Even when the immortal Burns came, to shame a selfish, undiscriminating, and ungrateful land, the Athens made not the slightest attempt to wash out the foul stain which she had given herself in the case of Ferguson. Burns put her in mind of that stain, not only by the erection of the little tomb-stone over his unfortunate brother; but in a monument more durable,--a poem, which, had there been any soul within the cold ribs of the Athens, would have harrowed it with remorse, that might have been a stimulus to repentance. But the Athens took it all with that sang-froid which is the concomitant and the characteristic of reckless and self-sufficient dulness; and no where in the whole history of literature, is there an instance of neglect more mean, and ingratitude more disgraceful, than that of the Athens, for Robert Burns. She lured him, by fair promises, within her siren and seductive walls. Day after day, and week after week, she dipt him deeper in that dissipation, of which she knows better how to set the example than any city between Kent and Caithness. She showed him about, from tavern to tavern, from one evening party to another, and through every one of her hundred scenes and sinks of vice; and this precious work she continued, till the prospects which he had left behind were blasted, and his own powers and habits spoiled; and the moment she had done this, she had the baseness, not only to drive him helpless back upon the world, but to slander his name for practices which none but herself had taught him. In a word, when I look at the literary men, whom evil stars have confined to the Athens, or, in any way made to look to her for patronage, I find a few who have succeeded, because it has not been in her power to injure them; and all upon whom she has had power, lost and ruined. Even Jeffrey, if he had not had his fees to bear him out, and if his journal had not been patronised in London, might have written his Review in vain; ay, and Scott, who perhaps persevered longer in writing in obscurity than any other author of the present times, would long ere now have been mute or a maniac, had he not possessed some property, held a public office, and been a fierce and forward party-man. Among them all, there has never been an author in the Athens who has lived even decently by literature alone,--as little is there, at this moment, within the whole of her compass, a single person above starvation, who has not some other occupation or emolument, than that of a literary man.