long after, early on a cold and dark spring morning, Mr. Nelson's servant arrived with the expected summons for Horatio to join his ship. The parting from his brother William, who had been so long his playmate, was a painful effort. He accompanied his father to London. The Raisonnable was lying in the Medway. He was put into the Chatham stage, and on its arrival was set down with the rest of the passengers, and left to find his way on board as he could. After wandering about in the cold without being able to reach the ship, an officer, observing the forlorn appearance of the boy, questioned him; and happening to be acquainted with his uncle, took him home and gave him some refreshment. When he got on board, Captain Suckling was not in the ship, nor had any person been apprised of the boy's coming. He paced the deck the whole remainder of the day, without being noticed by any one; and it was not till the second day that somebody, as he expressed it, "took compassion on him." Mr. Southey feelingly adds:

"The pain which is felt when we are first transplanted from our native soil, when the living branch is cut from the parent tree, is one of the most poignant griefs which we have to endure through life. There are after-griefs which wound more deeply, which leave behind them scars never to be effaced, which bruise the spirit, and sometimes break the heart but never do we feel so keenly the want of love, the necessity of being loved, and the sense of utter desertion, as when we first leave the haven of home, and are, as it were, pushed off upon the stream of life. Added to these feelings, the sea-boy has to endure physical hardships, and the privation of every comfort, even of sleep. Nelson had a feeble body and an affectionate heart, and he remembered through life his first days of wretchedness in the service.

In Arthur's Life of the hero, we have Nelson's own account of his birth and early life: "I was born Sept. 29th, 1758, in the parsonage-house; was sent to the High-school at Norwich, and afterward removed to Northway, from whence, on the disturbance with Spain relative to the Falkland Islands, I went to sea with my uncle, Captain Maurice Suckling, in the Raisonnable, of 64 guns; but the business with Spain being accommodated, I was sent in a West India ship belonging to the house of Hibbert Purrier Horton, with Mr. John Rathbone, who had formerly been in the navy, in the Dreadnought, with Captain Suckling. From this voyage I returned to the Triumph, at Chatham, in July, 1772; and if I did not improve in my education, I returned a practical seaman, with a horror of the Royal Navy, and with a saying, then constant with the seamen--'Aft the most honor, forward the better man."

Such was the start in life of one of the greatest heroes in the annals of British history, or perhaps in the annals of the world, whose great deeds are so numerous, splendid, and important as to "confound the biographer with excess of light," and whose death was felt in England as a public calamity; "yet," says

Southey, "he cannot be said to have fallen prematurely whose work was done, or ought he to be lamented who died so full of honors, and at the height of human fame."

66

ROBERT BURNS, THE AYRSHIRE PLOWMAN.”

Robert Burns, whom his countrymen delight to honor as the Shakspeare of Scotland, was born in 1759, in the parish of Alloway, near Ayr. His father was a poor farmer, who gave his son what education he could afford. Burns tells us that "though it cost the schoolmaster some thrashings," he made an excellent English scholar; and by the time he was ten or eleven years of age, he was a critic in substantives, verbs, and particles. In his infant and boyish days, too, he was much with an old woman who resided in the family, and was remarkable for her ignorance, credulity, and superstition. She had the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning demons, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of poetry, but had so strong an effect on Burns's imagination, that after he had grown to manhood, in his nocturnal rambles he sometimes kept a sharp look-out in suspicious places, and it often took an effort of philosophy to shake off these idle terrors.* He says: "The earliest composition that I recollect taking pleasure in, was The Vision of Mirza, and a hymn of Addison's, beginning, 'How are thy servants blest, O Lord!' I particularly remember one stanza, which was music to my boyish ear:

"For though on dreadful whirls we hung
High on the broken wave.'

I met with these pieces in Mason's English Collection, one of my school-books. The two first books I ever read in private, and which gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read since, were The Life of Hannibal, and The History of Sir William Wallace. Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn, that I used to strut in rapture up and down after the recruiting drum and bagpipe, and wish myself tall enough to be a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest.”

While Burns lived on his father's little farm, he tells us that he was, perhaps, the most ungainly, awkward boy in the parish. He continues:

*See the Life and Works of Robert Burns. Library Edition. Edited by Robert Chambers.

"What I knew of ancient story was gathered from Salmon's and Guthrie's Geographical Grammars; and the ideas I formed of modern manners, literature, and criticism, I got from the Spectator. These, with Pope's Works, some Plays of Shakspeare, Tull and Dickson on Agriculture, the Pantheon, Locke On the Human Understanding, Stackhouse's History of the Bible, Justice's British Gardener's Directory, Bayle's Lectures, Allan Ramsay's Works, Taylor's Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin, A Select Collection of English Songs, and Hervey's Meditations, had formed the whole of my reading. The Collection of Songs was my vade-mecum. I pored over them driving my cart, or walking to labor, song by song, verse by verse-carefully noting the true, tender, and sublime, from affectation and fustian. I am convinced I owe to this practice much of my critic craft, such as it is."

Burns's father was a man of uncommon intelligence for his station in life, and was anxious that his children should have the best education which their circumstances admitted of. Robert was, therefore, sent in his sixth year to a little school at Alloway Mill, about a mile from their cottage: not long after, his father took a lead in establishing a young teacher, named John Murdoch, in a humble temple of learning, nearer hand, and there Robert and his younger brother, Gilbert, attended for some time. "With him," says Gilbert, "we learned to read English tolerably well, and to write a little. He taught us, too, the English Grammar. I was too young to profit much from his lessons in grammar, but Robert made some proficiency in it; a circumstance of considerable weight in the unfolding of his genius and character, as he soon became remarkable for the fluency and correctness of his expression, and read the few books that came in his way with much pleasure and improvement; for even then he was a reader when he could get a book." Gilbert next mentions that The Life of Wallace, which Robert Burns refers to, "he borrowed from the blacksmith who shod our horses."

