never been paid to the memory of Burns; and though we do not exactly agree with Mr Carlisle in all his sentiments, especially in some of his remarks on Byron, and in his criticism on "Tam o' Shanter," we consider it a part of our literary duty to express the gratification we have, on the whole, experienced, in perusing a composition so redolent of genius. We doubt not that most of our readers will make it a point to judge of this Essay for themselves; but, in the meantime, to convince them that we have been bestowing no unmerited praise, we shall transfer to our pages the following admirable passage on

THE GENIUS OF BURNS.

how, in his darkest despondency, this proud being still seeks relief from friendship; unbosoms himself, often to the unworthy; and, amid tears, strains to his glowing heart, a heart that knows only the name of friend. ship. And yet he was quick to learn;' a man of keen vision, before whom common disguises afforded no concealment. His understanding saw through the hollowness even of accomplished deceivers; but there was a generous credulity in his heart. And so did our peasant show himself among us; a soul like an Æolian harp, in whose strings the vulgar wind as it passed through them, changed itself into articulate melody.' And this was he for whom the world found no fitter business than quarrelling with smugglers and vintners, computing excise dues upon tallow, and gauging alebarrels! In such toils was that mighty spirit sorrowfully wasted; and a hundred years may pass on before another such is given us to waste."

Not less eloquent, and, in the mind and heart of every enthusiastic Scotchman, not less true, is the subjoined panegyric on

THE SONGS OF BURNS.

"Such a gift had nature in her bounty bestowed on us in Robert Burns; but with queen-like indifference she cast it from her hand, like a thing of no moment; and it was defaced and torn asunder, as an idle bauble, before we recognized it. To the ill-starred Burns was given the power of making man's life more venerable; but that of wisely guiding his own was not given. Destiny, for so in our ignorance we must speak, his faults, the faults of others, proved too hard for him; and that spirit, which might have soared, could it but have walked, soon sank to the dust, its glorious faculties trodden "But by far the most finished, complete, and trulyunder foot in the blossom, and died, we may almost say, inspired pieces of Burns are, without dispute, to be without ever having lived. And so kind and warm a found among his Songs. It is here that, although soul; so full of inborn riches, of love to all living and through a small aperture, his light shines with the least lifeless things! How his heart flows out in sympathy obstruction; in its highest beauty, and pure sunny over universal nature, and in her bleakest provinces clearness. The reason may be, that song is a brief and discerns a beauty and a meaning! The daisy' falls simple species of composition; and requires nothing so not unheeded under his ploughshare, nor the ruined much for its perfection, as genuine poetic feeling,nest of that wee, cowering, timorous beastie,' cast genuine music of the heart. The song has its rules forth after all its provident pains, tothole the sleety equally with the tragedy; rules which, in most cases, dribble, and cranreuch cauld.' The hoar visage' of are poorly fulfilled; in many cases are not so much as winter delights him he dwells with a sad and oft-re- felt. We might write a long Essay on the Songs of turning fondness on these scenes of solemn desolation; Burns; which we reckon by far the best that Britain but the voice of the tempest becomes an anthem to his has yet produced; for indeed, since the era of Queen ears; he loves to walk in the sounding woods, for it Elizabeth, we know not that by any other hand aught raises his thoughts to Him that walketh on the wings truly worth attention has been accomplished in this deof the wind.' A true poet-soul, for it needs but to be partment. True, we have songs enough by persons of struck, and the sound it yields will be music! But ob- quality;' we have tawdry, hollow, wine-bred Madriserve him chiefly as he mingles with his brother men. gals; many a rhymed speech in the flowing and watery What warm all-comprehending fellow-feeling, what vein of Ossorius, the Portugal Bishop, rich in sonorous trustful, boundless love, what generous exaggeration of words; and for moral, dashed, perhaps, with some tint the object loved! His rustic friend, his nut-brown of a sentimental sensuality; all which many persons maiden, are no longer mean and homely, but a hero cease not from endeavouring to sing; though, for most and a queen, whom he prizes as the paragons of earth. part, we fear, the music is but from the throat outwards, The rough scenes of Scottish life, not seen by him in or at best from some region far enough short of the any Arcadian illusion, but in the rude contradiction, in soul; not in which, but in a certain inane Limbo of the smoke and soil of a too harsh reality, are still lovely the fancy, or even in some vaporous debateable land on to him: Poverty is indeed his companion, but love also the outside of the Nervous System, most of such Maand courage; the simple feelings, the worth, the noble-drigals and rhymed speeches seem to have originated. ness, that dwell under the straw roof, are dear and ve. nerable to his heart; and thus over the lowest provinces of man's existence, he pours the glory of his own soul; and they rise, in shadow and sunshine, softened and brightened, into a beauty which other eyes discern not in the highest. He has a just self-consciousness, which too often degenerates into pride; yet it is a noble pride, for defence, not for offence, no cold, suspicious feeling, but a frank and social one. The peasant poet bears himself, we might say, like a king in exile: he is cast among the low, and feels himself equal to the highest; yet he claims no rank, that none may be disputed to him. The forward he can repel, the supercilious he can subdue; pretensions of wealth or ancestry are of no arail with him; there is a fire in that dark eye, under which the insolence of condescension' cannot thrive. In his abasement, in his extreme need, he forgets not for a moment the majesty of poetry and manhood. And yet, far as he feels himself above common men, he wanders not apart from them, but mixes warmly in their interests; nay, throws himself into their arms, and, as it were, entreats them to love him. It is moving to see

