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choice in the old-fashioned kitchen. A stout, fresh, bare-legged girl set knife and fork at a corner table, while Mrs. Glass unhooked a piece of bacon from the chimney, and the frying-pan soon sent forth its agreeable hissing, to which even the sensitive ear of an actor would soon have become reconciled. Mr. Glass, a short, rubicund man, joined me affably over a trifle of hot toddy, and I quaffed a health out of the caup' or cup-an old wooden beaker out of which (Mr. Glass assured me) Burns drank many a draught in this very kitchen. In an upper room are pointed out two old high-backed chairs, as those which were usually occupied by the originals of Tam and Souter or Shoemaker Johnnie in their friendly boozings. Mr. Glass overflowed with quotations from Burns and reminiscences of his career, but nothing new of any importance came to light.

Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a town surpasses, for honest men and bonnie lasses, is, I must say according to my own slight experience, a somewhat disorderly place. As I turned into The Shanter,' a gaunt bareheaded woman on the causeway hard by, was roaring out drunken curses and snatches of songs to the amusement of a group of neighbours and passers by. A very large town-policeman was seen approaching with slow and dignified steps, and the woman (like her of the weatherglass) disappeared up a narrow entry. As I issued forth from mine inn, a mild starry night invited me to cross the Auld Brig. The narrow lane leading to it with its old rough-cast houses are just as Burns knew them. From the ambush of a dingy corner or gateway issued three or four women, bareheaded and barefooted, and beset the way to the bridge. Having passed over to the dim-lighted open space beyond the water, other prowlers of the tribe made their

appearance; two of them were engaged in mutual vituperation; and before I had reached the New Brig, the sound of shrieks and curses told of a furious personal encounter between two of those female outcasts. This left no agreeable impression on the mind, such as one would fain carry into the realms of sleep. The star of Burns's memory which rose for me sweetly over the tree-tops of Doon, was now clouded over with murky vapours. Wandering, musing alone, by flowery riverbrink-mixing in a low drunken 'spree'-rhyming out of either mood-leaving a jumble of things clean and unclean bound together by the strong tie of his genius-I had to endure a run of unhappy thoughts in connection with the Poet for whose sake I was in Ayr.

Next day I went eleven miles by rail to Manchline, a rather straggling village of small houses, whose industry now is making fancy articles of wood, boxes, paper-knives, &c. Many are adorned with tartan patterns, which are printed on paper, firmly pasted or glued on, and covered with a thick varnish. Most of the village girls of Mauchline are employed thus. It seems a light and pleasant occupation, with a touch of the artistic. In a workshop which I visited, numerous engravings and coloured sketches hung on the walls, to be copied by hand on the more costly boxes; portraits of Garibaldi, Burns, Princess Louise, Empress Eugénie (a star in the ascendant, a star in eclipse), Scottish landscapes and buildings, and so on.

I enquired for Mossgiel of two men in the street, one of whom gave me the requisite direction; while the other, who was like a cattle-dealer, said he had often wished to see Mossgiel too (being only an occasional visitor to Mauchline), and so gave me his company, which was more than I had bargained for. However, he was little

troublesome, and made no remark of any kind whatever concerning Burns. A mile of a flat, rather wide grass-bordered road, brought us to a little copse of trees, through which a footpath, a near-cut, led diagonally across a rough grass field to the farmstead of Mossgiel, a plain, ugly, two-storey, slated dwelling-house, with rude flower-garden inside a wooden fence in the front, and a yard at the back partly surrounded by a range of slated byres and other outhouses. The farmer came to us-a grave elderly man, of few words, who, without any show of either reluctance or readiness, consented to show us round.

When Mr. Robert Chambers was here, he found the place much the same as in the Poet's day-a thatched house, which struck him as more comfortable than the average of such in Ayrshire; and he was thrilled to find himself in the little room where the young peasant had written down and kept in his table-drawer so many worldfamous verses. When Nathaniel Hawthorne visited Mossgiel about the year 1856, he found the whitewashed stone cottage with weeds among its thatch, and altogether with an aspect of poverty and neglect. It was old, and doubtless narrow and uncomfortable; but I suspect further that our friend the farmer was purposely letting it go to the bad faster than need have been, with an eye to the re-edification which he was probably then urging on his landlord, and which has since been effected. About twelve years ago, the cottage and its outhouses were almost rebuilt. The ground-plan and some of the lower courses of the stones still remain, and that is all. Would that the landlord had built his tenant another cottage, and left Burns's Mossgiel on the face of the world! Say it would have cost something to keep and preserve it, a rich gen