The poet was about seven years of age when (1766) his father left the clay bigging at Alloway, and settled in the small upland farm at Mount Oliphant, about two miles distant. He and his younger brother continued to attend Mr. Murdoch's school for two years longer, when it was broken up. Murdoch took his leave of the boys, and brought, as a present and memorial, a small compendium of English Grammar, and the tragedy of Titus Andronicus; he began to read the play aloud, but so shocked was the party at some of its incidents, that Robert declared if the play were left, he would burn it; and Murdoch left the comedy of the School for Love in its place.

The father now instructed his two sons, and other children : there were no boys of their own age in the neighborhood, and their father was almost their only companion: he conversed with them as though they were men; he taught them from Salmon's Geographical Grammar the situation and history of the different countries of the world; and from a book-society in Ayr he procured Durham's Physico and Astro Theology, and Ray's Wisdom

of God in the Creation, to give his sons some idea of astronomy and natural history. Robert read all these books with an avidity and industry scarcely to be equaled. From Stackhouse's History of the Bible, then lately published in Kilmarnock, Robert collected a competent knowledge of ancient history; "for," says his brother, "no book was so voluminous as to slacken his industry, or so antiquated as to damp his researches." About this time a relative inquired at a bookseller's shop in Ayr for a book to teach Robert to write letters, when, instead of the Complete Letter Writer, he got by mistake a small collection of letters by the most eminent writers, with a few sensible directions for attaining an easy epistolary style, which book proved to Burns of the greatest consequence.

Burns was about thirteen or fourteen, when, his father regretting that he and his brother wrote so ill, to remedy this defect sent them to the parish school of Dalrymple, between two and three miles distant, the nearest to them. Murdoch, the boys' former master, now settled in Ayr, as a teacher of the English language: he sent them Pope's Works, and some other poetry, the first they had an opportunity of reading, except that in the English Collection, and in the Edinburgh Magazine for 1772. Robert was now sent to Ayr, "to revise his English grammar with his former teacher," but he was shortly obliged to return to assist in the harvest. He then learned surveying at the parish school of Kirkoswald. He had learned French of Murdoch, and could soon read and understand any French author in prose. He then attempted to learn Latin, but soon gave it up. Mrs. Paterson, of Ayr, now lent the boys the Spectator, Pope's Translation of Homer, and several other books that were of use to them.

Thus, although Robert Burns was the child of poverty and toil, there were fortunate circumstances in his position: his parents were excellent persons; his father exerted himself as his instructor, and, cottager as he was, contrived to have something like the benefits of private tuition for his two eldest sons; and the young poet became, comparatively speaking, a well-educated man. His father had remarked, from a very early period, the bright intellect of his elder-born in particular, saying to his wife, "Whoever may live to see it, something extraordinary will come from that boy!”

It was not until his twenty-third year that Burns's reading was enlarged by the addition of Thomson, Shenstone, Sterne, and Mackenzie. Other standard works soon followed. The great advantage of his learning was, that what books he had, he read and studied thoroughly-his attention was not distracted by a

multitude of volumes, and his mind grew up with original and robust vigor; and in the veriest shades of obscurity, he toiled, when a mere youth, to support his virtuous parents and their household; yet all this time he grasped at every opportunity of acquiring knowledge from men and books.

Burns, says Mr. Carruthers, came as a potent auxiliary or fellow-worker with Cowper, in bringing poetry into the channels of truth and nature. There were only two years between the Task, and the Cotter's Saturday Night. No poetry was ever more instantaneously or universally popular among a people than that of Burns in Scotland. There was the humor of Smollett, the pathos and tenderness of Sterne or Richardson, the real life of Fielding, and the description of Thomson—all united in the delineations of Scottish manners and scenery by the Ayrshire plowman. His master-piece is Tam o'Shanter: it was so considered by himself, and the judgment has been confirmed by Campbell, Wilson, Montgomery, and by almost every critic.

RICHARD PORSON, "THE NORFOLK BOY," AT HAPPEsburgh, ETON, AND CAMBRIDGE.

Richard Porson was born in 1759, at East Ruston, near North Walsham, Norfolk: he was the eldest son of the parish-clerk of the place, who was a worsted-weaver, and is described as clever in his way. Porson's mother was the daughter of a shoemaker: she was shrewd and lively, and had considerable literary taste, being familiar with Shakspeare and other standard English authors, from her access to a library in a gentleman's house where she lived servant.

Porson, when a boy, was put to the loom at once, and probably helped his mother in the corn-fields in harvest-time. He was next sent to the neighboring school of Happesburgh, the master of which was a good Latin scholar. When the father took his son to school, he said to the master: "I have brought my boy Richard to you, and just want him to make (sic) his own name, and then I shall take him into the loom." The master, however, took great pains with the boy, making him at night repeat the lessons he had learnt during the day, aud thus, probably, laid the foundation of Porson's unrivaled memory. He had previously been for a short time at a school at Bacton, but was unable to bear the rough treatment of the boys. At Happesburgh, he learnt rapidly-especially arithmetic, of which he continued all his life very fond; and his penmanship was very skillful. His memory was wonderful: he would repeat a lesson which he had learnt one or two years before, and had never seen