With the Songs of Burns we must not name these things. Independently of the clear, manly, heartfelt sentiment that ever pervades his poetry, his Songs are honest in another point of view; in form as well as in spirit. They do not affect to be set to music, but they actually and in themselves are music; they have received their life, and fashioned themselves together, in the medium of harmony, as Venus rose from the bosom of the sea. The story, the feeling, is not detailed, but suggested; not said, or spouted in rhetorical completeness and coherence, but sung in fitful gushes,-in glowing hints,-in fantastic breaks,-in warblings, not of the voice only, but of the whole mind. We consider this to be the essence of a song; and that no songs, since the little careless catches, and, as it were, drops of song, which Shakspeare has here and there sprinkled over his plays, fulfil this condition in nearly the same degree as most of Burns's do. Such grace and truth of external movement, too, presupposes, in general, a corresponding force and truth of sentiment, and inward meaning. The Songs of Burns are not more perfect in the former quali ty than in the latter. With what tenderness he sings,

yet with what vehemence and entireness! There is a piercing wail in his sorrow, the purest rapture in his joy; he burns with the sternest ire, or laughs with the loudest or slyest mirth; and yet he is sweet and soft, 'sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet, and soft as their parting tear! If we farther take into account the immense variety of his subjects; how, from the loud flowing revel in Willie brewed a peck o' Maut, to the still, rapt enthusiasm of sadness for Mary in Heaven; from the glad kind greeting of Auld Langsyne, or the comic archness of Duncan Gray, to the fire-eyed fury of Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, he has found a tone and words for every mood of man's heart,-it will seem a small praise, if we rank him as the first of all our songwriters; for we know not where to find one worthy of being second to him."

would not have been a forenoon's work to Captain Cochrane. It was all one, too, to him, where he walked. He originally proposed to the Admiralty to travel over the burning sands of Africa, following, as nearly as he could, the track of Mungo Park; but, as the proposal was received unfavourably, he very coolly altered his design, and proposed to sojourn among the eternal snows of Siberia. Off he set, without money, without friends, without any thing, except, as the old song says, "a light heart and a thin pair of breeches ;" and with these he literally went" thorough the world, brave boys." We have a respect for the indomitable spirit of this man. He said to himself," I shall walk round the world; I shall traverse Europe and Asia, cross over to America at Behring's Straits, and proceed down that mighty continent till I get to the vicinity of Cape Horn." He kept this object steadily in view, and nothing would divert him from it. Storms raged, but he smiled at them and walked on ;-meridian suns glared down upon him in sultry radiance, but he wiped the perspiration from his brow and walked on ;-robbers attacked and plunderThe only article by Mr Jeffrey, in the present Num- ed him, but as soon as they left him, naked as he was, ber of the Review, is one upon Bishop Heber, and his he walked on ;-the luxuries and dissipations of great works on India. It is written with all Mr Jeffrey's cities and princely mansions courted him, but he turned usual ability and good feeling.-The chief peculiarity his face to the keen blast, coming from the cold north, of Blackwood for this month is, that it contains nothing and walked on ;-human habitations forsook him, snow from the pen of Professor Wilson, and is therefore less and wild beasts, silence and solitude, were his only cominteresting than we could wish.-One of the best arti-panions, but he walked on and on, till the echoes of farcles in the Foreign Quarterly is a very elaborate one on the Arts and Manufactures in France.In the New Monthly, Lady Morgan writes the leading Essay, which is of an historico-political kind, on the subject of Irish Lords Lieutenant.

