Leave nothing of this heavenly sight

But loathesomeness and ruin?
Spare nothing but a gloomy theme,

On which the lightest heart might moralize?
Or is it only a sweet slumber

Stealing o'er sensation,

Which the breath of roseate morning

Cheateth into darkness?

Will Ianthe, wake again,

And give that faithful bosom joy

Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch
Light, Life and rapture from her smile?”

lived not to enjoy, since the "fickle goddess" delayed until after his decease the bestowment of that "larger measure" of glory which now encir cles his name. Whilst living, (shame be upon Scotland!) he needed oftentimes the necessaries of life! When dead, all did reverence to the might and power of his genius. We recollect of reading some years since in "Blackwood," an account of a "Burns Gems of exquisite lustre and peerless Festival," held near his birth-place. beauty glitter in every line of Queen There were many persons present. Mab," as dew-drops glitter on the en- Among them were his two sons, Major amelled grass. A like meed of praise Burns, of the British Army and anoth may, with truth, be awarded to the er whose name we do not now recol. "Prometheus Unbound;" the "Cenci" lect. Professor Wilson, Sheriff Alliand the "Adonais," all of which bear son, and many other "literateurs" evidence of the elaborate finish of were spokesmen upon the occasion. Shelley's genius. Alas! he met an Eulogy after eulogy was passed upon untimely fate, for his end came as the merits of the illustrious dead, and "night in the tropics." He sleeps be- all seemed to vie in doing honor to his neath the blue waters of the Mediter- genius. The festival concluded by ranean, and in its watery bosom will those present participating in a most repose until the sea shall "give up its costly and sumptuous banquet. How dead." Its susurral flow hymns thy much more would the eulogy and the requiem, star-eyed one, whilst celestial money lavished upon that occasion melody from thy heavenly-tuned lyre have done for poor struggling Burns if o'er its blue waters sweep! it had been expended in his lifetime? But the "Ploughman of Scotia's But it was not. Naturally cheerful, flinty glebe" we love dearly. Human- sorrows, however, came so thick and ity loves Burns, and the "big tear" heavy that his strong nature yielded as trickles often down her sorrowful face sometimes the oak will beneath the as she reads of the pangs which a cru- breath of the tempest. He fell a vicel world inflicted upon his "great heart." tim, his death we learn, being indirectIn Burn's were combined, in a high ly occasioned by excessive potations. degree, the true elements of genuine On this defect of his character, charity manhood. Frank, sincere, generous, throws her mantle. We love him none and honest, Nature stamped him as e the less. We have said. Burns was a precious coin from her own mint. The true and faithful worshipper of Nature. son returned with fondest affection the Indeed there is not an object in Nature kindness and almost prodigal liberality which the genius of Burns has not of his doting mother, and in the hum-painted in his poetry in all its fresh ble worship of Nature evidenced his and original colors. Simplicity, tenfilial affection. With the lark that derness, and the deepest affection for trills upon the morning air his matin everything characterize his muse. song-Burns attuned his voice, and What pathos and deep feeling, for insweeter gushes of melody ne'er issued stance, in his "Highland Mary!" from winged warblers of the woods. What an outgushing of the sensibiliWe thank God that Burns ever lived, ties of his tender, loving heart! Briny for his name stands upon the cliffs of tears trickle down our face as we read Time! Monumental of the elastic those tender lines, and the loved imcapacity of genius amid sufferings and age of one now a winged seraph in privations to work out its own high Heaven flits before us! Sleep on, destiny. Much of Burns' fame he dearest Laura, we would not ruffle thy

calm repose! Angels from their star-
ry watch-towers guard thy "couch of
lowly sleep," and

Affection's semblance weeps not o'er thy tomb,
Affection's self deplores thy youthful doom.

To us, there is sweet consolation, Lau-
ra, in the hope that we shall yet meet
in the "Bowers of Peace, which skirt
the River of Life," whilst

With clasping hands and intertwining wings
We shall nightly wander o'er the starry deep,
And by the crystal streams of Paradise
Loving in Heaven as we have loved on earth.

To return. Among all the poets of
which Scotland has been so prolific,

none, we venture to assert, has so strong a hold upon the affections of the Caledonian heart as Burns. He is essentially a National poet and yet all through his immortal verse he touches

chords which vibrate in unison with the heart of universal humanity! Broad and deep as is the lodgment which the memory of Burns has obtained in the heart of the Scottish na

His clean harth-stane, his thriftie wife's smile,
The lisping infant prattling on his knee,

Does a' his weary, carking cares beguile,
An' makes him quite forget his labor an' his toil.
Wi' joy unfeign'd brothers and sisters meet,
An' each for other's welfare kindly spiers

The social hours, swift-winged unnoticed fleet;
Each tells the uncos that he sees or learns;

Anticipation forward points the view.
The mother, wi' her needle and her shears

Gars auld cloes look amaist as weel's the new;
The father mixes a' wi' admiration due."

