polish and a certain direction and store of ideas. But if he is not a man, to begin with, you may cram him with Greek and Latin, you may stuff him with old-world lore and newworld lore, and he will be only a stuffed goose after all. Burns did not know Greek, he had no title, but he showed that "A man's a man for a' that." Burns was not only Scotland's greatest song writer; you can't match him in England. Shakespeare wrote as fine songs, but not so many. One of the first songs I learned in childhood was "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled." This song of War and Freedom, which Carlyle say is the best in our language, was composed by Burns when he was riding across Galloway moor in a stormy night. Mr. Syme, who was with him, noticed that the poet was strangely silent, and wisely held his peace. The sweetest and saddest scenes in our lives are blended with strains of "Auld Lang Syne." "We twa hae paidlt in the burn Frae morning sun til dine, But seas between us braid hae roared Ah, the happy days when we wandered with the boys in the fields and waded through the brooks, and danced under the greenwood trees, and pulled daisies. But where are the boys now? "We've wandered many a weary foot Sin' auld lang syne." All the romance of the dear days of youth is expressed in that poem as perfectly as perfection itself. It is a writer of love songs that Burns stands head and shoulders above all the world. Now it is the easiest thing in the world for a young man to fall in love. Even old men fall, and fall in deep, sometimes. But it is the hardest thing in the world to write a love song; a song that is not vapid or musty; a song that has the glow and fire in it, and the mighty passion out of which the gods rejuvenate the world. Millions of boys in love have written love songs. I have written some myself. But where are they now? Their leaves the sibyl scattered to the four winds of heaven. But Burns's love songs have become a part of the human heart. They go singing through all the spring-times of love as birds do. And the reason is that the love songs of Burns are not made songs; they are grown songs. They sprouted out of the spring of the poet's heart, as the hawthorne blooms started in the trees. They are as simple, as sweet, as tender, as natural, as divinely musical as the simple divine heart of love itself is; and no matter who the lover may be, a ploughman or a professor of Hebrew-the love songs of Burns are the utterance of that man's heart. What one of Burns's love songs is your favorite? 'Highland Mary," Bonny Doon," Ae Fond Kiss," and "Green Grow the Rashes, O!" I cannot choose. couldn't think of losing any one of them. In "Highland Mary " there is infinite tenderness; in "Ae Fond Kiss" and "When we Sever," infinite passion; in the "Green Grow the Rashes, O!" all the exuberant life of the young god Pan. Do you remember these lines? 66 Had we never loved sae kindly, We had ne'er been broken-hearted. We But Burns is more than a singer of love songs. He is one of the Bards of Freedom. He was the poet of the people. And when kings are gone, when aristocracies and high-sounding titles of duke and lord are things of the past, when Man to man, the world o'er, Burns will be held in as high honor then as now. In that happy age for which we work and hope, when it shall not be said Man's inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn; when none shall be compelled by bitter poverty to "Beg a brother of the earth To give him leave to toil;" in that age a fresh garland shall be woven for the poet who sung, "Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, Heine, the German poet, said: "When I am dead do not lay flowers, but a sword, on my coffin. For I was a soldier in the war of the liberation of humanity." We may say of Burns that he was a soldier in the war of the liberation of humanity. His songs work with the forces that liberate men from tyranny. And when the republic of man is ushered in it will point to Burns as one of its mortal founders. A DESCENDANT OF BURNS. A CORRESPONDENT forwards the Adelaide Observer the following: "A Scotchman would go a long distance to see a relic of Scotland's bard. Very precious in his eyes is something belonging to Robert Burns. Much more precious, however, is the sight of the face of one in whose veins runs the blood of so admired a son of his native land. Mrs. A. V. Burns Scott is the great-granddaughter of Robert Burns. She is the daughter of the late Dr. Hutchinson. Her mother was the daughter of the poet's youngest son, James Glencairn Burns. We have, therefore, in Adelaide society, a lineal descendant of the master of Scottish song, if, indeed, not of all song. Those who may have seen at any time the portrait of "Bonnie Jean," taken in somewhat advanced life, will remember