These extracts speak for themselves; and it is only necessary to add, that the whole of the article from which we have taken them, is made up of a string of passages equally brilliant.

A Pedestrian Journey through Russia and Siberian Tartary, to the frontiers of China, the Frozen Sea, and Kamtchatka. By Captain John Dundas Cochrane, R. N. Two volumes; being the 36th and 37th volumes of Constable's Miscellany. Edinburgh. 1829.

CAPTAIN COCHRANE's intention was to walk round the world; and he certainly walked a good part of the way. We know of no man who seems to have made a better hand of his legs. Cockneys account it a great thing to spend a week or two in summer, walking about Loch Ketturin, or climbing that remarkable piece of rising ground, called Ben-Lomond. At dinner parties, towards the fag end of the shooting season, we sometimes hear a sportsman, more daring than the rest, boast, that on one occasion he went over forty miles at a stretch, a distance nearly equivalent to that which exists between Edinburgh and Glasgow. These things are set down as feats, and recorded to a man's honour in after life, when he sits toasting his toes by his fireside, surrounded by a gaping circle of grandchildren. But what a contemptible figure their grandpapa would cut in their eyes were they just to take a slight glance at the pedestrian journey performed by Captain Cochrane! Their grandpapa, when a young man, walked forty miles; Captain Cochrane walked twenty thousand miles. He walked from London to Okotsk, on the Frozen Sea, passing through France, Germany, Prussia, Russia, Tartary, and Siberia. He then crossed to Kamtchatka, and walked through that Peninsula; and not being able to walk any farther north, because there was no more land to walk upon, he with great good humour turned round again, and walked the whole way back. There are a few who have walked the length of Johnny Groat's House, the farthest north point of Scotland, and when they returned, they looked amazingly big, with an expression which seemed to imply-"All that man dare, I dare." Heaven forgive them! their whole excursion

distant society rung not in his ears, and he passed, as it were, into a new state of existence.

That Captain Cochrane did not perambulate the globe, was not his fault. He could not get out of Asia ; so, by way of revenge, we suppose, he took to himself a wife in Kamtchatka, and came away home again. To walk back, however, only eight or nine thousand miles, appeared too insignificant, and he therefore made a digression to the frontiers of China, which afforded several thousand miles more of healthy exercise. Our hero was not a learned man, nor a very able inan, but he had a good stock of sound common sense; and the consequence is, that his book is by far the best Itinerary of Russia, Siberian Tartary, and Kamtchatka, that exists. If we ever were to walk the length of Okotsk, or pay a visit to our friends the Yakuti and Tongousians, we should never wish for more than a raw sturgeon in one pocket, and the Captain's book in the other; and with these auxiliaries, we should feel perfectly sure of getting on delightfully.

The "Pedestrian Journey," be it recollected, however, is, on the whole, more a curious than a very instructive work. We are led on from town to town, and village to village innumerable, of whose very existence nobody had ever dreamt before; and then, at length, we come into the immense wilderness of Siberia, "whose inhabitants are so scattered, that five or six hundred miles are passed by travellers without seeing an individual, much less any cultivation, or any works of man, at all worthy of description." As Captain Cochrane therefore frankly confesses, the matter of interest is to be compressed in a small space; for in these remote regions, the manners, customs, and dress of most of the inhabitants are the same, and the severity of the climate is in general productive of the same results. We confess, however, that, though here and there the details are a little tedious, we have, on the whole, derived very considerable gratification from these volumes. We subjoin one or two detached extracts, not with the view of giving any correct notion of the general features of the work, but as passages which may interest and amuse. Of the advantages to be derived from sending out Missionaries to Siberia, our author writes sceptically, and, we suspect, judiciously:

SIBERIAN MISSIONARIES.

