Dr. Currie, therefore, if phlegmatic, as he certainly was, must be looked upon as upon a level with the public of his own day--a public how different, different by how many centuries, from the world of this present 1837! One thing I remember which powerfully illustrates the difference. Burns, as we all know, with his peculiarly wild and almost ferocious spirit of independence, came a generation too soon. In this day, he would have been forced to do that, clamorously called upon to do that, and would have found his pecuniary interest in doing that, which in his own generation merely to attempt doing loaded him with the reproach of Jacobinism. It must be remembered that the society of Liverpool wits on whom my retrospect is now glancing were all Whigs--all, indeed, fraternizers with French Republicanism. Yet so it was that--not once, not twice, but daily almost, in the numerous conversations naturally elicited by this Liverpool monument to Burns's memory--I heard every one, clerk or layman, heartily agreeing to tax Burns with ingratitude and with pride falsely directed, because he sate uneasily or restively under the bridle-hand of his noble self-called "_patrons_." Aristocracy, then, the essential spirit of aristocracy--this I found was not less erect and clamorous amongst partisan democrats--democrats who were such merely in a party sense of supporting his Majesty's Opposition against his Majesty's Servants--than it was or could be among the most bigoted of the professed feudal aristocrats. For my part, at this moment, when all the world was reading Currie's monument to the memory of Burns and the support of his family, I felt and avowed my feeling most loudly--that Burns was wronged, was deeply, memorably wronged. A £10 bank note, by way of subscription for a few copies of an early edition of his poems--this is the outside that I could ever see proof given of Burns having received anything in the way of _patronage_; and doubtless this would have been gladly returned, but from the dire necessity of dissembling.