taking a farewell glass;— with dealers in cattle, traders in corn, travelling merchants, all drinking, all talking, and, generally, all contented; while among the whole, the bustling hostess and her active maidens are busy distributing liquor, and receiving cash. Such was The Howff when I saw it." A MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT. "What though on hamely fare we dine, Wear hoddin-gray, and a' that; Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, — A man's a man for a' that. For a' that, and a' that, Their tinsel show, and a' that; The honest man, though e'er sae poor, THIS manly song was written in the Poet's little homely house, in Mill-hole-brae, now Burns Street, Dumfries, and communicated to George Thomson, in the following words, in January, 1795:-" A great critic, Aikin, on Song, says that wine and love are the exclusive themes for song-writing. The following is on neither subject, and, consequently, is no song; but will be allowed, I think, to be two or three pretty good prose thoughts, inverted into rhyme." Thomson seems to have received this noble lyric very coldly; but those acquainted with the feverish state of the public pulse in the year Ninety-five, will not be surprised even had he treated it ungraciously; in those days Europe was up in arms, "Cannons were roaring, and bullets were flying;" ́and France was putting forth, in favor of liberty, those terrible energies which nearly made her mistress of the world. Our rulers saw revolution in all the movements of the people; and heard sedition and treason in every public murmur: the actions of Burns were watched, and all his words weighed, and his "Man's a man for a' that," was sung as secretly as was "You're welcome, Charlie Stuart," in the days of the Jacobite rebellions. A strain of this character seems to have been present to the mind of Burns from the time he read Pope's line, claiming an honest man as the noblest work of God; and composed his affecting poem, " Man was made to mourn." It is a popular exposition of sentiments he had long entertained; and though called into life by the fierce voice of the times, not a sentiment is uttered which is not natural to the heart of genius. Yet let no one imagine that he desired to cure the disorders which "Ribbons, stars, and a' that," had wrought in the land, by calling in the republican sword of France; he longed for liberty; he wished to see talent enjoying the honors which hereditary dulness had usurped; but he felt this ought to be accomplished by native hands, or not accomplished at all. He has in another song clothed this sentiment in words which can never be forgotten : "O let us not, like snarling curs, In wrangling be divided; For never but by British hands Maun British wrongs be righted." Having freed Burns from a charge, not seldom made, of desiring the help of foreigners to bring about more equal legislation, we may quote, without fear, some of the sharp stanzas of the stinging strain, "A man's a man for a' that." In the first verse he vindicates poverty from the scorn of wealth. "Is there, for honest poverty, Our toils obscure, and a' that; The man's the gowd for a' that." Had the poet lived in these latter days, he would likely have accepted the help of the new coinage to heighten his satire, and written -- "The rank is but the sovereign stamp." Having disposed of the merely wealthy-of men who, like striped pumpkins, grew and swelled up on the great midden-stead of scheming and calculation, and sprinkled a little of the nitric acid of his muse on ribbons and stars, he approaches the throne, and that with no ceremonious bows. A king can make a belted knight, A marquis, duke, an' a' that; Guid faith he mauna fa' that! For a' that, and a' that, Their dignities, and a' that, The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth, He concludes by expressing his belief that the day is at hand, when men of all lands will be brothers, and sense and worth hold universal dominion: a sentiment as likely to come to pass as that of the Spencean reformist, who says he desires no more than that all men shall be honest, and all women virtuous. WALLACE TOWER, AYR. "The dreary dungeon clock had numbered two, WERE William Wallace and Robert Burns to return to earth and visit Ayr, a town which they loved, the hero would not know the tower in which he was imprisoned, nor the poet the structure of which he sang. The villanous clutch of restoration, as Fuseli said of retouched pictures, has been laid upon it, and instead of the square and solid tower of the days of John Baliol, we have a stately, recessed, and pinnacled substitute, rising high in the air, and emblazoned in the mixed manner of the middle ages. The new tower is indeed far more handsome to look upon than the old; but modern splendor is sometimes ill exchanged for even mouldering and tottering things; we have got a structure which must depend upon its own merits; the historic and poetic halo which enabled us to see Wallace, and Bruce, and Burns, and rendered the rough, rude, coarse features of the old peel interesting, is gone now and for ever. Their memory, indeed, like an ill-laid ghost, continues to haunt the spot and this must supply the place of reality-the spell of the unimaginative: the bell to which the Poet alludes, is all that is old in the edifice. "Wallace Tower stands," says an authority, the beauty of whose account lies in the measurements, "within a hundred yards of the river Ayr to the west, on the left |