sions in it, complains their good Mentor of Edinburgh, and persuades them, seemingly the most meek and teachable of heroes, to omit them; though Alexander, while submitting, pleads fairly enough for retaining them, in a passage which we will give, as a specimen of the sort of English possible to be acquired by a Scotch day-laborer, selfeducated, all but the rudiments of reading and writing, and a few lectures on popular poetry from "a young student of Aberdeen," now the Rev. Mr. Adamson, who must look back on the friendship which he bore these two young men, as one of the noblest pages in his life:

blown up in quarrying with his own blast, and left for dead; recovers slowly, maimed and scarred, with the loss of an eye. John, when not thirteen, is set to stone-breaking on the roads during intense cold, and has to keep himself from being frost-bitten and heart-broken by monkey-gambols; takes to the weaving trade, and having helped his family by the most desperate economy to save £10 wherewith to buy looms, begins to work them, with his brother as an apprentice, and finds the whole outlay rendered useless the very same year by the failures of 1825-26. So the two return to day-labor at fourteenpence a day. John in a struggle to do task-work honestly over-exerts himself, and ruins his digestion for life. Next year he is set in November to clean out a watercourse knee-deep in water, and then to take marl from a pit, and then to drain standing water off a swamp during an intense De-thing to be weel learned,' and begin a lamentacember frost, and finds himself laid down with a three months' cough, and all but sleepless illness, laying the foundation of the consumption which destroyed him. But they will not give in. Poetry they will write, and they write it to the best of their powers on scraps of paper, after the drudgery of the day, in a cabin previous to every shower, teaching themselves the right spelling of the words from some "Christian Remembrancer" or other apparently not our meek and unbiased contemporary of that name; and all this without neglecting their work a day or even an hour, when the weather permitted— the only thing which tempted them to fret," being-hear it, readers, and perpend !— "being kept at home by rain and snow.' Then an additional malady (apparently some calculous one) comes on John, stops by him for the six remaining years of his life. Yet between 1826 and 1832, John has saved £14 out of his miserable earnings, to be expended to the last farthing on his brother's recovery from the second quarry accident. Surely the devil is trying hard to spoil these men! But no. They are made perfect by sufferings. In the house with one long narrow room, and a small vacant space at the end of it, lighted by a single pane of glass, they write and write untiring, during the long summer evenings, poetry, "Tales of the Scottish Peasant Life," which at last bring them in somewhat; and a work on practical economy, which is bepraised and corrected by kind critics in Edinburgh, and at last published without a sale. Perhaps one cause of its failure might be found in those very corrections. There were too many violent political allu

"Talk to the many of religion, and they will put on a long face, confess that it is a thing of the greatest importance to all-and go away and they will readily acknowledge that it is a braw forget the whole. Talk to them of education:

tion, which is only shorter than the lamentations of Jeremiah, because they cannot make it as long, on the ignorance of the age in which they live; but they neither stir hand nor foot in the matter. But speak to them of politics, and their excited how deeply they are interested. Politics are countenances and kindling eye show in a moment therefore an important feature, and an almost indispensable element in such a work as mine. Had it consisted solely of exhortations to industry and rules of economy, it would have been dismissed with a 'Ou ay, its braw for him to crack that way: but if he were whaur we are, deed he wad just hae to do as we do.' But by mixing up the science with politics, and giving it an occasional political impetus, a different result may be reasonably expected. In these days no man can be considered a patriot or friend of the poor, who is not also a politician.”

It is amusing, by the bye, to see how the world changes its codes of respectability, and how, what is anathema one year, becomes trite in twenty more. The political sins in the work were, that "my brother had attacked the corn-laws with some severity; and I have attempted to level a battery against that sort of servile homage which the poor pay to the rich!"

