Incidents of romance and anguish checker the opening of his poetic fame with sadness as well as sunshine. His “Highland Mary,” the love of his youth, and the dream of his life is wrenched from his heart by death. Then comes the melancholy episode of his attachment to Jean Armor, with its heavy retribution of wretchedness. His name has begun to gather honor among his native hills; the small provincial edition of his poems is hailed with proud enthusiasm; but yet, with poverty and a bleeding spirit, he looks across the ocean to foreign exile. Suddenly his purpose is turned aside, and we behold him in Edinburgh among the exclusives and magnates of the land. There, as at the plough, we find him still the true and sturdy man. In the throng of Highland chieftains and border barons, in the full blaze of pride and beauty, he felt within him a humanity beyond the claim of titles; genius had given him a superscription more impressive than device of heraldry; the patent of nobility was written with fire in his heart, and the proud ones of earth became poor before the aristocrat of heaven. In that day of classic propriety, a poet from the plough, full of passionate earnestness, must have been in Edinburgh a startling phenomenon. But nature made herself heard in the very citadel of art; cavil was silent, and admiration offered willing homage. The wealthy marveled at the inspired peasant; and wherever the eloquent ploughman appeared, there were the nobles collected together. Dukes gave him their silken hands; duchesses received him with sweetest smiles; earls pledged him in the wine-cup; and for the moment, the haughty and the high-born recognized the presence of a greatness superior to their own. But Burns was not a man to hold popularity long in circles such as these. He was too stoutly individual for the apathy of elegant mediocrity, and he was too sternly independent for the sensibility of patronizing grandees: he saw nothing to venerate in a title when it was but the nickname of a fool; and he was undazzled by a star when it glittered on the breast of a ruffian or a dunce. But though Burns escaped the danger of aristocratic delusion, he did not escape the danger of aristocratic feasts. These were the times of night-long carousals, and pottle-deep potations. Burns had neither the firmness to resist such dissipation, nor the constitution to endure it; and he carried from it impaired health and impaired habits—an irritable discontent with his condition, and an instability of purpose fatal to a life of labor. Having placed a tomb over the neglected remains of poor Ferguson, the poet, he retired to the country, shared his success with his brother Gilbert, met his mother steeped in tears of honest joy, married his Jean, and gave peace to a wounded spirit.