does the utmost that he can,

Will whiles do mair.

But to conclude my silly rhyme,
(I'm scant o' verse, and scant o' time),
TO MAKE A HAPPY FIRE-SIDE CLIME

TO WEANS AND WIFE,

THAT'S THE TRUE PATHOS AND SUBLIME
OF HUMAN LIFE."

These noble stanzas were written towards the end of October, and in another month Burns brought his wife home to Ellisland, and his three children, for she had twice born him twins. The happiest period of his life, we have his own words for it, was that winter.

But why not say that the three years he lived at Ellisland were all happy, as happiness goes in this world? As happy perhaps as they might have been had he been placed in some other condition apparently far better adapted to yield him what all human hearts do most desire. His wife never had an hour's sickness, and was always cheerful as day, one of those

"Sound healthy children of the God of heaven,"

whose very presence is positive pleasure, and whose silent. contentedness with her lot inspires comfort into a husband's heart, when at times oppressed with a mortal heaviness that no words could lighten. Burns says with gloomy grandeur, "There is a foggy atmosphere native to my soul in the hour of care which makes the dreary objects seem larger than life." The objects seen by imagination; and he who suffers thus cannot be relieved by any direct appliances to that faculty, only by those that touch the heart-the homelier the more sanative, and none so sure as a wife's affectionate ways, quietly moving about the house affairs, which, insignificant as they are in themselves, are felt to be little truthful realities that banish those monstrous phantoms, showing them to be but glooms and shadows.

And how fared the Gauger? Why, he did his work. Currie says, "His farm no longer occupied the principal part of his care or his thoughts. It was not at Ellisland that he was now in general to be found. Mounted on horseback, this highminded poet was pursuing the defaulters of the revenue among the hills and vales of Nithsdale; his roving eye wandering over the charms of nature, and muttering his wayward fancies as he moved along." And many a happy day he had when thus riding about the country in search of smugglers of all sorts, zealous against all manner of contraband. He delighted in the broad brow of the day, whether glad or gloomy, like his own forehead; in the open air whether still or stormy, like his own heart. While "pursuing the defaulters of the revenue," a gauger has not always to track them