"I passed a couple of days in a most agreeable man

ner with these secluded and self-devoted people, who have, indeed, undertaken an arduous task. They have been established in the present place more than three years; during which time they have erected two neat and homely dwellings, with out-houses, small gardens, &c. It is, however, to the generosity of the Emperor of Russia that these very comfortable residences are to be attributed, he having generously paid all the expenses, and given the society a grant of land, free of actual rent or public service.

third, and all were devoured with avidity. The steersman then gave him several pounds of sour frozen butter; this also he immediately consumed; lastly, a large piece of yellow soap ;-all went the same road; but as I was convinced that the child would continue to gorge as long as it could receive any thing, I begged my companion to desist as I had done.

"As to the statement of what a man can or will cat, either as to quality or quantity, I am afraid it would be quite incredible; in fact, there is nothing in the way of fish or meat, from whatever animal, however putrid or unwholesome, but they will devour with impunity, and the quantity only varies from what they have, to what they can get. Í have repeatedly seen a Yakut or a Tongouse devour forty pounds of meat in a day. The effect is very observable upon them, for, from thin and meagre-looking men, they will become perfectly potbellied. Their stomachs must be differently formed from ours, or it would be impossible for them to drink off at a draught, as they really do, their tea and soup scalding hot, (so hot, at least, that an European would have difficulty in even sipping at it,) without the least inconvenience. I have seen three of these gluttons consume a rein-deer at one meal; nor are they nice as to the choice of parts; nothing being lost, not even the contents of the bowels, which, with the aid of fat and blood, are converted into black puddings.

"Many journeys have been made into the interior of the country, with a view to form acquaintances with the chiefs and principal people, as also with the lamas or priests. As yet, however, it is a matter of regret, that these very indefatigable ministers have not been the instrument of converting one single individual. Nor is it probable they will; for it is only very lately that the Buriats brought their religious books, thirty waggon loads, from Thibet, at an expense of twelve thousand head of cattle. Their tracts have been received, but have never, save in a solitary instance, been looked in to. Even their Buriat servants secretly laugh at the folly of their masters, and only remain with them for the sake of getting better food, with less work. It appears to me, that the religion of the Buriats is of too old a date, and they are of too obstinate a disposition, to receive any change. Nor is it much to be wondered at: their own religious books point out the course they "For an instance, in confirmation of this, no doubt, pursue; and when the religion of a people, who have extraordinary statement, I shall refer to the voyages of been, from time immemorial, acquainted with the art of the Russian admiral, Saritcheff. No sooner,' he says, reading and writing, is attacked, and attempted to be had they stopped to rest or spend the night, than they changed, by three strangers, it is almost preposterous to had their kettle on the fire, which they never left until expect any favourable result. For my own part, so small they pursued their journey, spending the intervals for are my hopes of their success, that I do not expect any rest in eating, and, in consequence of no sleep, were one Buriat will be really and truly converted: for the drowsy all the next day.' The admiral also says, That sake of profit, several may so pretend; but, as long as such extraordinary voracity was never attended with any they have their own priests and religious instruction, so ill effects, although they made a practice of devouring, long the Missionary Society will do no more good than at one meal, what would have killed any other persimply translating their works, and acquiring the know- son. The labourers,' the admiral says, had an allow ledge of a language useless to England. I must, how-ance of four poods, or one hundred and forty-four Eng. ever, humbly add,—that what is impossible with man, is possible with God! The field chosen, on the banks of the Selenga, is, no doubt, the very worst; and this is known even to the missionaries; but, I presume, it is too comfortable a birth to be given up. I have every respect for them personally, but really I cannot think justice is done to the people of England, to say nothing of the poverty and ignorance of a large portion of the peo. ple of Ireland, in squandering money in every part of the world, while there are so many poor and religiously ignorant in our own empire. When we shall have all become good and steady and wealthy Christians, then will be the time to assist others; and thus, in a few words, I bid adieu to the subject."-Vol. 2d, p. 99101.

