ble adherence to correct principles, and to a just line of action, together with an "Ode to Liberty," which he had published, caused him to lose favor with those who had offices in their gift, and he did not obtain the situation of the judgeship at Fort William, in Bengal, which became vacant in 1780, though he was doubtless the most competent person at that time in England to fill it. But on a change of administration in 1782, he was appointed to this responsible station, and received the honor of knighthood. In April, 1783, he married Anna Maria Shipley, the daughter of the Bishop of St. Asaph, to whom he had been engaged for sixteen years. He immediately set sail for India, having secured, as his friend Lord Ashburton congratulated him, the two first objects of human pursuit, those of love and ambition.

In December, 1783, he commenced the discharge of his duties as an Indian judge, with his characteristic ardor; but it is impossible, in this short space, to do any justice to his great labors. He early formed a society of which he was the president, for "Inquiring into the History and Antiquities, the Arts, Sciences, and Literature of Asia;" and to the "Asiatic Researches," which this society published, he himself was the chief contributor. The following are some of his papers: "Eleven Anniversary Discourses on the different nations of Asia, &c.;" "A Dissertation on the Orthography of Asiatic Words in Roman Letters;” “On the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India ;" ;""On the Chronology of the Hindoos;" "On the Antiquity of the Indian Zodiac;" "On the Mystical Poetry of the Persians and Hindoos;" with very many other treatises of less importance. All these literary labors he performed when not attending to his official duties, which, for the greater part of the year, occupied him seven hours a day. But such labors, enough to try the strongest constitution anywhere, were too much for him in the debilitating climate of Bengal; his health gave way, and he died at Calcutta, on the 27th of April, 1794.'

"In the course of a short life," says Campbell, "Sir William Jones acquired a degree of knowledge which the ordinary faculties of men, if they were blessed with antediluvian longevity, could scarcely hope to surpass. His learning threw light on the laws of Greece and India, on the general literature of Asia, and on the history of the family of nations. He carried philosophy, eloquence, and philanthropy, into the character of a lawyer and a judge. Amidst the driest toils of erudition, he retained a sensibility to the beauties of poetry, and a talent for transfusing them into his own language, which has seldom been united with the same degree of industry. When he went abroad, it was not to enrich himself with the spoils of avarice or ambition; but to search, amidst the ruins of oriental literature, for treasures which he would not have exchanged

'For all Bocara's vaunted gold,

Or all the gems of Samarcand.'"

"Sir William Jones," says his biographer, "seems to have acted on this maxim, that whatever had been attained was attainable by him; and he

The best edition of his works is that by Lord Teignmouth, in 13 vols. Svo.; to which is prefixed a well-written life of this illustrious scholar.

was never observed to overlook or to neglect any opportunity of adding to his accomplishments or to his knowledge. When in India, his studies began with the dawn; and, in seasons of intermission from professional duty, continued through the day; while meditation retraced and confirmed what reading had collected or investigation discovered. By a regular application of time to particular occupations, he pursued various objects without confusion; and in undertakings which depended on his individual perseverance, he was never deterred by difficulties from proceeding to a successful termination." With respect to the division of his time, he had written in India, on a small piece of paper, the following lines:

Sir Edward Coke.

Six hours in sleep, in law's grave study six,
Four spend in prayer-the rest on nature fix.

Rather.

Seven hours to law, to soothing slumber seven,
Ten to the world allot, and all to heaven.

But we cannot conclude this short sketch of the life of this eminently great and good man, without adding his beautiful encomium on the Bible. Let it also be borne in mind that those peculiar attainments which rendered him so fully competent to utter it, were scarcely ever possessed by any other man; for he was not only critically acquainted with the original languages of the Bible, but with all the various cognate languages and dialects of the East, a knowledge of which imparts new beauty and lustre to that wonderful book.

I have regularly and attentively read the Holy Scriptures, and am of opinion that this volume, independent of its Divine origin, contains more sublimity and beauty, more pure morality, more important history, and finer strains of poetry and eloquence, than can be collected from all other books, in whatever language or age they may have been composed.'

