record in judgment against such a man words that have escaped him in the fervour of the pleading designed to uphold great causes dear to humanity?--who would ignobly strike the self-disarmed?--scornfully insult him who, kneeling at the Muses' confessional, whispers secrets that take wings and fly abroad to the uttermost parts of the earth? Can they be lovers of the people who do so? who find it in their hearts thus to think, and speak, and write of Robert Burns?--He who has reconciled poverty to its lot, toil to its taskwork, care to its burden--nay, I would say even--grief to its grave? And by one Immortal Song has sanctified for ever the poor man's Cot--by such a picture as only genius, in the inspiring power of piety, could have painted; has given enduring life to the image--how tender and how true!--of the Happy Night passing by sweet transition from this worky world into the Hallowed Day, by God's appointment breathing a heavenly calm over all Christian regions in their rest--nowhere else so profoundly--and may it never be broken!--as over the hills and valleys of our beloved, and yet religious land! It cannot be said that the best biographers of Burns, and his best critics, have not done, or desired to do, justice to his character as well as to his genius; and, according as the truth has been more entirely and fearlessly spoken, has he appeared the nobler and nobler man. All our best poets, too, have exultingly sung the worth, while they mourned the fate of him, the brightest of the brotherhood. But above, and below, and round about all that they have been uttering, has all along been heard a voice, which they who know how to listen for it can hear, and which has pronounced a decision in his favour not to be reversed; for on earth it cannot be carried to a higher tribunal. A voice heard of old on great national emergencies, when it struck terror into the hearts of tyrants, who quaked, and quailed, and quitted for aye our land before "the unconquered Caledonian spear"--nor, since our union with noblest England, ever slack to join with her's and fervid Erin's sons, the thrice-repeated cry by which battle-fields are cleared; but happier, far happier to hear, in its low deep tone of peace. For then it is like the sound of distant waterfalls, the murmur of summer woods, or the sea rolling in its rest. I mean the Voice of the People of Scotland--the Voice of her Peasantry and her Trades--of all who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow--her Working Men.