tension, and admirals, governors, and customs-officers, influenced by the wishes and entreaties of the colonists, agreed that there was nothing in the English Navigation Acts forbidding foreigners to trade with the British colonies; and, above all, that a boy captain in the navy was not entitled to enforce his interpretation of a doubtful statute by cannonballs. Nelson, however, "though no lawyer," had not the slightest doubt upon the subject; and having first given due notice to all concerned,-governors, customs-officers, and American skippers,—" that he should stand no nonsense," seized, without further ceremony, every American vessel he could lay hold of,-a peremptory proceeding which brought a hornets' nest about his ears. Actions at law were forthwith commenced against him in the island courts for damages to the extent of £40,000, for which sum, but for the safe protection of his frigate, he would have been immediately arrested; "and the admiral, Sir Richard Hughes," wrote Nelson, "stood neuter in the matter, though his flag was flying in the road." This was not surprising, for Nelson had disobeyed Sir R. Hughes's positive orders, not to interfere with the American vessels, an act of daring insubordination which Nelson justified by saying, "that his choice lay between disobeying orders and disobeying acts of parliament; " but would, nevertheless, have led to his being immediately superseded and tried by court-martial, but that the admiral, upon mentioning the matter to the captain of his flag-ship, was told that all the officers of the squadron believed he had sent Captain Nelson illegal orders, and were therefore not quite sure that he was bound to obey them. Not long afterwards despatches from home endorsed Nelson's interpretation of the law, and, much to his angry surprise, the thanks of the Admiralty were given to Sir Richard Hughes, and the officers under his command-Nelson's name not being mentioned-for their activity and zeal in protecting British commerce! The president of Nevis, Mr. Herbert, who sided with Nelson throughout the dispute, was Mrs. Nisbet's uncle, upon whom Nelson called one morning at an unusually early hour. Mr. Herbert hastened, half-dressed, to receive his important visitor, and on his return to finish his toilet, exclaimed, addressing his wife, "Good God! if I didn't find that great little man, of whom everybody is afraid, playing under the dining-table with Mrs. Nisbet's child!" The next time Captain Nelson called on Mr. Herbert, the young widow had an opportunity of thanking him for his notice of her little boy. Nelson was vanquished at once, and "dearest Fanny " forthwith installed supreme idol of his heart-or fancy; for which happiness he writes, in one of his early love-letters, "I daily thank God, who ordained that I should be attached to you. He has, I firmly believe, intended it as a blessing to me, and I am well assured you will not disappoint His beneficent intentions." Captain Horatio Nelson was married to Frances Herbert Nisbet on the 11th of March, 1787.

The fratricidal struggle with America terminated, and hostilities with any other country not being thought probable for a long time to come, Nelson, in common with the great majority of England's sea officers, retired into comparative obscurity, till the war growing out of the French Revolution recalled him to the service of his country. The

deeds of the great admiral in that Titanic contest are engraved upon the hearts of his countrymen, and require no mention here, but the significance of the bright dawn of this great life would be but poorly and partially revealed unless there be permitted to fall upon it some rays of the sunset glory which it presaged and mirrored. The heroism of Nelson, it will have been remarked, was from his earliest youth the heroism of self-sacrifice,-of single-hearted, fervent, thoroughly unselfish devotion to his country: there was no alloy of caste, pride, or exclusiveness about it; and hence it came to pass, that his own ardent, glowing enthusiasm kindled a like flame in the breasts of all who came within the range of his great example-the cabin-boy equally with the post captain, so that at last the sole anxiety of his warfare, which done all was done, was to bring England, naval England, into close deathgrips with her foes. Restless, angry, perturbed, sleepless, whilst this was doubtful, whilst it was possible that the enemy of his nation might elude his search, avoid the combat,-no sooner did the near closing of the hostile fleets show that hand-to-hand decisive battle was inevitable, than the clouded eye brightened, the furrowed brow grew clear, and the previously disturbed and irate admiral became calm as infancy, confident as truth,-" took bread and anointed himself," had consideration for the decorations of his toilet, and the display of his ribands, crosses, stars,for was not his task achieved, and he no longer a leader struggling with a foe, but the chief guest and spectator at an assured triumph of his country's arms, the victor in a battle sure to be won because certain to be fought? That this was true of Nelson no one can dispute,-more true of him than of any other man I at least have ever heard or read of. Such men never die till the country which gave them birth has perished; and we may, spite of alarmists and panic-mongers, confidently rely that Nelson's last signal flying from the mastheads of the English battle-line in any future contest, will be followed by a hurricane of fire that shall wither up the mightiest force which the banded despots of the world could hope to array against the last and, it were impious to doubt, invulnerable bulwark of the liberties of Europe.

THE

HE life-story of the peasant-poet of Scotland is one that seldom fails to excite a painful sympathy in cultivated and generous minds, and astonishment, almost indignation, is felt that the wealthy and influential of his contemporary countrymen should have looked on with indifference at the sad spectacle of a being so greatly gifted treading, with bleeding, lacerated feet, the rugged and thorny road of poverty from the cradle to the tomb, when so slight an exertion on their part would have raised him to a position of leisure, ease, and competence. This feeling, which we constantly hear expressed, is, no doubt, a natural and amiable one, and apparently assumes that a wayward, impassioned child of impulse, might, by wise guidance and substantial help, have been transformed to a decorous, staid, well-to-do man of the world, without any fear that the "light from heaven" by which he was led astray would be thereby sensibly deadened or obscured, much less extinguished. Hardly so, we cannot help suspecting; it is just possible that another unit might, by such charitable solicitude, have been added to the tens of thousands of forgotten respectabilities, of which there has never been any lack in Scotland or elsewhere, but not without mortal peril to the Robert Burns now dwelling with us in radiant immortal life-the familiar and ennobling guest alike of the cottage and the palace. God is not so unregardful of His noblest creations as to place them where the mission for which He has especially and divinely gifted them could not be fulfilled, and we may be sure it was necessary to the full revealment of the powers of the mighty spirit-harp which we call

