WITH the sincerest grief I read your letter. You are truly a son of misfortune. I shall be extremely anxious to hear from you how your health goes on; if it is any way re-establishing: or if Leith promises well in short how you feel in the inner man.

No news worth any thing: only godly Bryan was in the inquisition yesterday, and half the countryside as witnesses against him. He still stands out steady and denying: but proof was led yesternight

of circumstances highly suspicious: almost de facto: one of the servant girls made faith that she upon a time rashly entered the house-to speak in your cant, "in the hour of cause."

I have waited on Armour since her return home: not from any the least view of reconciliation, but merely to ask for her health and-to you I will confess it—from a foolish hankering fondness-very ill placed indeed. The mother forbade me the house, nor did Jean shew the penitence that might have been expected. However the priest, I am informed, will give me a certificate as a single man, if I comply with the rules of the church, which for that very reason I intend to do.

I am going to put on sack-cloth and ashes this day. I am indulged so far as to appear in my own seat. Peccavi, pater, miserere mei. My book will be ready in a fortnight. If you have any subscribers return them by Connell. The Lord stand with the righteous amen, amen. R. B.

[The minister who so boldly took it upon him to pronounce Burns a single man, after he had been married according to the law and usage of Scotland, was the Rev. Mr. Auld, of Mauchline. That he had no such power, no one can deny. The kirk of Scotland and the civil law were long at variance on the important subject of marriage. When a young pair were married by a magistrate, the minister of their parish not uncom

:

monly caused them to endure a rebuke in the church before they were re-admitted to its bosom; this was sometimes resisted by the more obstinate or knowing of the peasantry, and ill blood, harsh words, and threats of kirk-censure were the consequence. Burns, instead of mounting the common seat of shame, was allowed to stand in his own seat. There might be other reasons for this Auld was alarmed lest severity on his part should call forth a burning satire on the other; moreover, the repentance-stool had other occupants: the poet was one of seven who appeared, figuratively at least, in sack-cloth on the same day. In one of his memorandum books occurs the following singular entry:- "Mem: to enquire at Mr. M'Math whether, when a man has appeared in church for a child, and had another prior to it in point of time, but not discovered till after, he is liable for that one again. Note. The child was five and a half years old before the father was cited."

The kindness of James Grierson, Esq. of Dalgonar, in Dumfries-shire, has enabled me to add this letter to those addressed to John Richmond on love and poetry. It came too late to be inserted according to its date.— ED.]

No. CXXX.

TO MRS. DUNLOP.

Ellisland, New-year-day Morning, 1789.

THIS, dear Madam, is a morning of wishes, and would to God that I came under the apostle James's description !—the prayer of a righteous man availeth much. In that case, Madam, you should welcome in a year full of blessings: every thing that obstructs or disturbs tranquillity and self-enjoyment, should be removed, and every pleasure that frail humanity can taste, should be yours. I own myself so little a Presbyterian, that I approve of set times and seasons of more than ordinary acts of devotion, for breaking in on that habituated routine of life and thought, which is so apt to reduce our existence to a kind of instinct, or even sometimes, and with some minds, to a state very little superior to mere machinery.

This day; the first Sunday of May; a breezy, blue-skyed noon some time about the beginning, and a hoary morning and calm sunny day about the end, of autumn; these, time out of mind, have been with me a kind of holiday.

I believe I owe this to that glorious paper in the

Spectator," The Vision of Mirza," a piece that struck my young fancy before I was capable of fixing an idea to a word of three syllables: "On the 5th day of the moon, which, according to the custom of my fore-fathers, I always keep holy, after having washed myself, and offered up my morning devotions, I ascended the high hill of Bagdat, in order to pass the rest of the day in meditation and prayer."

We know nothing, or next to nothing, of the substance or structure of our souls, so cannot account for those seeming caprices in them, that one should be particularly pleased with this thing, or struck with that, which, on minds of a different cast, makes no extraordinary impression. I have some favorite flowers in spring, among which are the mountain-daisy, the hare-bell, the foxglove, the wild brier-rose, the budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight. I never hear the loud, solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of grey plovers, in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the Eolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own myself partial to such proofs of those awful