The worthy people who live in these northern regions seem to enjoy the most tremendous appetites ever heard of. We earnestly join in the wish of Macbeth, "may good digestion wait on appetite !" The following, we think, may be considered

SYMPTOMS OF A GOOD APPETITE.

"At Tabalak I had a pretty good specimen of the appetite of a child, whose age (as I understood from the steersman, who spoke some English and less French) did not exceed five years. I had observed the child crawling on the floor, and scraping up with its thumb the tallow-grease which fell from a lighted candle, and I inquired in surprise whether it proceeded from hunger or liking of the fat. I was told from neither, but simply from the habit in both Yakuti and Tongousi of eating whenever there is food, and never permitting any thing that can be eaten to be lost. I gave the child a candle made of the most impure tallow, a second, and a

lish pounds, of fat, and seventy-two pounds of ryeflour; yet in a fortnight they complained of having nothing to eat. Not crediting the fact, the Yakuti said that one of them was accustomed to consume at home, in the space of a day, or twenty-four hours, the hind quarter of a large ox, twenty pounds of fat, and a proportionate quantity of melted butter for his drink. The appearance of the man not justifying the assertion, the admiral had a mind to try his gormandizing powers, and for that purpose he had a thick porridge of rice boiled down with three pounds of butter, weighing together twenty-eight pounds, and although the glutton had already breakfasted, yet did he sit down to it with the greatest eagerness, and consumed the whole without stirring from the spot; and, except that his stomach betrayed more than ordinary fulness, he showed no sign of inconvenience or injury, but would have been ready to renew his gluttony the following day.' So much for the admiral, on the truth of whose account I place perfect reliance."-Vol. 1, p. 193–5.

We have room left for only a few anecdotes selected from different parts of the work.

"A Siberian Town. Of all the places I have ever seen, bearing the name of a city or town, this is the most dreary and desolate; my blood froze within me as I beheld and approached the place. All that I have seen in passing rocky or snowy sierras or passes in Spain, in traversing the wastes of Canada, or in crossing the Cordilleras or Andes of North America, the Pyrenees or the Alps, cannot be compared with the desolation of the scene around me! The first considerable halting-place from Yakutsk, the half-way house, is nine hundred or one thousand miles removed from a civilized place. Such a spot gives name to a commissariat, and contains seven

habitations of the most miserable kind, inhabited severally by two clergymen, each separate, a non-commissioned officer, and a second in command; a postmaster, a merchant, and an old widow. I have, during my service in the navy, and during a period when seamen were scarce, seen a merchant ship with sixteen guns, and only fifteen men, but I never before saw a town with only seven inhabitants."

"A Siberian Luxury.-On the 3d of December I quitted the town of Zashiversk, not ungrateful for the hospitality of its poor inhabitants, who had supplied me with plenty of fish, here eaten in a raw state, and which to this hour I remember as the greatest delicacy I have ever tasted. Spite of our prejudices, there is nothing to be compared to the melting of raw fish in the mouth; oysters, clotted cream, or the finest jelly in the world, is nothing to it; nor is it only a small quantity that may be eaten of this precious commodity. I myself have finished a whole fish, which, in its frozen state, might have weighed two or three pounds, and, with black biscuit, and a glass of rye-brandy, have defied either nature or art to prepare a better meal. It is cut up or shaved into slices with a sharp knife, from head to tail, and thence derives the name of stroganina; to complete the luxury only salt and pepper were wanting."

MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE.

TRADITIONARY NOTICES OF THE COUNTESS
OF STAIR.

By the Author of the "Histories of the Scottish Re-
bellions," the " Traditions of Edinburgh,” &c.