tleman might find many worse uses for a few pounds. It is not on every manor that such a cottage stands. To put it in another light, by which even the spectacles of an old Jew stockbroker might recognise something 'practical' here, supposing all visible relics of Burns removed from Ayrshire, what would be the effect on the steamboat and railway traffic of the locality? But Burns's Mossgiel is improved away, and Colonel Alexander, 'by way of compensation,' the farmer said, has sent the original manuscript of the song of 'The Lass o' Ballochmyle' (Miss Wilhemina Alexander), with its accompanying letter, framed and glazed, to hang in the new parlour. This beautiful estate of Ballochmyle,' says Hawthorne, is still held by the family of Alexanders, to whom Burns's song has given renown on cheaper terms than any other set of people ever attained it.' The farmer took down the frame off the wall, and we read the writing. Then my companion, who had hitherto been stolid as one of the oxen in which he probably deals, remarked that he thought he knew the tune, and then struck up 'The Lass o' Ballochmyle,'

Twas eve, the dewy fields were green, in a rather high and not unmusical voice, and went through with it, helped now and again by the old farmer.

The field where the daisy was once turned up by a ploughshare remains, with its old fence, just behind the farmyard; and a slope to the westward is pointed out as the scene of The Mouse.' great number of Americans come to Mossgiel, the farmer told us; and there have been more this year than ever.

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At Mauchline the churchyard of 'The Holy Fair' remains, but the church has been rebuilt. On the site of Poosie Nansie's beggars' lodging-house stands a trim little

'Co-operative Store.' Bonnie Jean's residence, too, has been a good deal altered.

Seeking for some one who could talk of Burns, I found an old tailor, a thin old man, who 'hirpled' down stairs to see me. He minded well the Burns family living at Mossgiel, (i.e. Gilbert and old Mrs. Burns) but his own father in earlier days would not have any correspondence with the Burns's, on account of Robert's character. 'Decent folk did no' think much o' him at that time.' This was all I gathered from the old tailor.

Alloway, Mount Oliphant, Lochlea, Mossgiel, Edinburgh, Ellisland, Dumfries,-Nelly Kilpatrick, Elizabeth Paton, Jean Armour, Highland Mary, Clarinda, Peggy, cum multis aliis, flit before me-the peasant, the rhymester, the exciseman, with his hopes, enthusiasms,

struggles, vices, remorses, disgraces, tædium vite, and death at thirty-seven,-a great original Poet, truthful, simple, cordial, and, at the same time, by instinct, a true poetic artist, using the old Scottish dialect, and raising it once and for ever into a classic tongue; his songs household words over the globe; his fame one of Scotland's dearest possessions!

Burns was in money a poor man (though he had more than ever his father had), but as a poet, wealthy; he inherited the old form of speech and the old songs and song-love of his native land.

Enough for meditation, as I wandered by the sea rippling cheerfully up its sands that stretch westward from Ayr, and embarking again on board the 'Bonnie Doon,' steamed away across the mouth of Clyde, in view of Ailsa Craig,

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THE CONSTITUTION OF SWEDEN.

LTHOUGH the position of Sweden is far inferior to that held by her during the stirring reigns of the great princes of the Wasa line, her diminished influence is due to causes common to most small States in the present day, and not to a real lack of prosperity. Insignificance in the world of politics is not inconsistent with substantial progress; and the welfare and happiness of Sweden have not suffered in the exchange of the alarms of war for the security of peace. By the loss of Finland and Pomerania, scarcely compensated by the union under one crown of the two kingdoms of the Scandinavian Peninsula, the Swedes have been deprived of a base of operations on the Continent at the same time that they have acquired a practical immunity from invasion, except by sea. Russia, the only power so situated as to have the opportunity of marching round the shores of the Gulf of Bothnia, would find the undertaking certainly perilous, perhaps not even practicable; and the danger of Sweden arises rather from the inadequacy of its resources to the construction and maintenance of a fleet sufficiently powerful to protect its extensive sea-board. While other countries have been torn by internal dissensions or exhausted by the ravages of war, Sweden has, since the Napoleonic era, been left in quiet to pursue the path of steady improvement; and now, under the grandson of Bernadotte, enjoys a constitution well adapted to the genius of the people, the material advantages of which may reconcile them to the loss of their former glories. Till the beginning of this century the history of Sweden was simply that of its kings; and brilliant as the narrative of their exploits is, the interest attached to the development of the

VOL. IV.--NO. XXIV. NEW SERIES.

constitution as well as to the improved condition of the inhabitants fully supplies its place. A greater contrast than the present relation of the mass of the people to the government compared with their former want of influence is seldom to be found. Even the Reformation which, in other countries, though initiated by the government, was the occasion of drawing forth warm feelings on either side among the governed, in Sweden was brought about by the fiat of the sovereign amidst the indifference of the laity.

