in the Bible where the consequences of the first sin are certainly spoken of. I. Gen. ii. 17. ‘But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.' He argues that the punishment here threatened is simply the loss of that life which God had lately conferred upon Adam. He remarks, that there is not one word here relating to Adam's posterity. II. Gen. iii. 7–24. ‘And the eyes of them both were opened,' &c. In this text the commentator sees only that, Adam having sinned, and fallen under guilt, shame, and fear, God graciously proposed to continue his race, to appoint his Son, the Messiah, to oppose the kingdom of the Devil, now begun by the sin of Adam, but withal subjected the man to sorrow, labour, and death.' III. 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.' 'From this place,' he says, 'we cannot conclude that any other evil or death came upon mankind in consequence of Adam's first transgression, besides that death from which mankind shall be delivered at the resurrection; whatever that death be.' IV. Rom. v. 12-19. 'Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin,' &c. The author acknowledges that this text is more difficult; but after a long and subtle argument, he arrives at this conclusion, that, 'furthermore, God in Christ hath bestowed upon us mercy and gifts, privileges and advantages, both in this and a future world, abundantly beyond the reversing of any evils we are subject to in consequence of Adam's sin.' V. 1 Tim. ii. 14. On this text the author makes no remarks.

The second part of the work is devoted to an examination of the principal passages of Scripture which have been applied in support of the common scheme of original sin, and have not been discussed in the first part. The passages examined are those adduced as proofs for the propositions laid down in the Larger Catechism of the Westminster Assembly. After discussing the whole, he says: 'I cannot see that we have advanced one step further than where we were at the conclusion of the first part-namely, that the consequences of Adam's first transgression upon us are labour, sorrow, and mortality. He elsewhere adds: 'And that thereupon a new dispensation, abounding with grace, was erected in a Redeemer.'

It would be beyond my province to enter more largely into the subject of this book, or to trace the discussions arising from it; but as it was one which is understood to have exercised some influence, at least for a time, over the mind of our great national poet, I thought it well to shew the principal conclusions which it endeavours to establish.

No. 8 (p. 138).-GAVIN HAMILTON AND THE MAUCHLINE KIRK-SESSION.

The parochial persecution of Gavin Hamilton was not now terminated. On the 27th October (1785), the Session resolved not to erase the minutes of which he had complained, because he continues to give more and more offence by neglect of public ordinances, and that in disobedience to the recommendation of the reverend presbytery.'

On the 2d of August 1787, the Session is informed that Gavin Hamilton, on the last Lord's Day, caused his servant, James Brayan, to dig some potatoes in his garden. By a letter of the 8th September, Mr Hamilton makes the following explanation :— 'I was walking with my children in the forenoon in the garden, when some of them petitioned for a few new potatoes, having got none that season. I considered the request as so very reasonable, particularly from those who made it, that I did not scruple to listen to their demands; nor had I an idea that raising a few potatoes in a private garden would have given offence to any person, more than pulling any garden stuff.'

In their answer, the Session express doubt of the fact of the children having had none that season, 'being informed that there were new potatoes in his house some days before that Sabbath, for proving whereof, if necessary, witnesses are named.' Some time after, they find that two and a half rows of potatoes, each row ten or eleven feet long, were dug, and that the child was employed to gather them; they therefore pass sentence, ordering Mr Hamilton to appear and profess repentance. How this matter terminated as to Mr Hamilton, does not appear; but on the 13th January 1788, James Brayan stood a rebuke for having dug the potatoes.

There seems to have been a degree of religious zeal and scrupulosity at Mauchline beyond what was common. In the course of the general election of 1790, the kirk-session declined to allow a precept of the sheriff to be read from the precentor's desk 'before the forenoon's blessing;' and for this, as an act in contempt of court, the minister, elders, and clerk were fined £5, besides paying £3, 3s. of expenses.

On zeal beyond discretion how painful often the comment afforded by the infirmity of our common nature! Sad to tell, of the three zealous elders constituting, along with the minister, the court by which Mr Hamilton was prosecuted, and Burns rebuked, one put a period to his own life, and another died in a drunken fit after becoming a convicted larcenist.

'December 12, 1791.-Died at Mauchline, the Rev. William Auld, in the eighty-third year of his age, and fiftieth of his ministry, universally beloved and regretted.'-Newspaper Obit.

No. 9 (p. 280).-THE METRES OF BURNS.

The English reader will not have failed to remark, that some of the forms of verse employed by Burns are different from any in use among southern poets. In these matters, the Ayrshire bard was of course led by the fashions set before him by the poets with whose works he was familiar. He had studied Fergusson and Ramsay with veneration. In their volumes it is easy to trace the models of versification which Burns followed, and in many instances, as has been noted, the particular productions which he condescended in some degree to imitate.