the child that stands by her side with a daisy in her hand. This child was named Daisy by her father, J. Glencairn Burns, and in womanhood Daisy became Mrs. Scott's mother. Daisy was the granddaughter of "The Bonnie Jean," as Mrs. Scott affectionately called her. The first object Mrs. Scott showed me was the topaz seal of her great-grandfather. It had stamped many a bright epistle, no doubt. Engraved on a yellow topaz stone is a "thrush " sitting on a twig, and encircled by the words, "Wood notes wild." I could hardly believe that my eyes rested on the veritable seal of the great Scottish genius. It seemed so precious, as my fingers rested upon it, I felt as if it were still instinct with the touch of the great departed. I then examined a manuscript in his handwriting. Very old and very worn, but most carefully preserved. It is a poetic effusion, written 106 years ago, and signed in his own usual firm hand-Robert Burns. Underneath his signature he had evidently written one or two words-probably Poet Laureate-but they are effectually erased. There are one or two corrections, and as it has never appeared in any collected edition of his works I here append a copy. It is dated from Edinburgh, 1787. The crimson blossom charms the bee, Her portrait fair upon my mind No bard or lover's rapture this, Who the "lovely Isabella " was it is difficult to say. A careful perusal of the poet's whereabouts in 1787, although given with great detail in his life by Chambers, does not reveal the lady who had excited his muse. It was the year in which he was mainly in Edinburgh, and during the early months of which he met the famous Duchess of Gor-. don, besides many other Scotch folk of rank and literary fame. It is supposed that the "lovely Isabella " formed one of the group in the beautiful painting lately hung for too brief a period in the Adelaide Gallery of Art by Sir Thomas Elder, and entitled "Burns reading the 'Cottar's Saturday Night' to the Duchess of Gordon." The year 1787 was one of the most eventful of his life. Still it is somewhat strange that "Isabella " cannot be identified. It is the intention of the South Australian Caledonian Society to erect a monument to the memory of Burns. I understand that its completion is near, and within a short period the ceremony of unveiling the statue will be performed. This will be an honor which any chieftain of that society may feel proud to have conferred upon him. But may I suggest that while a lineal descendant of the poet is here to raise the veil, no other hand should be asked to do it. If I accept my own feelings as the feelings of every Scotchman, and of every true admirer of my country's most famous son, the desire will be universal that Mrs. Scott should perform the ceremony; and the Caledonian Society will feel proud, I am sure, that a lady so representative of Robert Burns and the Bonnie Jean is in our midst at this moment to unveil the form that will remind the generations that come and go of the greatest genius of song. THE LASSIE THAT BURNS LICKIT. BY SAM TEENAN. THIS story I am about to tell of Robert Burns was related to me as far back as the early sixties. It was the fall of the year, and I was on a visit to the late Mr. William Bell, who was for many years master forester to the late Marquis of Tweeddale, the famous Indian soldier and agriculturist, a beautiful monument to whose memory now adorns the county town of East Lothian. The dwelling of Mr. Bell was situated in the centre of a great pine wood called Blawearie, on the estate of Yester, near Gifford, and not far from the Goblin Ha' mentioned in Sir Walter Scott's "Marmion." The house of Mr. Bell also went by this eerie-sounding name, and there was no human habitation near it. At the time of my visit Mr. Bell's mother, a very old woman, was sojourning at Blawearie. Notwithstanding her great age, Mrs. Bell, or Peggy Bell as she was familiarly called by those among her relatives and neighbors who preferred her maiden name, was blessed with all her faculties to a remarkable degree of acuteness. She had discarded the use of spectacles, and could hear the fall of a pin, and her memory was not in any way impaired. The animation she displayed and the brightness of her intellect struck me as altogether wonderful in a person of her age. On the first night of my stay at Blawearie I learned by the kitchen fire, round which, after tea, we had gathered to spend the long forenight in joking and story-telling, as was the custom in this solitary place, that Mrs. Bell had come from Dumfries about the beginning of this century. Being then, as I am now, an ardent admirer of Burns, the first thing I asked when I heard the old woman say so was if she knew anything from personal observation of, or had ever seen or known, Robert Burns. At my inquiries the |