world, so he had tastes, thoughts, and weaknesses to match.

He loved to walk under a wood to the sound of a winter
tempest; he had a singulartenderness for animals; he carried

a book with him in his pocket when he went abroad, and wore
out in this service two copies of the MAN OF FEELING. With

young people in the field at work he was very long-suffering;
and when his brother Gilbert spoke sharply to them - "O man,

ye are no for young folk," he would say, and give the
defaulter a helping hand and a smile. In the hearts of the

men whom he met, he read as in a book; and, what is yet more
rare, his knowledge of himself equalled his knowledge of

others. There are no truer things said of Burns than what is
to be found in his own letters. Country Don Juan as he was,

he had none of that blind vanity which values itself on what
it is not; he knew his own strength and weakness to a hair:

he took himself boldly for what he was, and, except in
moments of hypochondria, declared himself content.

THE LOVE STORIES.
On the night of Mauchline races, 1785, the young men and

women of the place joined in a penny ball, according to their
custom. In the same set danced Jean Armour, the master-

mason's daughter, and our dark-eyed Don Juan. His dog (not
the immortal Luath, but a successor unknown to fame, CARET

QUIA VATE SACRO), apparentlysensible of some neglect,
followed his master to and fro, to the confusion of the

dancers. Some mirthful comments followed; and Jean heard the
poet say to his partner - or, as I should imagine, laughingly

launch the remark to the company at large - that "he wished
he could get any of the lasses to like him as well as his

dog." Some time after, as the girl was bleaching clothes on
Mauchline green, Robert chanced to go by, still accompanied

by his dog; and the dog, "scouring in long excursion,"
scampered with four black paws across the linen. This

brought the two into conversation; when Jean, with a somewhat
hoydenish advance, inquired if "he had yet got any of the

lasses to like him as well as his dog?"
It is one of the misfortunes of the professional Don Juan

that his honour forbids him to refuse battle; he is in life
like the Roman soldier upon duty, or like the sworn physician

who must attend on all diseases. Burns accepted the
provocation; hungry hope reawakened in his heart; here was a

girl - pretty, simple at least, if not honestlystupid, and
plainly not averse to his attentions: it seemed to him once

more as if love might here be waiting him. Had he but known
the truth! for this facile and empty-headed girl had nothing

more in view than a flirtation; and her heart, from the first
and on to the end of her story, was engaged by another man.

Burns once more commenced the celebrated process of
"battering himself into a warm affection;" and the proofs of

his success are to be found in many verses of the period.
Nor did he succeed with himself only; Jean, with her heart

still elsewhere, succumbed to his fascination, and early in
the next year the natural consequence became manifest. It

was a heavy stroke for this unfortunate couple. They had
trifled with life, and were now rudely reminded of life's

serious issues. Jean awoke to the ruin of her hopes; the
best she had now to expect was marriage with a man who was a

stranger to her dearest thoughts; she might now be glad if
she could get what she would never have chosen. As for

Burns, at the stroke of the calamity he recognised that his
voyage of discovery had led him into a wrong hemisphere -

that he was not, and never had been, really in love with
Jean. Hear him in the pressure of the hour. "Against two

things," he writes, "I am as fixed as fate - staying at home,
and owning her conjugally. The first, by heaven, I will not

do! - the last, by hell, I will never do!" And then he adds,
perhaps already in a more relenting temper: "If you see Jean,

tell her I will meet her, so God help me in my hour of need."
They met accordingly; and Burns, touched with her misery,

came down from these heights of independence, and gave her a
written acknowledgment of marriage. It is the punishment of

Don Juanism to create continually false positions - relations
in life which are wrong in themselves, and which it is

equally wrong to break or to perpetuate. This was such a
case. Worldly Wiseman would have laughed and gone his way;

let us be glad that Burns was better counselled by his heart.
When we discover that we can be no longer true, the next best

is to be kind. I daresay he came away from that interview
not very content, but with a gloriousconscience; and as he

went homeward, he would sing his favourite, "How are Thy
servants blest, O Lord!" Jean, on the other hand, armed with

her "lines," confided her position to the master-mason, her
father, and his wife. Burns and his brother were then in a

fair way to ruin themselves in their farm; the poet was an
execrable match for any well-to-do country lass; and perhaps

old Armour had an inkling of a previousattachment on his
daughter's part. At least, he was not so much incensed by

her slip from virtue as by the marriage which had been
designed to cover it. Of this he would not hear a word.

Jean, who had besought the acknowledgment only to appease her
parents, and not at all from any violentinclination to the

poet, readily gave up the paper for destruction; and all
parties imagined, although wrongly, that the marriage was

thus dissolved. To a proud man like Burns here was a
crushing blow. The concession which had been wrung from his

pity was now publicly thrown back in his teeth. The Armour
family preferred disgrace to his connection. Since the

promise, besides, he had doubtless been busy "battering
himself" back again into his affection for the girl; and the

blow would not only take him in his vanity, but wound him at
the heart.

He relieved himself in verse; but for such a smarting affront
manuscript poetry was insufficient to console him. He must

find a more powerful remedy in good flesh and blood, and
after this discomfiture, set forth again at once upon his

voyage of discovery in quest of love. It is perhaps one of
the most touching things in human nature, as it is a

commonplace of psychology, that when a man has just lost hope
or confidence in one love, he is then most eager to find and

lean upon another. The universe could not be yet exhausted;
there must be hope and love waiting for him somewhere; and

so, with his head down, this poor, insulted poet ran once
more upon his fate. There was an innocent and gentle

Highland nursery-maid at service in a neighbouring family;
and he had soon battered himself and her into a warm

affection and a secret engagement. Jean's marriage lines had
not been destroyed till March 13, 1786; yet all was settled

between Burns and Mary Campbell by Sunday, May 14, when they
met for the last time, and said farewell with rustic

solemnities upon the banks of Ayr. They each wet their hands
in a stream, and, standing one on either bank, held a Bible

between them as they vowed eternal faith. Then they
exchanged Bibles, on one of which Burns, for greater

security, had inscribed texts as to the binding nature of an
oath; and surely, if ceremony can do aught to fix the

wandering affections, here were two people united for life.
Mary came of a superstitious family, so that she perhaps

insisted on these rites; but they must have been eminently to
the taste of Burns at this period; for nothing would seem

superfluous, and no oath great enough, to stay his tottering
constancy.

Events of consequence now happened thickly in the poet's
life. His book was announced; the Armours sought to summon

him at law for the aliment of the child; he lay here and
there in hiding to correct the sheets; he was under an

engagement for Jamaica, where Mary was to join him as his
wife; now, he had "orders within three weeks at latest to

repair aboard the NANCY, Captain Smith;" now his chest was
already on the road to Greenock; and now, in the wild autumn