to the friars of the convent of St. Hieronomo, the grape that yields it being dark and sweet. The Paxareti of Xeres, however, from the superior care and cultivation, not only equals, but often surpasses it in quality. Much variety is given to the Pedro Ximenes by mixing it with dry wines, and reducing it to a moderate sweetness. A very successful imitation is also made both in flavor and color of the fine old Malaga or mountain, so rare when of considerable age, and which sells at Malaga itself at enormous prices.

Amontillado is a singular, and, as it is believed accidental variety of sherry, and is produced in small quantities from all dry grapes, although some soils and vines yield it in greater abundance than others. It is a wine which has long puzzled the growers at Xeres, since no one can tell how it is produced.

It is called amontillado, from its resembling montilla, a pale, very delicate, and extremely dry kind of wine, which is grown in the neighborhood of Cordova, scarcely known in England, but very rare, and in high estimation in Spain. Amontillado is something like a phenomenon in wine-making, for no cultivator can be certain that the grape will produce it, although he may conjecture that such will be the case from past experience, knowledge of the soil, and state of the vintage. It is seldom obtained from young vines, neither is it the produce of any partic

ular vineyard or grape; although it is conjectured by some, that the Palomine grape is more instrumental in yielding it than any other. The difference which this wine assumes from the general character of dry white wines is supposed to be the consequenceof a more perfect or peculiar fermentation. It is never known what casks will turn out amontillado before the first process of fermentation is over, and frequently not even then.

When all the wines are racked off the lees in March, those casks which may prove to be amontillado are generally recognised from the wine being very pale and bright, as if it had no further deposit of matter or lees to make; the taste at the same time being nutty and rather brisk, without much strength.

About September a white thin oily coating appears on the surface of the wine, which, in the following year, becomes of a yellow, and, sometime afterwards, of a dark color; which covering seems given to it by nature to protect it from acidity, devoid as it is of the spirituous quality. During this time the wine is not moved or racked off into other casks; and care is taken that the cask be not disturbed by tasting it too often, and admitting the air. Out of 100 butts of wine, not more than five or six may turn out amontillado. Every thing, however, relating to the production of this wine, is involved in so much uncertainty, that what has been suppo

sed to be amontillado will, after some years, turn out the reverse, and vice versa. On these accounts and its consequent rarity, it is greatly prized and carefully husbanded by the merchants; not for the purposes of sale, but of mixing with their other wines, and improving their flavor.

ROBERT BURNS.

Burns, in his letters of the year 1789, makes many apologies for doing but little in his poetical vocation; his farm, without doubt, occupied much of his attention, but the want of social intercourse, of which he complained on his first arrival in Nithsdale, had by this time totally disappeared. On the contrary, his company was courted eagerly, not only by his brother farmers, but by the neighboring gentry of all classes; and now, too, for the first time, he began to be visited continually in his own house by curious travellers of all sorts, who did not consider, any more than the generous poet himself, that an extensive practice of hospitality must cost more time than he ought to have had, and far more money than he ever had, at his disposal. Meantime, he was not wholly regardless of the muses; for in addition to some pieces which we have already had occasion to notice, he contributed to this year's Museum, The Thames flows proudly to the Sea; The lazy mist hangs, &c.; The day returns,

my bosom burns; Tam Glen, (one of the best of his humorous songs); the splendid lyric, Go fetch to me a pint of wine, and My heart's in the Hielands, (in both of which, however, he adopted some lines of ancient songs to the same tunes ;) John Anderson, in part also a rifiacciamento; the best of all his Bacchanalian pieces, Willie brewed a peck o' maut, written in celebration of a festive meeting at the country residence,-in Dumfriesshire, of his friend Mr. Nicoll of the high school; and lastly, that noblest of all his ballads, To Mary in Heaven.

This celebrated poem was, it is on all hands admitted, composed by Burns in September, 1789, on the anniversary of the day on which he heard of the death of his early love, Mary Campbell; but Mr. Cromek has thought fit to dress up the story with circumstances which did not occur. Mrs. Burns, the only person who could appeal to personal recollection on this occasion, and whose recollections of all circumstances connected with the history of her husband's poems, are represented as being remarkably distinct and vivid, gives what may at first appear a more prosaic edition of the history.* According to her, Burns spent that day, though laboring under cold, in the usual work of his harvest, and apparently in excellent spirits. But as the twilight deepened, he appeared to grow

*I owe these particulars to Mr. M'Diarmid, the able editor of the Dumfries Courier, and brother of the lamented author of "Lives of British Statesmen."

"very sad about something," and at length wandered out in the barn-yard, to which his wife, in her anxiety for his health, followed him, entreating him in vain to observe that frost had set in, and to return to the fireside. On being again and again requested to do so, he always promised compliance-but still remained where he was, striding up and down slowly, and contemplating the sky, which was singularly clear and starry. At last Mrs. Burns found him stretched on a mass of straw, with his eyes fixed on a beautiful planet "that shone like another moon ;" and prevailed on him to come in. He immediately on entering the house, called for his desk, and wrote exactly as they now stand, with all the e ase of one copying from memory, the sublime and pathetic verses

"Thou lingering star with lessening ray, That lovest to greet the early morn,

Again thou usher'st in the day

My Mary from my soul was torn.

O Mary, dear departed shade,

Where is thy place of blissful rest;

See'st thou thy lover lowly laid,

Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast?" &c

The Mother's Lament for her Son, and Inscription in a Hermitage in Nithsdale, were also written this year.

From the time when Burns settled himself in Dumfries-shire, he appears to have conducted with much care the extensive correspondence in which his celebrity had engaged him; it is, however, very necessary in judg