grave was not difficult to re-open. A fresh fall of snow had again made all things white and smooth; Rab once more looked on, and slunk home to the stable. He What's I was not to And what of Rab? I asked for him next week at the new carrier who got the goodwill of James's business, and was now master of Jess and her cart. "How's Rab?" put me off, and said rather rudely, your business wi' the dowg?" be so put off. "Where's Rab?" He, getting confused and red, and intermeddling with his hair, said, "Deed, sir, Rab's deid.” 66 Dead! what did he die of? Weel, sir," "he didna exactly said he, getting redder, dee; he was killed. I had to brain him wi' a rack-pin; there was nae doin' wi' him. He lay in the treviss wi' the mear, and wadna come oot. I tempit him wi' kail and meat, but he wad tak naething, and keepit me frae feedin' the beast, and he was aye gur gurrin', and grup gruppin' me by the legs. I was laith to make awa wi' the auld dowg, his like wasna atween this and Thornhill-but, 'deed, I believed sir, I could do naething else." him. Fit end for Rab, quick and complete. His teeth and his friends gone, why should he keep the peace, and be civil? JOHN BROWN, M. D. THE BALLAD OF BOUILLABAISSE. A street there is in Paris famous, For which no rhyme our language yields, Rue Neuve des petits Champs its name isThe New Street of the Little Fields; And there's an inn, not rich and splendid, But still in comfortable caseThe which in youth I oft attended, To eat a bowl of Bouillabaisse. This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is- That Greenwich never could outdo; Green herbs, red peppers, muscles, saffern, Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace; All these you eat at Terre's tavern, In that one dish of Bouillabaisse. Indeed a rich and savory stew 't is; Should love good victuals and good drinks. And Cordelier or Benedictine Might gladly, sure, his lot embrace, VOL. I. I wonder if the house still there is? I recollect his droll grimace; He'd come and smile before your table, And hoped you liked your Bouillabaisse. We enter; nothing's changed or older. "How's Monsieur Terré, waiter, pray?" The waiter stares and shrugs his shoulder;"Monsieur is dead this many a day." "It is the lot of saint and sinner, So honest Terré's run his race! "What will Monsieur require for dinner?" "Say, do you still cook Bouillabaisse?" "Oh, oui, Monsieur," the waiter's answer; My old accustomed corner-place; "He's done with feasting and with drinking, With Burgundy and Bouillabaisse.” My old accustomed corner here is- I'd scarce a beard upon my face, Where are you, old companions trusty My memory can quick retrace; Good Lord! the world has wagged apace A fair young form was nestled near me, * 27 I drink it as the Fates ordain it. Come, fill it, and have done with rhymes; Fill up the lonely glass, and drain it In memory of dear old times. Welcome the wine, whate'er the seal is; And sit you down and say your grace With thankful heart, whate'er the meal is, -Here comes the smoking Bouillabaisse! WILLIAM M. THACKERAY. had been ten years in print, and Gray's Elegy" nine years. Dr. Johnson had lately published his Dictionary, and Edmund Burke his essay on the "Sublime and Beautiful." In the year 1759 Garrick was the first of actors, and Sir Joshua Reynolds of painters. Gibbon dated in this year the preface of his first work; Hume published the third and fourth volumes of his history of England; Robertson his history of Scotland, and Sterne came to London to find a publisher for Tristram Shandy." Oliver Gold CURTIS ON THE DEDICATION OF A STA-smith, "unfriended, solitary," was toiling The year 1759 was a proud year for Great Britain. Two years before, amid universal disaster, Lord Chesterfield had exclaimed, "We are no longer a nation." But meanwhile Lord Chatham had restored to his country the scepter of the seas and covered her name with the glory of continuous victory. The year 1759 saw his greatest triumphs. It was the year of Minden, where the French Army was routed; of Quiberon, where the French fleet was destroyed; of the heights of Abraham, in Canada, where Wolfe died happy, and the dream of French supremacy upon the American continent vanished forever. The triumphant thunder of British guns was heard all around the world. Robert Clive was founding British dominion in India; Boscawen and his fellow-Admirals were sweeping France from the ocean; and in America Col. George Washington had planted the British flag on the field of Braddock's defeat. We are forced to ask every morning what victory there is," said Horace Walpole, for fear of missing one." But not only in politics and war was the genius of Great Britain illustrious. James Watt was testing the force of steam; Hargreaves was inventing the spinning-jenny, which ten years later Arkwright would complete, and Wedgwood was making household ware beautiful. Fielding's Tom Jones" 66 But for the booksellers in his garret over Fleet Ditch; but four years later with Burke and Reynolds and Garrick and Johnson, he would found the most famous of literary clubs and sell the "Vicar of Wakefield" to save himself from jail. It was a year of events decisive of the course of history, and of men whose fame is an illustrious national possession. among those