AN ODE.

In Imitation of Alcaus.

What constitutes a State?

Not high-raised battlements, or labor'd mound,

Thick wall or moated gate;

Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crown'd;
Nor bays and broad-armed ports,

Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;

Nor starred and spangled courts,

Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride.

"I am confident," says Sir Richard Steele, "that whoever reads the Gospels, with a heart as much prepared in favor of them, as when he sits down to Virgil or Homer, will find no passage there which is not told with more natural force, than any episode in either of those wits, who were the chief of mere mankind.”

No;-men, high-minded men,

With powers as far above dull brutes endued,
In forest, brake, or den,

As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude;
Men who their duties know,

But know their rights; and, knowing, dare maintain,
Prevent the long-aimed blow,

And crush the tyrant, while they rend the chain:
These constitute a State;

And sovereign Law, that State's collected will,

High over thrones, and globes elate,

Sits Empress, crowning good, repressing ill.
Smit by her sacred frown,

The fiend Discretion like a vapor sinks;

And e'en th' all-dazzling crown

Hides his faint rays, and at her bidding shrinks.

Such was this heaven-loved isle,

Than Lesbos fairer, and the Cretan shore!

No more shall Freedom smile?

Shall Britons languish, and be men no more?
Since all must life resign,

Those sweet rewards which decorate the brave,
"Tis folly to decline,

And steal inglorious to the silent grave.

ROBERT BURNS, 1759-1796.

ROBERT BURNS, the celebrated Scottish poet, was born in Ayrshire,' one of the western counties of Scotland, January 25, 1759. His father was a small farmer, and Robert had no advantages of early education beyond what the parish schools afford. But he made the most of what he had; and in the possession of discreet, virtuous, and most pious parents, he had the best of all education, the education of the heart; and in the Cotter's Saturday Night," we see what was the foundation of the whole-THE BIBLE. He early showed a strong taste for reading; and to the common rudiments of education he added some knowledge of mensuration, and a smattering of Latin and French. But poetry was his first delight, as it was his chief solace through life. A little before his sixteenth year, as he tells us himself,

2

He was born in a clay-built cottage, about two miles to the south of the town of Ayr.

"The earliest composition I recollect taking pleasure in," says Burns, "was the Vision of Mirza, and a hymn of Addison's, beginning, How are thy servants bless'd, O Lord! I particularly remember one half stanza which was music to my boyish ear,

For though in dreadful whirls we hung
High on the broken wave.'"

See both of these pieces on pp. 348 and 356.

he had "first committed the sin of rhyme." His verses soon acquired him considerable village fame, to which, as he made acquaintances in Ayr and other neighboring towns with young men of his own age, he greatly added by the remarkable fluency of his expression, and the vigor of his conversational powers. The charm of these social meetings, at which he shone with so much distinction, gradually introduced him to new habits, some of which were most destructive of his happiness and his virtue.

About this time, to escape the ills of poverty, and to break away from some of the associations by which he was surrounded, he resolved to leave his native country, and to try his fortune in Jamaica. In order to raise funds for this purpose, he resolved to publish a volume of his poems. They were received with great favor, and Burns cleared, thereby, twenty pounds. He engaged his passage, his chest was on the road to Greenock, from which port he was to sail, and he had taken leave of his friends, when a letter from Dr. Blacklock to one of the friends of the poet, completely altered his resolutions. 'His opinion," says Burns himself, "that I would meet with encouragement in Edinburgh for a second edition of my poems, fired me so much, that away I posted for that city, without a single acquaintance, or a single letter of introduction."

The result was, the introduction of the poet to all who were eminent in literature, in rank, or in fashion, in the Scottish metropolis. The brilliant conversational powers of the unlettered ploughman seem to have struck all with whom he came in contact, with as much wonder as his poetry. Under the patronage of Dr. Robertson, Professor Dugald Stewart, Mr. Henry Mackenzie, and other persons of note, a new edition of his poems was published, which yielded him nearly five hundred pounds. With this he returned, in 1788, to Ayrshire-advanced £200 to relieve his aged mother and brother, who were struggling with many difficulties on their farm—and with the rest prepared to stock another farm for himself, in Dumfrieshire, where he took up his abode in June of that year, having before publicly solemnized his union with Jean Armour, to whom he had long been attached.

