I am now at the close of my task. I have gone through it lovingly, and with reverence; sensible along the way of much goodness in my subject, and not forgetful, either, of some evil also. That many faults are in the compositions of Burns, I apprehend most clearly; and that sad irregularities were in his life, it requires small trial of candor to confess; but to have spread them out in ostentatious commentary would have served no purpose of this article, and gratified no desire of the reader. I am not blind to those errors; I propose no excuse; I deprecate no just condemnation, and I have been forbearing from no moral indifference, no moral insensibility. But dealing with the memory of genius, I reflected that the _man_ was before his God, and the _poet_ had met the sentence of the world. For wisdom, or for warning, the events of his life are sufficiently familiar—he that runs may read, their moral meaning let him read and ponder—let him learn, and let him be better. But I have no sympathy with that vampire-like spirit which disentombs the faults of the illustrious dead to feed the nauseous appetites of itself or others; I tread upon the grave with caution and compassion; and while I do not regard genius as repealing the law of virtue, neither do I regard it as beyond the law of mercy. We need, all of us, great tenderness from those who surround us; we need much, too, from those who survive us. If we require charity from men, who give them nothing, let us grant it to those who have enriched us, and enriched the ages. In the noble and eloquent verses of Halleck, we, too, say of Burns: His is the language of the heart, In which the answering heart would speak; Thought, word, that bids the warm tear start, Or the smile light the cheek. And his, the music, to whose tone The common pulse of man keeps time, In cot or castle’s mirth or moan, In cold or sunny clime. . . . . . . Praise to the bard, his words are driven, Like flower seed by the far wind sown, Where’er beneath the sky of heaven The birds of fame have flown. Praise to the man! a nation stood Beside his coffin with wet eyes, Her brave, her beautiful, her good, As when a loved one dies. And still, as on his funeral day, Men stand his cold earth-couch around, With the mute homage that we pay To consecrated ground. And consecrated ground it is The last, the hallowed home of one, Who lives upon all memories, Though with the buried gone. Such graves as his, are pilgrim shrines, Shrines to no creed or sect confined, The Delphian vales, the Palestines, The Meccas of the mind. * * * * * THE GAMBLER’S DAUGHTER.