The dawn of a better state of things was almost coeval with the change of dynasty which ultimately led to the accession of Bernadotte. The events which resulted in the seating a French family upon the throne of Charles XII. are too well known to require to be narrated at length. Gustavus IV., by his rashness and imprudence, almost amounting to madness, had brought the country to the verge of ruin, and his obstinacy was such that there seemed little hope of prevailing on him to withdraw from the unequal contest on which he had entered. In these circumstances a revolution was effected, the King was forced to abdicate, and his uncle, the Duke of Sudermania, proclaimed in his stead. The difficulties of the revolution did not terminate there. Charles XIII. was childless, and it was necessary that he should adopt some one as his heir, to whom the crown might descend unquestioned. Accordingly the Prince Augustenburg was, in the first instance, declared Crown Prince, but his sudden death shortly thereafter reopened the whole subject; and it was only after some delay that the succession was offered to Bernadotte, whose treatment of the Swedish prisoners in Pomerania had rendered him generally popular. He accepted the

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offer, and his dynasty seems now to be firmly established, and to have succeeded in attaching to it the sympathies of the people. From these circumstances the present constitution took its first colouring; and though in the course of time many important alterations have been made, its main outlines remain the same. It is contained in four Grundlagar, or fundamental laws, the sanctity of which is guarded by the provision that they shall not be repealed or innovated, except by a decree which has received the assent of two successive Riksdags, in addition to the approval of the sovereign. These statutes are, the Regerings Form passed in 1809, the Successions Ordning in 1810, the Tryckfrihets Forordning in 1812, and the Riksdags Ordning in 1866, and respectively define the Constitution, the Succession to the Throne, the Freedom of the Press, and the powers and mode of election of the Riksdag. The succession to the throne is strictly entailed upon the male descendants of Bernadotte, and all females or males connected through females with the royal house are expressly excluded. Adherence to the pure Protestant faith, as contained in the Augsburg Confession, and accepted and explained by the Upsala Decree of 1593, is a sine qui non, the contravention of which would annul the rights of the reigning family. No prince of the blood-royal can marry without the consent of the King; but if he does, he ipso facto forfeits all claims which he or his children would otherwise have to the crown. In no case, whether with or without the consent of the sovereign, can a prince or princess marry a Swedish subject, except another member of the royal family. A prince, accepting a foreign crown, or becoming entitled to it by marriage, also forfeits his rights, unless he has obtained the sanction of the King and

of the Riksdag. When the heir to the throne is in minority, the nomination of guardians to him is vested in the Riksdag, whose right cannot be defeated by the will of the predeceasing monarch. In the event of the failure of the male heirs of Bernadotte, the right of election to the vacant throne lies with the Riksdag, which must be specially summoned within fifteen days after the throne has become vacant.

The project has sometimes been mooted of the union of the three Scandinavian nations under one sovereign, with the proviso that each should retain its present constitution, and expectations have even been entertained of this result being accomplished through the marriage of Prince George of Denmark to the only child of Carl XV. But apart altogether from the provisions of the Successions Ordning, the Swedish people would deprecate a proposal, the risks of which seem to their eyes more manifest than the advantages. They say, and with much truth, that a union with Denmark would contribute little to their strength; while it could not fail to add to the danger of their being embroiled with Germany. The fear of provoking the animosity either of that country or of Russia is ever present to the minds of Swedish statesmen, and they not unnaturally shrink from the prospect of a conflict in which the combatants would be so unequally matched. No plan, however fair it may appear in the eyes of outsiders, is likely to find favour with them, which would, in an appreciable degree, increase the peril of their position. Whatever may be the consequences to Denmark, the law of self-preservation imperatively demands that they should first consult their own safety. Should Carl XV. die without marrying again and leaving a son to succeed him, the crown will pass to his

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