Robert Burns, that it should be exposed to all impulses of soul and sense the stern touch of poverty,-the maddening play of passion,--the indignant sweep of ireful scorn, ay, and the burning pulses of remorse. But that the chords were sometimes struck by the iron hand of adversity,—the lines to the Mountain Daisy,—the Mouse,-the "Man's a Man for a' that," would not, it may be feared, be now household harmonies in the dwellings of the Anglo-Saxon race; the dainty touch of a decorous conventionalism could scarcely have elicited " Holy Willie's Prayer," and "The Address to the De'il," from ease-loosened, dusty strings, and what but the fiery fingers of passionate, self-accusing grief could have produced the sobbing agony of the invocation to "Mary in Heaven!"

Let us, therefore, instead of lamenting that Robert Burns was not changed into something else by a pension or other money-metempsychosis, and having regard to the poet-crown of stars, which diadems the brow of the immortal, rather than to the tattered and coarse apparel of the ploughman or the gauger, strive to ascertain in what respect his earlier hours of life preluded or gave promise of its brief but glorious day, perfectly satisfied that in so doing we shall not render ourselves justly obnoxious to any charge of sentimental indifference towards the man Burns, for nothing can be more certain than that if he himself could have had but one day's experience of the calm, decorous, prosperous, tideless life, many of his admirers think should have been assured to him, he would have flown back with eagerness to the sighs, the tears, the sorrows, joys, the tumultuous delights which have rendered him immortal.

Nearly a century ago William Burns, or Burness, the name is spelt both ways, originally from Kincardinshire, in the north of Scotland, afterwards of Edinburgh, settled down as a gardener, near Ayr, his last employer being Mr. Crawford, of Doon-Side. At Alloway, near the bridge of Doon, William Burns rented about seven acres of land, with the intention of following the business of a nurseryman, but first built a mud or clay cottage with his own hands thereon, consisting of one floor only, divided into two compartments-a sitting-room and kitchen, the bed place, an enclosed one, being in the latter division of the cottage. When it is said that this William Burns was the original of the patriarchal sire in the "Cottar's Saturday Night," though "his lyart haffets" (grey temples) were as yet unwhitened by time and hardship, it is almost unnecessary to add that he was a high-principled, superior man, and moreover, writes his great son, one who thoroughly understood men, their manners and their ways," and remarkable "for stubborn, ungainly integrity, and ungovernable irascibility of temper." At Maybole fair, William Burns had met Agnes Brown, the daughter of a penurious Carrick farmer, but since his second marriage living, drudging rather, at her grandmother's. Agnes was at this time five or six and twenty years of age, and her pleasant manners, "fine complexion and beautiful dark eyes," effected such a sudden and decisive revolution in the mind of William Burns, who was some ten years her senior, that on his return home, he forthwith burnt a love-missive addressed, but

not, luckily, forwarded, to another damsel, who had before slightly caught his fancy, and thenceforth became the avowed suitor of Agnes Brown. Her circumstances were humbler even than his own, and she had not received the slightest education in a school sense-she could not even read-but was withal rarely gifted with cheerful placidity of temper, housewifely, industrious habits, and a sweet voice for Scottish songs and ballads, which she sang with much feeling and taste. It was for the reception of Agnes Brown that William Burns had built his lime-washed cottage, to which he brought her, a newly-wedded bride, in December, 1757, and there was born, on the 25th of January, 1759, their eldest son, the now world-famous Robert Burns-the first-born of a rather numerous family.

Robert was not sent to school till he was in his sixth year, but the mind-nurture which influenced him through life began with the sweet ballad-strains by which he was rocked to sleep in his mother's arms, and the warlock, ghost, fairy, dragon stories, and songs of an old woman of the name of Betty Davidson, a distant relative by marriage of Mrs. Burns, the impression made by which upon his childish imagination was never, he says, effaced. The poet resembled his father neither in temperament, taste, mode of thought, nor faith, but he was deeply indebted to him for a mechanical education-reading, writing, grammar-a slight knowledge of French, less of Latin (but this was of his own procurement), and some lessons in elementary mathematics-far superior as a whole to what is usually acquired by the children of parents in William Burns's rank of life. Robert first went to a small school about a mile distant from his home, and not long subsequently he and his brother Gilbert received instruction in reading, writing, and English grammar from a clever young teacher of the name of Murdoch, who had temporarily fixed his abode near them.

In 1766 William Burns removed to Mount Oliphant, distant about two miles from his cottage, where he had taken the lease of a farm on such disadvantageous terms,-the wretched quality of the land considered ("the poorest soil in Scotland," writes Gilbert Burns, "I know of in a state of cultivation,")-as to induce a doubt that he really understood men and their ways so perfectly as his son imagined he did. The twelve years which the family passed at Mount Oliphant was one ceaseless bitter struggle for bare existence, which could hardly be obtained by the most strenuous and exhausting toil, in which husband, wife, sons, and daughters were alike compelled to join, frequently unsustained by a sufficiently generous diet. "My brother," says Gilbert, "at the age of thirteen, assisted in thrashing the crop of corn, and at fifteen was the principal labourer on the farm, for we had no hired servant, male or female." During the last ten years of this painful period, the education of his children was superintended by William Burns himself, except when Robert and his brother were sent for one quarter, weeks about, to a school between two and three miles off, at Dalrymple, for the improvement of their writing, and three weeks' tuition which the poet received from his former preceptor, Mr. John Murdoch, who had been recently appointed to a school at Ayr.