Could you but faintly realize the scope of the spirit, its perfect freedom, its power and right to travel where it listeth, you would understand that in the higher life we have but to earnestly desire to be in the presence of any great soul, in order to gain pleasure and profit from the gems of love, beauty, and wisdom which fall upon receptive minds from those great repositories of thought, and, lo, we are there, drinking in great and mighty truths from those who are above us in grandeur of thought, beauty of expression, and sweetness of spirit. Robert Burns is by no means confined to his books; but, as he informed me, though his brightest thoughts are drawn from the life of Nature, or the hearts of humanity, he loves to gather about him all the expressions of the sweet, soulful, noblest ideals which others have produced. Much, that by force of circumstances, he was deprived of on earth is his now; all that will tend to ennoble and elevate his soul, which was denied him here, he finds on the other shore. Why he does not ornament his home with those adornments that denote rank and wealth to the external eye is because his soul loathed the arrogance, and learned to despise the superciliousness which he found in the hearts, often stamped on the faces and shown in the mien, of many wealthy aristocratic personages he met with while on earth. He is Nature’s child to the core of his being, and no glittering pageantry will adorn his heart and home; as well attempt to gild the rose, and paint the lily, to add to their beauty. Together, he and I went forth into the smiling valley. A low burn wended its way beneath the shade of waving trees, close down to the mountain base; thither we directed our steps, for he wished to show me, with a sort of fatherly pride, the great plumy bunches of purple heather tufting the sides of the gigantic hills. A tiny child, paddling in the dark waters of the burn, her snowy feet gleaming pearly white amid the shadows thrown by the green branches of the trees, her brown locks hanging in a profusion of luxuriant curls over her dimpled shoulders, and half veiling the azure blue eye and damask cheek, arrested our attention and formed as pretty a picture as one can well imagine; and the poet soul of my companion, drinking in the beauty of the scene, felt all the sweetness of life rushing over him, as he broke out in his quaint Scotch fashion:— Thou winsome, weesome, smiling creature, Half formed of human, half of nature, Thy soul gleams through thy every feature, This gladsome day; While life itself becomes thy teacher— Thou prattling fay! Thy e’en, as blue as simmer skies, Reflect the joys of paradise, An’ glisten wi’ their sweet surprise, That knows no guile; While angel praises o’er thee rise, An’ bless the while.