On the twenty-first instant died at Dumfries, after a lingering illness, the celebrated Robert Burns. His poetical compositions, distinguished equally by the force of native humor, by the warmth and tenderness of passion, and by the glowing touches of a descriptive pencil, will remain a lasting monument of the vigor and versatility of a mind, guided only by the light of nature and the inspirations of genius. The public, to whose amusement he so largely contributed, will learn with regret that the last months of his short life were spent in sickness and indigence, and his widow and five infant children, and in the hourly expectation of a sixth, is now left without any resource but what she may hope from the regard due to the memory of her husband.
Apropos to the subject come these remarks in the New York Sun:
It is better to write a little book that is full of heart and brains than a big book that lacks both. Probably there is no writer but Robert Burns who has made such broad and enduring renown as his through a book as small as his. This thought arose while taking a glimpse of a new statue of the bard that is to be erected in a city out West. There is a statue of Burns in our Central Park; there is another up at Albany; there is at least one in Australia, and there are several statues of him in the British Isles. All that he wrote appears as a tiny volume in the latest edition of his works; much of it is in a dialect that is hard to be understood by English-speaking people, and he died in obscurity about one hundred years ago. Yet there are probably as many public statues of him in various parts of the globe as there are of Shakespeare, who wrote voluminously.
Monuments, however, are not Edinburgh’s only attractions, but do not count on seeing the sights there on Sunday. The day is closely and strictly observed. London is surely quiet enough on a Sunday, but it is gayety itself when compared with the capital of Scotland. Not a shop is open; even the drug shops are open only during two hours. Everything is shut as tight as a drum in Edinburgh except the churches, and to these you must either walk or hire a carriage, for not the wheel of an omnibus or car turns on Sunday.
RIGHT REVEREND THE MODERATOR,
JAMES MACGREGOR, D. D.
In September, 1890, I had the privilege of listening to England’s foremost preacher, Rev. C. H. Spurgeon, in his Tabernacle at Newington Butts, in London; and one year later, on Sunday, September 16, 1891, happening to be in Edinburgh, I made it a point to hear the Rev. James Macgregor, the leading light of the Scotch Presbyterian Church.