Burns has been termed "the Shakspeare of Scotland." And certainly no poet has ever been regarded, in that country, with such enthusiastic love and reverence. With all his faults, some of which were bad enough, all classes of the Scottish people, from the noble to the peasant, cherish him in their heart of hearts. Indeed he is a sort of national idol, to whom all feel bound to do reverence, notwithstanding his admitted failings. Nor is this a matter of surprise. For, taken as a whole, the poetry of Burns is the poetry of nature--of the heart--and especially of the Scottish heart. It represents the genius of the nation--wild, beautiful and free, shaded by thoughtfulness, and set off by devotion, at once merry as her mountain brooks, yet deep, strong and passionate as the stormy ocean which encircles her coast. "Tam O'Shanter," or "Halloween," the "Cotter's Saturday Night," or "Mary in Heaven," are the two extremes of the picture. In Burns, Scotland saw incarnated her poetry and song, her music and passion, her love and devotion, her seriousness and merriment, her strong-hearted adherence to integrity and truth, her occasional recklessness and madness of spirit, her love of nature, her veneration for God. The grave and the gay, the old and the young, the religious and the reckless, all saw themselves represented in the glorious fragments of his witching poetry. Hence the enthusiasm with which his first volume of poems was received. It seemed as if a new realm had been added to the dominions of the British muse--a new and glorious creation fresh from the hand of nature. There the humor of Smollett, the pathos and tenderness of Sterne and Richardson, the real life of Fielding, and the description of Thomson, were all united in delineations of Scottish manners and scenery by the Ayrshire ploughman! The volume contained matter for all minds--for the lively and sarcastic, the wild and the thoughtful, the poetical enthusiast and the man of the world. So eagerly was the book sought after, that when copies of it could not be obtained, many of the poems were transcribed and sent round in manuscript among admiring circles. His songs are the songs of Scotland. A few have been furnished by Tannahill, Fergusson, Ramsay and others; but the main body of the most exquisite and most popular Scottish melodies are from the pen of Burns. Evermore they echo among her heathy hills and bosky dells. You hear them by the sides of her "bonnie burns," and along the shores of her silver lakes and "rivers grand." At evening gray, they are heard resounding from gowan'd braes and "birken shaws," in the shadow of haunted woods, and hoary ruins; and especially, on winter nights, and "tween and supper times" from her ten thousand happy "inglesides." In Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night" are seen his reverence for religion "pure and undefiled," combined with exquisite description and melodious verse; in "Tam O'Shanter," his vivid