There is no use pursuing the story much further. They again save a little money, and need it; for the estate on which they hav lived from childhood changing hands, they are, with their aged father, expelled from the dear old dog-kennel, to find house-room where they can. Why not?" it was not in the bond." The house did not belong to them; nothing of it, at least, which could be specified in any known lease. True, there may have been associations, but what asso

ciations can men be expected to cultivate on fourteenpence a day? So they must forth, with their two aged parents, and build with their own hands a new house elsewhere, having saved some £30 from the sale of their writings. The house, as we understand, stands to this day-hereafter to become a sort of artisan's caaba and pilgrim's station, only second to Burns's grave. That, at least, it will become, whenever the meaning of the wordsworth" and " worship' shall become rightly understood among us.

Long, obdurate, and painful; and thy hand Hath wrung cold sweat-drops from my brow; for these

I thank thee too. Though pangs at thy command

Have compassed me about, still, with the blow,

Patience sustained my soul amid its wce."

Of the actual literary merit of these men's writings there is less to be said. However extraordinary, considering the circumstances. under which they were written, may be the polish and melody of John's verse, or the

For what are these men, if they are not heroes and saints? not of the Popish sort, abject and effeminate, but of the true, human, evangelic sort, masculine and grand-like the figures in Raffaelle's Cartoons, compared with those of Fra Bartolomeo. Not from superstition, not from selfish prudence, but from devotion to their aged parents, and the right-genuine spiritual health, deep death-andeous dread of dependence, they die volun- devil-defying earnestness, and shrewd practitary celibates, although their writings show cal wisdom, which shines through all that that they, too, could have loved as nobly as either brother writes, they do not possess any they did all other things. The extreme of of that fertile originality, which alone would endurance, self-restraint, of "conquest of the have enabled them, as it did Burns, to comflesh," outward as well as inward, is the life-pete with the literary savans, who, though long lot of these men; and they go through for the most part of inferior genius, have the it. They have their share of injustice, tyranny, help of information and appliances, from disappointment; one by one each bright boy's which they were shut out. Judging them, dream of success and renown is scourged out as the true critic, like the true moralist, is of their minds, and sternly and lovingly their bound to do, "according to what they had, Father in heaven teaches them the lesson of not according to what they had not," they all lessons. By what hours of misery and are men who, with average advantages, might blank despair that faith was purchased, we have been famous in their day. God thought can only guess; the simple strong men give it better for them to "hide them in his tabus the result, but never dream of sitting down ernacle from the strife of tongues,"—and, and analyzing the process for the world's seldom believed truism, He knows best. amusement, or their own glorification. We Alexander shall not, according to his early question, indeed, whether they could have dreams, "earn nine hundred pounds by writtold us; whether the mere fact of a man's ing a book, like Burns," even though his being able to dissect himself, in public or in ideal method of spending be to buy all the private, is not proof-patent that he is no man, boys in the parish "new shoes with iron tacbut only a shell of a man, with works inside, kets and heels," and send them home with which can of course be exhibited and taken shillings for their mothers, and feed their fato pieces--a rather more difficult matter with thers on wheat bread and milk, with tea and desh and blood. If we believe that God is bannocks for Sabbath-days, and build a house educating, the when, the where, and the how for the poor old toil-stiffened man whom he are not only unimportant, but, considering once saw draining the hill-field, "with a who is the teacher, unfathomable to us, and yard full of gooseberries, and an apple-tree !" it is enough to be able to believe with John not that, nor even, as the world judges, betBethune, that the Lord of all things is in-ter than that, shall he be allowed to do. The fluencing us through all things; whether sacraments, or sabbaths, or sun-gleams, or showers-all things are ours, for all are His, and we are His, and He is ours ;-and for the rest, to say with the same John Bethune :

"Oh, God of glory! thou hast treasured up For me my little portion of distress; VOL. XXV. NO. I.

poor, for whom he writes his "Practical Economy," shall not even, care to read it; and he shall go down to the grave a failure and a lost thing in the eyes of men;-but not in the eyes of grand God-fearing old Alison Christie, his mother, as he brings her, scrap by scrap, the proofs of their dead idol's poems, which she has prayed to be

of the sun.