We have not the space or the time to quote more at length from the "Cotter's Saturday Night," but the excerpt which we have given above, we think, fully sustains us in the assertion that

an eminent characteristic of Burns'

genius is its descriptive power. Indeed, perhaps no poet, living or dead, exceeds Burns in accuracy of observa. tion, and terse, forceful expression.

These intellectual characteristics of his the moral elements of the poet's na genius, we doubt not, are traceable to ture. His feelings, whatever might be their nature, whether of sympathy or antipathy, were exceedingly intense. Hence his intellectual was colored somewhat by his moral nature; intensity of feeling, by a law of mind, developing itself in intensity of expres cant? THEN do the candid and sincere sion. Does he rebuke hypocrisy and instincts of his nature find vent in

"words that burn."

tion, equally dear is his fame to that by no means small class of genuine humanity, who recognizes in the generous, manly, and free instincts of Burns nature a brother and comrade in the common warfare against all despotisms; be they social, religious or political. Burns was a poor man, and how frequently through his verse are interspersed touching allusions to the ills of penury; whilst at the same time with what truthfulness of delineation and "word painting" the poor man's humble cottage is pictured before the "mind's eye!" We know of no description in the writings, either prose Does he exhibit gratitude for hospitali. or poetic, of Sir Walter Scott which ty and kindness shown? Then hear equals the "Cotter's Saturday Night." his impromptu reply to the Highland It is inimitably descriptive of the domestic life of the Scotch peasant!

"The toil-worn Cotter frae his labor goes,

This night his weekly toil is at an end,

Collects his spades, his mattocks and his hoes,

Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend

And weary, o'er the moor, his course does homeward bend,

At length his lonely cot appears in view

Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;

Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacker thro' To meet their da d, in flitchterin noise an' glee. s wee-bit rigle, blinking bonnily,

"God knows I am not what I should be,
Nor am I, indeed, what I could be,
But a thousand times I'd rather be
An atheist clean

Than under gospel colors hid be,
Just for a screen."

Chief upon leaving his hospitable roof.
The verse is characteristic of the man.

"When Death's dark stream I ferry o'er,
That time must surely come,

In Heaven itself I'll ask no more,
Than just an Highland welcome.”

Do the acerbities of temper on the part
of his "better half" harrass? Equally
candid is the poet in the enunciation
of those ever memorable lines the re-
membrance of which has, doubtless,

often been painfully called up to the
mind of many a luckless swain who,
under a feeling sense of the joys of
connubial bliss, could exclaim with
the "Ayrshire Ploughman."

"On peace and rest my mind was bent,
And so a fool, I married,

But never honest man's intent

So awfully miscarried."

ven in frescoed beauty upon the architrave of Heaven!

In contemplating the brief but brilliant career of Henry Kirke White, one cannot but see, how that all the effusions of his Muse were colored by the ever-varying state of his bodily health. Has he recovered from sick. ness, he addresses a "Sonnet to the

"Once more, O Trent, along thy pebbly marge A pensive invalid, reduced, and pale,

Does he mourn over joys which have River Trent.".
departed? Listen to his deeply touch-
ing monody upon the death of "Mary,"
who, with him, had enjoyed sweet com-
munion on the flowing banks of "Bon-
nie Doon."

"But, ah, fell Death's untimely frost,

Which nipt my flower sae early,

Now green's the sod and cauld's the clay
That wraps my "Highland Mary."

From the close sick-room newly let at large,

Woos to his wan. worn cheek, the pleasant gale. O! to his ear how musical the tale,

Which fills with joy the throstles little throat! And all the sounds which on the fresh breeze sail, How wildly novel on his senses float!"

Laboring under the premonitories of
speedy death, he addressed his "Ode
to Disappointment," and his "Thought
written in prospect of Death."

"Sad, solitary thought, who keep'st thy vigils,
Thy solemn vigils, in the sick man's mind;
Communing lonely with his sinking soul,
And musing on the dubious glooms that lie
In dim obscurity before him-there,
Wrapt in thy dark magnificence, I call

At this still, midnight hour, this awful season,
When on my bed, in wakeful restlessness,
I turn me wearisome; while all around,
All, all save me, sink in forgetfulness;
I only wake to watch the sickly taper
Which lights me to my tomb."