Or this venerable lady, who presided over the fashionable world of Edinburgh during the earlier half of the last century, some curious traditionary anecdotes are preserved, which may perhaps amuse the people of an age so different from that in which she flourished.

of Loudoun, and consequently was grand-daughter to She was the youngest daughter of James, second Earl that stern old Earl, who acted so important a part in the affairs of the Covenant, and who was Lord Chancellor of Scotland during the troublous times of the Civil War. While very young, (about the beginning of the eighteenth century,) she was married to James, first Viscount what was worse, of an extremely unhappy temper. Her P. a nobleman of very dissolute character, and, ladyship, who had a great deal of her grandfather in her, could have managed most men with great ease, by dint "French Patriotism.-At Ustkamenogorsk I again of superior intellect and force of character; but the partook of the hospitality of the commandant, a French- cruelty of Lord P was too much for her. He treatman; his name is Delancourt, and he has been thirty-ed her so barbarously, that she had even occasion to apfive years in Siberia, doing any thing or nothing; being prehend that he would some day put an end to her life. one of those feeble but respectable individuals, of whom One morning, during the time when she was labouring there are several, that are supported by the liberality of under this dreadful anticipation, she was dressing herthe Russian government. In him I saw the first instance self in her chamber, near an open window, when his of a Frenchman's forgetting his own country; he seemed lordship entered the room behind her, with a drawn entirely divested of the patriotic affection which that sword in his hand. He had opened the door softly, and, fickle nation are supposed to possess, but which, perhaps, although his face indicated a resolution of the most horgenerally exists more in appearance than reality, as rible nature, he still had the presence of mind to approach wherever a Frenchman can do best, there he will settle. her with the utmost caution. Had she not caught a I asked him if he ever intended to return to France ? glimpse of his face and figure in her glass, he would, in His reply was, that France was nothing to him.' I all probability, have approached near enough to execute asked him why? He looked at his wife and large fa- his bloody purpose, before she was aware, or could have mily of marriageable daughters, shrugged up his shoul- taken any measures to save herself. Fortunately, she ders, and said, Que voulez vous que j'y fasse ?' and, perceived him in time to leap out of the open window heaving a sigh, left the room. Yet, in spite of his into the street. Half-dressed as she was, she immeteeth, he was still a Frenchman, for the first words upon diately, by a very laudable exertion of her natural good 'Ma pauvre France!' I had touched sense, went to the house of Lord P's mother, where a tender string, and, although he is now resigned to his she told her story, and demanded protection. That profate, he says that he has been a bête' for marrying, tection was at once extended; and, it being now thought and begetting an entail which he cannot quit. His so- vain to attempt a reconciliation, they never afterwards ciety, during the few hours that I enjoyed it, was very lived together. agreeable."

his return were,

6

6

"Russian Civility. Among other proofs of their civility, or rather of the interest which Russians take in foreigners, as well as the means they have of making themselves understood, one very strong one occurred to me in a small village. I had learned so much of the language as to know that kchorosho is the Russian word for well, but not that kchudo was the translation for bad. My host, being a good sort of a blunt fellow, was discoursing upon the impropriety of travelling as I did. As I could not comprehend him, I was impatient to go; but he persisted in detaining me till he had made me understand the meaning of kchudo. My extreme stupidity offered a powerful barrier to his design; but a smart slap on one cheek and a kiss on the other, followed by the words kchudo and hehorosho, soon cured my dulness, and I laughed heartily in spite of this mode of instruction."

Lord P

soon afterwards went abroad. During his absence, a foreign conjuror, or fortune-teller, came to Edinburgh, professing, among many other wonderful accomplishments, to be able to inform any person of the present condition or situation of any other person, at whatever distance, in whom the applicant might be interested. Lady P, who had lost all trace of her husband, was incited, by curiosity, to go with a female friend to the lodgings of this person in the Canongate, for the purpose of inquiring regarding his motions. It was at night; and the two ladies went, with the tartan screens or plaids of their servants drawn over their faces, by way of disguise. Lady P― having described the individual in whose fate she was interested, and having expressed a desire to know what he was at present doing, the conjuror led her to a large mirror, in which she distinctly perceived the appearance of the inside of a church, with a marriage-party arranged near the altar. To her infinite astonishment, she recognised in the shadowy bridegroom no other than her husband, Lord P magical scene thus so strangely displayed was not exactly like a picture; or, if so, it was rather like the live pictures of the stage, than the dead and immovable delineations of the pencil. It admitted of additions to the persons represented, and of a progress of action. As the

The