Making all allowance for natural and pardonable high-coloring, we recommend this most weighty and significant passage to the attention of all readers, and draw an argumentum a fortiori from the high estimation in which Thom holds those very songs of Tannahill's, of which we just now spoke somewhat depreciatingly, for the extreme importance which we attach to popular poetry, as an agent of incalculable power in moulding the minds of nations.

on his seventeen years' weaving, in 1814, the those, the last relic of moral existence would have nemesis has come. 'Wages are six shillings passed away. Song was the dew-drop which a week where they had been forty; but the gathered during the long dark night of despondenweaver of forty shillings, with money instead cy, and was sure to glitter in the very first blink of wit, had bequeathed his vices to the weaver You might have seen Auld Robin Gray' wet the eyes that could be tearless amid of six shillings, with wit instead of money." cold and hunger, and weariness and pain. SureThe introduction of machinery works evilly, surely, then there was to that heart one passage rather than good, on account of the reckless left." way in which it is used, and the reckless material which it uses. "Vacancies in the factory, daily made, were daily filled by male and female workers; often queer enough people, and from all parts-none too coarse for using. The pick-pocket, trained to the loom six months in Bridewell, came forth a journeyman weaver, and his precious experiences were infused into the common moral puddle, and in due time did their work." No wonder that "the distinctive character of all sunk away. Man became less manly woman unlovely and rude." No wonder that the factory, like too many more, though a thriving concern to its owners, becomes "a prime nursery of vice and sorrow." "Virtue perished utterly within its walls, and was dreamed of no more; or, if remembered at all, only in a deep and woful sense of self-debasement-a struggling to forget, where it was hopeless to obtain." But to us, almost the most interesting passage in his book, and certainly the one which bears most directly on the general purpose of this article, is one in which he speaks of the effects of song on himself and his fellow factory-workers :

"Moore was doing all he could for love-sick boys and girls, yet they had never enough! Nearer and dearer to hearts like ours was the Ettrick Shepherd, then in his full tide of song and story; but nearer and dearer still than he, or any living songster, was our ill-fated fellow-craftsman, Tannahill. Poor weaver chiel! what we owe to you!

-your Braes of Balquidder, and Yon Burnside,
and Gloomy Winter,' and the Minstrel's' wail-
ing ditty, and the noble Gleneiffer.' Oh! how
they did ring above the rattle of a thousand shut-
les! Let me again proclaim the debt which we
owe to these song spirits, as they walked in melo-
dy from loom to loom, ministering to the low-
hearted; and when the breast was filled with
everything but hope and happiness, let only break
out the healthy and vigorous chorus, ' A man's a
man for a' that,' and the fagged weaver brightens
Who dare measure the restraining
influences of these very songs? To us they were
all instead of sermons. Had one of us been bold
enough to enter a church, he must have been
ejected for the sake of decency. His forlorn and
curiously patched habiliments would have con-
tested the point of attraction with the ordinary
eloquence of that period. Church bells rang not
for us.
Poets were indeed our priests: but for

up.

The popular poetry of Germany has held that great nation together, united and heartwhole for centuries, in spite of every disadvantage of internal division, and the bad influence of foreign taste; and the greatest of their poets have not thought it beneath them to add their contributions, and their very best, to the common treasure, meant not only for the luxurious and learned, but for the workman and the child at school. In Great Britain, on the contrary, the people have been left to form their own tastes, and choose their own modes of utterance, with great results, both for good and evil; and there has sprung up, before the new impulse which Burns gave to popular poetry, a considerable literatureconsiderable not only from its truth and real artistic merit, but far more so from its being addressed principally to the working-classes. Even more important is this people's literature question, in our eyes, than the more palpable factors of the education question, about which we now hear such ado. It does seem to us, that to take every possible precaution about the spiritual truth which children are taught in school, and then leave to chance the more impressive and abiding teaching which popular literature, songs especially, give them out of doors, is as great

a niaiserie as that of the Tractarians who insisted on getting into the pulpit in their surplices, as a sign that the clergy only had the right of preaching to the people, while they forgot that, by means of a free press, (of the license of which they too were not slack to avail themselves,) every penny-aliner was preaching to the people daily, and would do so, maugre their surplices, to the end of time. The man who makes the peo

