of the breast which poured forth the address to the mountain daisy, and that the bosom which heaved with emotions of the most touching tenderness and exquisite sensibility, was often set on fire of hell.

We say not these things because we have any pleasure in calling attention to the failings and shortcomings of one of whom Scotland has so much reason to be proud. Nor do we homologate, in any measure, the untenable opinion held by certain narrow souls, that Burns was wanting in what modern moralists have called the religious sentiment. The very opposite we believe to have been the case. Again and again throughout his letters we meet the genuine outbreathing of this sentiment. It is related by his brother Gilbert how very profoundly Burns was impressed with the solemn beauty and power of the words, "Let us worship God." That this simple utterance, heard from childhood beneath the paternal rooftree, known by him as the call which summoned thousands of Scottish households to offer up to heaven the morning and the evening sacrifice-should have so completely penetrated his soul, and bowed it beneath a sense of the awe and mystery of the infinite and the unseen, tells in language neither to be mistaken nor misinterpreted, the depth of religious feeling which, like a fountain sealed, lay struggling for utterance within his soul. Pity it was that this religious sentiment, naturally so deep and ardent, was not permitted to work itself clear of the dross which had gathered round it, "staining the white radiance of eternity." The men

and the times on which he had fallen, in great part prevented this. That latent scepticism which good old Wodrow, in his Analecta, mourns as having entered the Church of Scotland, had, in Burns' day, borne some of its most noxious fruits. A false philosophy had eaten. out the heart of the historic religion of Scotland amongst Scottish literati and Scottish theologians. The church of Knox, Melville, and Henderson, was now represented by Dr. William Robertson and Dr. Hugh Blair. Unhappily, the New-Light priesthood found in the rustic bard at once a powerful and popular ally; for, without doubt, the controversies into which he plunged with its approbation, exerted a most sinister influence, at a most critical hour, on his religious nature. Cut off, not by any innate want of sympathy, but by a fatal misdirection of his faculties, from the creed of his country-nay, publicly pitted against it, as the fighting man of the illuminati of his age-Burns missed becoming Scotland's representative man.

Thus has it come to pass, that neither in Abbotsford nor in Ayrshire-not by the banks of the Doon, but by the Bay of Cromarty, must we seek the embodiment of the genius and tendencies of our country. We again repeat, that however great, however potential in their respective individualities Scott and Burns undoubtedly were, the defects we have pointed out are fatal to their claims as representative men. A nation with such glorious souvenirs of freedom, could not crown the laureate of feudalism; and though he who sang "A man's

a man for a' that," and "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled," has infinitely higher claims, yet a nation whose religious struggles surpassed even the splendour of her conflicts for civil freedom, cannot call the author of the "Holy Fair" a type of the children of the Covenant.

In his "Sartor Resartus," Carlyle, with that felicitous pictorial power for which he stands unrivalled among modern writers, has gathered up into a single sentence that photographs on the mind for ever, a magnificent image of the influence and the unity of mankind. "On the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped in-the last rear of the host shall read traces of the earliest van." Subordinated to this general unity, and infolded in its ample circumference, lie the various national unities; and he who would adequately represent a nation must be himself the heir of all the epochs through which that nation has passed. The puerile rant indulged about Scottish nationality by certain writers and speakers during recent years, has so burlesqued the subject, that it is all but impossible to obtain the public ear for the soberest and most philosophic statements of its claims. Fortunately, the object we contemplate in adverting to the topic now, will be sufficiently served by the recapitulation of a few facts which even the most sceptical will not attempt to challenge. It may be asserted with something like axiomatic accuracy, that the peculiar character of a nation is determined by the spirit with which it rises equal to those great crises in its history which sooner or later overtake all peoples

in the development of the drama of the world. Three such epochs have occurred in Scottish story, and it has been the fortune of Scotland, on each occasion, to encounter the fiery trial through which she was called to pass, in the most heroic and dauntless spirit.

The first crisis was the patriotic struggle for Scottish nationality in the actual, not in the heraldic sense. Blind Harry's heroes were men of a very different stamp from the windbags who, a short while ago, set England a-laughing at Scotland and Scotchmen. And, however easily Punch snuffed out the babblers about nationality in our own day, we believe southern chivalry found it no laughing matter to deal with the thirteenth-century defenders of Scottish rights.

The conflict of which Wallace was the representative, fused the various races which had come together on the soil of Scotland, but had hitherto dwelt apart, without community of interest or unity of feeling. The battle with England, fought out so gloriously, so victoriously, animated the victors with a passion for nationality, such as never before possessed them. The unity of the nation, thus perfected through suffering, was destined to exert a most salutary influence upon the fortunes of another great struggle which was soon to call, not Scotland only, but Europe to the conflict. What Wallace was in the thirteenth century, such was Knox in the sixteenth. The foe is now no longer England, but the Pope; not a powerful sovereign, but a powerful superstition it is the people are called to combat. We need not say how

more completely here than in any other corner of Christendom, if perhaps we except Geneva, the work was done. Yet once more was Scotland summoned to the battle-field. Again the conflict is mainly ecclesiastical. She has been equal to the occasion hitherto, whether the foe was England's sovereign or the Roman pontiff: will she be equal to the conflict when the enemy is her own king? Deep-seated in every Scottish heart was the attachment of the people for the descendants of the hero of Bannockburn. Through long centuries that royal race had gone out and in before them, and, whether in the halls of debate or in the field of battle, had not been wanting to the nation. Much, very much, did Scotland suffer from the Stuarts before, stung into rebellion, her sons took the field against them. Yet generous and ardent as had been their devotion to their kings, in the camp of Leslie the highest earthly royalty was esteemed but as the dust in the balance, when weighed against the claims of Christ's crown and covenant.

From the elements which mingled in this last struggle it was necessarily very protracted. During thirty years did the best and bravest of our people wander the wilderness, pouring out their blood like water in defence of the good-the holy cause. The battle descended from sire to son, and even in what seemed its triumph, though a period was put to the fierce persecution which had devoured the nation, the principle for which Scotland had taken arms against Charles Stuart was not