limited to one word, have done better than take “pleas"Flowant?" and then the fine vagueness of "time!" ers o' every color;" he gets a glimpse of "herself a fairer flower," and is off in pursuit. "The water rins ower the heugh" (a steep precipice); flinging itself wildly passionately over, and so do I long for my true lover. Nothing can be simpler and finer than

"When I sleep, I dream;

When I wauk, I'm eerie."

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"Lanely nicht;" how much richer and touching than "darksome." "Feather beds are saft; paintit rooms are bonnie; I would infer from this, that his "dearie," his "true love," was a lass up at "the big house". a dapper Abigail possibly at Sir William's at the Castle, and then we have the final paroxysm upon Friday nicht Friday at the gloamin'! O for Friday nicht! Friday 's lang o' comin'!-it being very likely Thursday before daybreak, when this affectionate ululatus ended in repose.

Now, is not this rude ditty, made very likely by some clumsy, big-headed Galloway herd, full of the real stuff of love? He does not go off upon her eyebrows, or even her eyes; he does not sit down, and in a genteel way announce that "love in thine eyes forever sits," &c. &c., or that her feet look out from under her petticoats like little mice: he is far past that; he is not making love, he is in it. This is one and a chief charm of Burns' love-songs, which are certainly of all lovesongs except those wild snatches left to us by her who flung herself from the Leucadian rock, the most in earnest, the tenderest, the "most moving delicate and full of life." Burns makes you feel the reality and the

depth, the truth of his passion; it is not her eyelashes or her nose, or her dimple, or even

"A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I' the bottom of a cowslip,"

"winging the

that are fervor of his love; " not even her soul; it is herself. This concentration and earnestness, this perfervor of our Scottish love poetry, seems to me to contrast curiously with the light, trifling philander ing of the English; indeed, as far as I remember, we have almost no love-songs in English, of the same class as this one, or those of Burns. They are mostly either of the genteel, or of the nautical (some of these capital), or of the comic school. Do you know the most perfect, the finest love-song in our or in any language; the love being affectionate more than passionate, love in possession not in pursuit?

"Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast

On yonder lea, on yonder lea,

My plaidie to the angry airt,

I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee:

Or did Misfortune's bitter storms

Around thee blaw, around thee blaw,
Thy bield should be my bosom,
To share it a', to share it a'.

"Or were I in the wildest waste,

Sae black and bare, sae black and bare,
The desert were a paradise,

If thou wert there, if thou wert there:

Or were I monarch o' the globe,

Wi' thee to reign, wi' thee to reign,

The brightest jewel in my crown

Wad be my queen, wad be my queen."

The following is Mr. Chambers' account of the origin

of this song:-Jessy Lewars had a call one morning from Burns. He offered, if she would play him any tune of which she was fond, and for which she desired new verses, that he would do his best to gratify her wish. She sat down at the piano, and played over and over the air of an old song, beginning with the words

"The robin cam' to the wren's nest,

And keekit in, and keekit in:
'O weel's me on your auld pow!
Wad ye be in, wad ye be in?
Ye' se ne'er get leave to lie without,
And I within, and I within,

As lang 's I hae an auld clout,

To row ye in, to row ye in.'"

Uncle now took his candle, and slunk off to bed, slipping up noiselessly that he might not disturb the thin sleep of the sufferer, saying in to himself—" I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee;' "If thou wert there, if thou wert there;" and though the morning was at the window, he was up by eight, making breakfast for John and Mary.

Love never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall ccase; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanisk away; but love is of God, and cannot fail.

ARTHUR H. HALLAM.

"PRESENS imperfectum, perfectum, plusquam perfectum FUTU

RUM."

- GROTIUS.

"The idea of thy life shall sweetly creep

Into my study of imagination;

And every lovely organ of thy life

Shall come apparelled in more precious habit

More moving delicate, and full of life,

Into the eye and prospect of my soul,

Than when thou livedst indeed."

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

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