ple's songs
Whatsoever, true or false, he sends forth,
will not be carried home, as a sermon often
is, merely in heads, to be forgotten before
the week is out: it will ring in the ears, and
cling round the imagination, and follow the
pupil to the workshop, and the tavern, and
the fireside, even to the death-bed, such
power is in the magic of rhyme. The emi-
grant, deep in Australian forest, may take
down Chalmers's sermons on Sabbath even-
ings from the scanty shelf; but the songs
of Burns have been haunting his lips, and
cheering his heart, and moulding him uncon-
sciously to himself, in clearing and in pasture
all the weary week. True, if he be what a
Scotchman should be, more than one old
Hebrew psalm has brought its message to
him during these week-days; but there are
feelings of his nature on which those psalms,
not from defect, but from their very purpose,
do not touch; how is he to express them,
but in the songs which echo them? These
will keep alive, and intensify in him, and in
the children who learned them from his lips,
all which is like themselves. Is it, we ask
again, to be left to chance what sort of songs
these shall be ?

is a true popular preacher. | ess, in our eyes, "wiser than her teachers."
But this is our way. We are too apt to be
afraid of the men, and take to the children
as our pis aller, covering our despair of deal-
ing with the majority, the adult population,
in a pompous display of machinery for influ-
encing that very small fraction, the children.
"Oh, but the destinies of the empire depend
on the rising generation!" Who has told us
so!-how do we know that they do not de-
pend on the risen generation? Who are
likely to do more work during our lifetime,
for good and evil,-those who are now be-
tween fifteen and five-and-forty, or those
who are between five and fifteen? Yet for
those former, the many, and the working,
and the powerful, all we seem to be inclined
to do is to parody Scripture, and say, "He
that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and
he that is filthy, let him be filthy still."

As for poetry written for the working classes by the upper, such attempts at it as we yet have seen may be considered nil. The upper must learn to know more of the lower, and to make the lower know more of them-a frankness of which we honestly believe they will never have to repent. Moreover, they must read Burns a little more, and cavaliers and Jacobites a little less. As it is, their efforts have been as yet exactly in that direction which would most safely secure the blessings of undisturbed obscurity. Whether "secular" or "spiritual," they have thought proper to adopt a certain Tommygood-child tone, which, whether to Glasgow artisans or Dorsetshire laborers, or indeed for any human being who is "grinding among the iron facts of life," is, to say the least, nauseous; and the only use of their poematicula has been to demonstrate practically the existence of a great and fearful gulf between those who have, and those who have not, in thought as well as in purse, which must be, in the former article at least, bridged over as soon as possible, if we are to remain one people much longer. The attempts at verse for children are somewhat more successful-a certain little Moral Songs" especially, said to emanate from the Tractarian School, yet full of a health, spirit, and wild sweetness, which makes its author

Not that we ask any one to sit down, and out of mere benevolence, to write songs for the people. Wooden, out of a wooden birthplace, would such go forth, to feed fires, not spirits. But if any man shall read these pages, to whom God has given a truly poetic temperament, a gallant heart, a melodious ear, a quick and sympathetic eye for all forms of human joy and sorrow, and humor, and grandeur-an insight which can discern the outlines of the butterfly, when clothed in the roughest and most rugged chrysalis hide; if the teachers of his heart and purposes, and not merely of his taste and sentiments, have been the great songs of his own and of every land and age; if he can see in the divine poetry of David and Solomon, of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and, above all, in the parables of Him who spake as never man spake, the models and elemental laws of a people's poetry, alike according to the will of God and the heart of man; if he can welcome gallantly and hopefully the future, and yet know that it must be, unless it would be a monster and a machine, the loving and obedient child of the past; if he can speak of the subjects which will alone interest the many, on love, marriage, the sorrows of the poor, their hopes, political and social, their wrongs, as well as their sins and duties; and that with a fervor and passion akin to the spirit of Burns and Elliott, yet with more calm, more purity, more wisdom, and therefore with more hope, as one who stands upon a vantage ground of education and culture, sympathizing none the less with those who struggle behind him in the valley of the shadow of death, yet seeing from the mountain peaks the coming dawn, invisible as yet