We are admonished that we have already extended these "random thoughts" to a tedious length. We will conclude our desultory observations by a few critical remarks upon the genius of Henry Kirke White. Ah! how the heart of every lover of genuine poesy thrills with emotions that cannot be uttered, at the mention of the name of this Holy "Child of =Song!" A flower wert thou Kirke White, in the Paradise of Song; nipped whilst yet its tiny petals were laden with the dew-drops of the early morn. His characteristics as a poet, are the Short, indeed, was thy pilgrimage, and simplicity of his versification, and the we think mercifully brief; for thy lov. deep pathos of sentiment which breathes ing, tender nature was illy adapted to through all his poetry. There is a brook the rude shocks of this warmth tinge of melancholy, and a "rhyming less world! Much, then, as we may sadness," as Crabbe has expressed it, regret that, for thy Saviour's sake, thou in all of Kirke White's published didst not longer tarry, we would not poems, which, while it strikes a sympamurmur at the Providence of God. thetic chord in the breasts of those "He doeth all things well." Thine who have experienced the vicissitudes earthly Harp has been changed for an Heavenly Lyre, and the soft preludial notes which thou sangest so sweetly on the "hither" side of the "cold river," are now blended in that deep tidal melody which floats from around the "great white Throne." Thy pure spirit wanders o'er the plains of Immortality, and genius has found the Heaven of its aspiration! Arrayed in the stainless vestments of immortal youth and beauty, thou walkest by the "still waters of peace," and thy name is engra

of human life; casts at the same time a funeral sadness over even our transient joys. That the coloring of Kirke White's should have been such as it is, is by no means strange. He was a proud, sensitive and susceptible nature, and conscious, as he was, and as every genius must be, of its high prerogatives, he felt a mental pride which, when he came in contact with servile and inferior men, suffered a vulgar competition, which if it did not relax, was, certainly not calculated to stimulate

[363

Selections.

ALABAMA HISTORICAL

SOCIETY.

It is the wish of the Society to collect:

Ante-Revolutionary documents of all kinds, relating to any of the colonies or colonists; books, pamphlets, &c., on such subjects.

Journals of the Provincial Congress, of the Colonial and State Legislatures; records of the proceedings of conventions and committees of safety; jour nals of the King's councils! statutes of colonies, territories, and states, at any period of their history; treaties with Indian tribes or with any state or na tion:-all relating to the history and progress of any state.

Whatever belongs to the Documentary History of the United States; embracing the first movements in resist ance to British aggression, articles of confederation, constitutions, &c., down to the present time.

WHATEVER RELATES TO THE HISTORY

OF ALABAMA.

The French settlements, earlier and later-Mobile, Marengo, &c.

Territorial government, Mississipi territory, Georgia western territory. Formation of the State Conventions, constitution, &c., &c.

Legislatures-seats of government, officers, members of the general assembly-journals of both houses, laws and acts passed, Digests made by public authority, all documents published by public authority; and memoirs and accounts of all public officers.

History of counties, cities, towns, villages--or remarkable settlements, for whom named,--including their origin, incorporation, charters, officers, and memorable events or persons, and all public transactions, maps, surveys, &c.

anec.

Memoirs, correspondence, dotes, &c., of any remarkable persons, residing in or passing through the State; or in any way connected with its his. tory: together with all letters, documents and papers illustrative of public or private history. Essays, or other productions, in manuscript,-written by, or at the suggestion of, any citizen The earliest notices of Indian tribes of this State. All works relating to within our borders, their manners and the Literary History of the State, its customs, their skirmishes and battles; colleges, academies and seminaries, the adventures and sufferings of cap. minutes and proceedings of scientific tives and travellers among them, or in and literary associations, orations, serthe territories they occupied; the Indian mons, addresses, tracts, essays, pamphnames attached to rivers, hills, dis- lets, poems, delivered or written on tricts, islands, bays, and all other any occasion; also magazines, almaplaces, with their meanings and the nacs, reviews.-meteorological jour traditions connected with them; to- nals, and the records of any facts or gether with accounts of all monuments, observations tending to promote knowrelics, mounds, dwellings, implements, ledge or advance science. memorials, or traditions, connected with the aborigines; and the articles themselves when capable of transmission.

Facts relating to the Spanish adventurers, De Soto, &c.

A copy or copies of every book pub. lished in the State, or by, or for, any citizen of the State.

A file (from the beginning, if possible,) of every newspaper published in

the State.