But the farm did not prosper well, and he obtained the office of exciseman or gauger, in the district in which he lived. In 1791 he abandoned the farm entirely, and took a small house in the town of Dumfries. By this time, his habits of conviviality had settled down to confirmed intemperance, "and almost every drunken fellow, who was willing to spend his money lavishly in the ale-house, could easily command the company of Burns. His Jane still behaved with a degree of maternal and conjugal tenderness and prudence, which made him feel more bitterly the evil of his misconduct, although they could not reclaim him. At last, crippled, emaciated, having the very power of animation wasted by disease, quite broken-hearted by the sense of his errors, and of the hopeless miseries in which he saw himself and his family depressed, he died at Dumfries on the 21st of July, 1796, when only thirty-seven years of age."

This was in 1786, when he was twenty-seven years old.

Read an interesting sketch of his life in Chambers' Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen; also Currie's Life, Lockhart's Life, and Cunningham's

"Burns,” says Professor Wilson, “is by far the greatest poet that ever sprung from the bosom of the people, and lived and died in an humble condition. Indeed, no country in the world but Scotland could have produced such a man; and he will be forever regarded as the glorious representative of the genius of his country. He was born a poet, if ever man was, and to his native genius alone is owing the perpetuity of his fame. For he manifestly had never very deeply studied poetry as an art, nor reasoned much about its principles, nor looked abroad with the wide ken of intellect for objects and subjects on which to pour out his inspiration. The condition of the peasantry of Scotland, the happiest, perhaps, that Providence ever allowed to the children of labor, was not surveyed and speculated upon by him as the field of poetry, but as the field of his own existence; and he chronicled the events that passed there, not merely as food for his imagination as a poet, but as food for his heart as a man. Hence, when inspired to compose poetry, poetry came gushing up from the well of his human affections, and he had nothing more to do than to pour it, like streams irrigating a meadow, in many a cheerful tide over the drooping flowers, and fading verdure of life. Imbued with vivid perceptions, warm feelings, and strong passions, he sent his own existence into that of all things, animate and inanimate, around him; and not an occurrence in hamlet, village, or town, affecting in any way the happiness of the human heart, but roused as keen an interest in the soul of Burns, and as genial a sympathy, as if it had immediately concerned himself and his own individual welfare. Most other poets of rural life have looked on it through the aerial veil of imagination-often beautified, no doubt, by such partial concealment, and beaming with misty softness more delicate than the truth. But Burns would not thus indulge his fancy where he had felt-felt so poignantly, all the agonies and all the transports of life. He looked around him, and when he saw the smoke of the cottage rising up quietly and unbroken to heaven, he knew, for he had seen and blessed it, the quiet joy and unbroken contentment that slept below; and when he saw it driven and dispersed by the winds, he knew also but too well, for too sorely had he felt them, those agitations and disturbances which had shook him till he wept on his chaff bed. In reading his poetry, therefore, we know what unsubstantial dreams are all those of the golden age. But bliss beams upon us with a more subduing brightness through the dim melancholy that shrouds lowly life; and when the peasant Burns rises up in his might as Burns the poet, and is seen to derive all that might from the life which at this hour the peasantry of Scotland are leading, our hearts leap within us, because that such is our country, and such the nobility of her children.. There is no delusion, no affectation, no exaggeration, no falsehood in the spirit of Burns's poetry. He rejoices like an un

Life prefixed to his edition of the poet's works. This is now the most complete and best edition of Burns, containing 150 pieces more than Dr. Currie's edition. Read also the "Genius and Character of Burns," by Professor Wilson, No. XXI. of Wiley and Putnam's Library of Choice Reading. Also, two articles in the Edinburgh Review, vol. 13th and vol. 48th, and one in the first volume of the London Quarterly.