There runs throughout Mr. Burns's volume a rich vein of scriptural imagery and allusion, and much oriental description--rather quiet, however, than gorgeous--that bears in its unexaggerated sobriety the impress of truth. From a weakness of chest and general delicate health, Mr. Burns has had to spend not a few of his winters abroad, under climatal influences of a more genial character than those of his own country; and hence the truthfulness of his descriptions of scenes which few of our native poets ever see, and a corresponding amount of variety in his verse. But we have exhausted our space, and have given only very meagre samples of this delightful volume, and a very inadequate judgment on its merits. But we refer our readers to the volume itself, as one well fitted to grow upon their regards; and meanwhile conclude with the following exquisite landscape,--no bad specimen of that ability of word-painting which is ever so certain a mark of the true poet:-- 'Below me spread a wide and lonely beach, The ripple washing higher on the sands: A river that has come from far-off lands Is coiled behind in many a shining reach; But now it widens, and its banks are bare-- It settles as it nears the moaning sea; An inward eddy checks the current free, And breathes a briny dampness through the air: Beyond, the waves' low vapours through the skies Were trailing, like a battle's broken rear; But smitten by pursuing winds, they rise, And the blue slopes of a far coast appear, With shadowy peaks on which the sunlight lies, Uplifted in aërial distance clear. _November 8, 1854._ THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA. After the labour of years, the seventh edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ has been at length completed. It is in every respect a great work--great even as a commercial speculation. We have been assured the money expended on this edition alone would be more than sufficient to build three such monuments as that now in the course of erection in Edinburgh to the memory of Sir Walter Scott. And containing, as it does, all the more valuable matter of former editions--all that the advancing tide of knowledge has not obliterated or covered up, and which at one time must have represented in the commercial point of view a large amount of capital--it must be obvious that, great as the cost of the present edition has been, it bears merely some such relation to the accumulated cost of the whole, as that borne by the expense of partial renovations and repairs in a vast edifice to the sum originally expended on the entire erection.