The stanza which, from the frequency with which he uses it, may be presumed to have been his favourite, is the peculiar one employed in the Verses to a Mouse. By modern Scottish bards it had been largely employed for comic subjects: it was reserved for Burns to shew that it was not incapable of expressing solemn feeling and energetic description: the bard of Rydal Mount afterwards gave it the stamp of his approbation. Fergusson, the immediate predecessor of Burns, found many poems in this stanza in the volumes of Ramsay. Ramsay found it in use with his senior contemporary, Hamilton of Gilbertfield; and Hamilton, again, had before him several poems of the same form, which had been produced before the middle of the seventeenth century by Robert Semple of Beltrees. It is curious to find at that early period burlesque elegies on the noted piper Habbie Simpson, and 'Sandy Briggs, butler to the Laird of Kilbarchan,' exactly resembling that of Burns on Tam Samson. For example, from the elegy on Briggs:

'Wha 'll jaw ale on my drouthy tongue,

To cool the heat o' light and lung?
Wha 'll bid me, when the kail-bell's rung,
To board me speed?

Wha 'll set me by the barrel bung,

Since Sandy's dead?

Wha 'll set me dribbling by the tap?
While winking I begin to nap,

Then lay me down, and weel me hap,
And bin' my head.

I needna think to get ae drap,

Since Sandy's dead.

Well did the master-cook and he

Wi' giff-gaff courtesies agree,

While tears as fast as kitchen-fee

Drapt frae his head.

Alake a day! though kind to me,

Yet now he's dead!'

pour

dinner-bell

cover

reciprocal

It has been thought that Semple was the inventor of this stanza, but it may be traced in slightly different forms amongst the writers of

the preceding century. We find Sir Richard Maitland employing one only differing from it in the want of a line-which of course it was easy for a subsequent poet to add. Sir Richard, who died in 1589 at the age of ninety, has occasion to console himself for his want of the vigour of youth:

'My horse, my harness, and my spear,
And all other, my hosting gear,

May now be sauld;

I am not able for the weir,

I am sae auld.

When young men comis frae the green,

Playand at the foot-ball had been,

With broken spauld,

I thank my God I want my e'en,

And am sae auld.'

soldiering stuff

shoulder-blade

Sir Richard himself gives an example of the full form of the stanza, only with a fifth rhyme in the second last line. He is bewailing 'the Evils of New-found Laws :'

'Lord punish them that aye pretendit

For to do wrang, or to defend it;

In haste let them be apprehendit,
And thole the law,

Or gar them mend it,
Whom they offendit

In deed or saw.'

When we go seventy years further back, we find the germ of the stanza in a peculiar group of the poems of Dunbar, where rhymed couplets were somewhat conceitedly associated with alternate rhymes. Thus, for example, in his Tidings fra the Session:

Beyond the commencement of the 16th century, it does not seem possible to trace this stanza even in its most rudimentary state.

Another of the favourite metres of Burns, is that employed in his first Epistle to Davie-a remarkably complicated and difficult stanza, but which our poet had so completely mastered through his extraordinary command of language, that he would employ it in scribbling a note on the most trivial business to a friend. This stanza was adopted by Ramsay in a poem entitled The Vision, which he wrote in the style of a former age, and passed off in his Evergreen as a genuine production of the elder Muse. Ramsay found his model in the well-known poem styled The Cherry and the Slae, by Alexander Montgomery, who flourished in the reign of James VI. This is an

allegorical piece of somewhat tedious length, but in a style of poesy far from vulgar or tame. For example—

The air was sober, soft, and sweet,
But misty vapours, wind, and weet,
Bot quiet, calm, and clear;
To foster Flora's fragrant flowers,
Whereon Apollo's paramours

Had trickled many a tear;

The which like silver shakers shined,
Embroidering Beauty's bed;
Wherewith their heavy heads declined,
All in May's colours clad:

Some knopping, some dropping

Of balmy liquor sweet;

Excelling in smelling

Through Phoebus' wholesome heat.'

The stanza was used by a poet who lived before the days of Montgomery, though only, as far as is known, in one piece. This piece is Ane Ballat of the Creation of the World, written by Sir Richard Maitland. It recites the facts of the Scripture narrative with little embellishment and much simplicity, as is well exemplified in a verse apostrophising the unfortunate mother of the human race :— 'O delicate dame, with ears bent,

As Maitland wrote this curious poem 'to the tune of the Banks of Helicon,' we may safely assume that there was at least one previous example of the stanza. It occurs not, however, in any of the poems of Dunbar, Douglas, Henryson, or other of the early Makars.'

A third stanza worthy of special notice, is that employed in the Holy Fair and Ordination. Here Burns directly imitated Fergusson's Leith Races and Hallow Fair; but the stanza was first brought into vogue by Ramsay, in the continuation which he wrote of Christ's Kirk of the Green. The poem last mentioned was published a little before the time when Ramsay flourished, by Bishop Gibson, being derived from a manuscript of the sixteenth century. It has been supposed by some to be a composition of King James I., by others of James V.; but without the slightest grounds beyond conjecture for