Even these words are not strong enough to express his love for natural liberty and his distrust of those forms and institutions which over and over again have crushed the priceless gem they pretend to protect. A fig for those by law protected! Liberty’s a glorious feast! Courts for cowards were erected, Churches built to please the priest. Even higher and broader was Burns’ view of equality and right. He stood on a serene height, where he looked upon all the strife and contention of individuals and states, and dreamed of a perfect harmony and universal order, where men and Nations alike should be at peace, and the world united in one grand common brotherhood, where the fondest wish of each should be the highest good of all. These beautiful, prophetic lines seem to speak of a day as distant now as when Burns wrote them down a hundred years ago. But still, all men that love the human race will ever hope, and work, and say with him: Then let us pray that come it may, As come it will for a’ that, That sense and worth, o’er a’ the earth May bear the gree, and a’ that; For a’ that, and a’ that, It’s coming yet, for a’ that, That man to man, the warld o’er, Shall brothers be for a’ that. It is perhaps as a singer of songs that the literary fame of Burns will longest be preserved. No other poet has ever breathed such music from his soul. His melodies are as sweet and pure as the bubbling spring; and as natural and spontaneous as ever came from the throat of the nightingale or lark. These songs could not be made. The feeling and passion that left his soul bore this music as naturally as the zephyr that has fanned the strings of the Æolian harp. The meter of these songs was not learned by scanning Latin verse, or studying the dry rules that govern literary art, but it was born of the regular pulse beats, which in the heart of Nature’s poets are as smooth and unstudied as the rippling laughter of her purling brooks. John Anderson, my jo, John, When we were first acquent, Your locks were like the raven, Your bonnie brow was brent; But now your brow is beld, John, Your locks are like the snow; But blessing on your frosty pow, John Anderson, my jo. John Anderson, my jo, John, We clamb the hill tegither, And mony a canty day, John, We’ve had wi’ ane anither; Now we maun totter down, John, But hand in hand we’ll go, And sleep tegither at the foot, John Anderson, my jo.