events none is more memorable than the birth of a son in the poorest of Scotch homes; and of all that renowned and resplendent throng of statesmen, soldiers, and seamen; of philosophers, poets, and inventors, whose fame filled the world with acclamation, not one is more gratefully and fondly remembered than the Ayrshire ploughman, Robert Burns. solemn This great assembly is in large part composed of his countrymen. You, fellow-citizens, were mostly born in Scotland. There is no more beautiful country, and as you stand here, memory and imagination recall your native land. Misty coasts and farstretching splendors of summer sea; mountains and wind-swept moors; singing streams and rocky glens and water falls; lovely vales of Ayr and Yarrow, of Teviot, and the Tweed; crumbling ruins of ancient days, abbey and castle and tower; legends of romance gilding burn and brae with "the light that never was on sea or land;" every hill with its heroic tradition, every stream with its story, every valley with its song; land of the harebell and the mountain daisy, land of the laverock and the curlew, land of braw youths and sonsie lasses, of a deep, strong, melancholy manhood, of a deep, true, tender womanhood-this is your Scotland, this is your native land. And how could you so truly transport it to the home of your adoption, how interpret it to us beyond the sea, so fully and so fitly, as by this memorial of the poet whose song is Scotland? No wonder that you proudly bring his statue and place it here under the American sun, in the chief American city, side by side with that of the other great Scotchman, whose genius and fame, like the air and the sun shine, no local boundary can confine. In this Walhalla of our various nationality it will be long before two fellow-countrymen are commemorated whose genius is at once so characteristically national and so broadly universal, who speak so truly for their own countrymen and for all mankind as Walter Scott and Robert Burns. his birth's invidious bar." He was born This season of the reddening leaf, of sunny stillness and of roaring storm, especially befits this commemoration, because it was at this season that the poet was peculiarly inspired, and because the wild and tender, the wayward and golden-hearted Autumn is the best symbol of his genius. The sculptor has imagined him in some hour of pensive and ennobling meditation, when his soul, amid the hush of evening, in the falling year, was exalted to an ecstasy of passionate yearning and regret; and here, rapt in silence, just as the heavenly melody is murmuring from his lips, here he sits and will sit forever. It was in October that Highland Mary died. It was in October that the hymn to Mary in Heaven was written. It was in October, ever afterward, that Burns was lost in melancholy musing as the anniversary of her death drew near. Yet within a few days, while his soul might seem to have been still lifted in that sorrowful prayer, he wrote the most rollick-posed a song himself upon a lassie who drew ing, resistless, and immortal of drinking songs: "O Willie brew'd a peck o'maut, Here were the two strains of this marvelous genius, and the voices of the two spirits that went with him through life: "He raised a mortal to the skies, This was Burns. This was the blended poet and man. What sweetness and grace! What soft, pathetic, penetrating melody, as if all the sadness of shaggy Scotland had found a voice! What whispering witchery of love! What boisterous, jovial humor, excessive, daring, unbridled!-satire of the kirk, so scorching and scornful that John Knox might have burst indignant from his grave, and shuddering ghosts of Covenanters have filled the mountain with a melancholy wail. A genius so masterful, a charm so universal, that it drew farmers from the fields when his coming was known, and men from their tavern beds at midnight to listen delighted until dawn. It cannot be said of Burns that he "burst his eye and heart; and so, as he says, love and poetry began with him together. For ten years his life was a tale of fermenting youth: toiling and moiling, turning this way and that, to surveying and flax dressing, in the vain hope of finding a fairer chance; a lover of all the girls and the master of the revels everywhere; brightening the long day of peat-cutting with the rattling fire of wit that his comrades never forgot; writing love-songs, and fascinated by the wild smuggler boys of Kirkoswald; led by them into bitter shame and self-reproach, but turning with all the truculence of heady youth upon his moral censors and taunting them with immortal ridicule. At twenty-five, when his father was already laid in Alloway kirkyard, the seed of old national legend which his mother had dropped into his cradle began to shoot into patriotic feeling and verse, and Burns became conscious of distinct poetic ambition. For two years he followed the plow and wrote some of his noblest poems. But the farm which he tilled with his brother was unproductive, and at the very time that his genius was most affluent his conduct was most wayward. Distracted by poetry and poverty and passion, and brought to public shame, he determined to leave the country, and in 1786, when he was twenty-seven years old, Burns published his poems by |