Ignatius Sancho to Mr. Sterne-Appeal in behalf of his Race.

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very much, good sir, am I (amongst millions) indebted to you for the character of your amiable uncle Toby? I declare I would walk ten miles in the dog-days to shake hands with the honest corporal. Your sermons have touched me to the heart, and I hope have amended it; which brings me to the point. In your tenth discourse is this very affecting passage : "Consider how great a part of our species, in all ages down to this, have been trod under the feet of cruel and capricious tyrants, who would neither hear their cries nor pity their distresses! Consider slavery, what it is; how bitter a draught, and how many millions are made to drink of it! Of all my favorite authors, not one has drawn a tear in favor of my miserable black brethren, excepting yourself and the humane author of Sir Geo. Ellison. I think you will forgive me, I am sure you will applaud me, for beseeching you to give one half-hour's attention to slavery, as it is this day practised in our West Indies. That subject, handled in your striking manner, would ease the yoke perhaps of many; but if only of one, gracious God! what a feast to a benevolent heart! and sure I am you are an epicurean in acts of charity. You, who are universally read, and as universally admired, you could not fail. Dear Sir, think in me you behold the uplifted hands of thousands of my brother Moors. Grief (you pathetically observe) is eloquent; figure to yourself their attitudes, hear their supplicating addresses! Alas! you cannot refuse. Humanity must comply; in which hope I beg permission to subscribe myself, Reverend sir,

I. S.

Mr. Sterne to Ignatius Sancho-Humanity knows no shades of Color.

XXIII.-HUMANITY KNOWS NO SHADES OF COLOR.

Mr. Sterne to Ignatius Sancho.

COXWOULD, July 27th, 1776.

There is a strange coincidence, Sancho, in the little events as well as in the great ones of this world; for I had been writing a tender tale of the sorrows of a friendless poor negro girl, and my eyes had scarce done smarting with it, when your letter of recommendation, in behalf of so many of her brethren and sisters, came to me. But why her brethren? or yours, Sancho, any more than mine? It is by the finest tints and most insensible gradations that nature descends from the fairest face about St. James's to the sootiest complexion in Africa. At which tint of these is it that the ties of blood are to cease? and how many shades must we descend lower still in the scale, ere mercy is to vanish with them? But 'tis no uncommon thing, my good Sanother half of it like For my own part,

cho, for one-half of the world to use the brutes, and then endeavor to make them so. I never look westward (when I am in a pensive mood at least) but I think of the burdens which our brothers and sisters are there carrying; and, could I ease their shoulders from one ounce of them, I declare I would set out this hour upon a pilgrimage to Mecca for their sakes; which, by the bye, Sancho, exceeds your walk of ten miles in about the same proportion that a visit of humanity should one of mere form. However, if you meant my uncle Toby, more, he is your debtor. If I can weave the tale I have wrote into the work I am about, 'tis at the service of the afflicted; and a much greater matter, for, in serious truth, it casts a sad shade upon the world, that so great a part of it are, and have been, so long bound in chains of darkness and in

Robert Burns to Mrs. Dunlop—Description of his Wife.

chains of misery; and I cannot but both respect and felicitate you, that, by so much laudable diligence, you have broke the one, and that, by falling into the hands of so good and merciful a family, Providence has rescued you from the other.

And so, good-hearted Sancho, adieu! and believe me I will not forget your letter.

Yours,

L. STERNE.

*

XXIV. DESCRIPTION OF HIS WIFE.

*

Robert Burns to Mrs. Dunlop.

ELLISLAND, June 13th, 1788.

Your surmise, madam, is just. I am, indeed, a husband. * To jealousy and infidelity I am an equal stranger. My preservation from the first is the most thorough consciousness of her sentiments of honor, and of her attachment to me; my antidote against the last is my long and deeprooted affection for her.

In housewife matters, of aptness to learn, and activity to execute, she is eminently mistress; and during my absence in Nithsdale, she is regularly and constantly apprentice to my mother and sisters in their dairy and other rural business.

The muses must not be offended when I tell them the concerns of my wife and family will, in my mind, always take the pas; but I assure them their ladyships will ever come next in place.

You are right that a bachelor state would have insured me more friends; but, from a cause you will easily guess, conscious peace in the enjoyment of my own mind, and unmistrusting confidence in approaching my God, would seldom have been of the number.

Robert Burns to Francis Grose-Legends of Alloway Kirk.

I found a once much loved, and still much loved female, literally and truly, cast out to the mercy of the naked elements; but I enabled her to purchase a shelter; there is no sporting with a fellow-creature's happiness or misery.

The most placid good nature, and sweetness of disposition; a warm heart, gratefully devoted with all its powers to love me; vigorous health, and sprightly cheerfulness, set off to the best advantage by a more than commonly handsome figure; these, I think, in a woman, may make a good wife, though she should have never read a page but the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, nor have danced in a brighter assembly than a penny-pay wedding.

R. B.

XXV.—-LEGENDS OF ALLOWAY KIRK.

Robert Burns to Francis Grose.

DUMFRIES, 1792.

Among the many witch stories I have heard relating to Alloway Kirk, I distinctly remember only two or three.

Upon a stormy night, amid whistling squalls of wind and bitter blasts of hail-in short, on such a night as the devil would choose to take the air in-a farmer, or farmer's servant, was plodding and plashing homeward, with his plough irons on his shoulder, having been getting some repairs on them at a neighboring smithy. His way lay by the Kirk of Alloway, and being rather on the anxious lookout in approaching a place so well known to be a favorite haunt of the devil, and the devil's friends and emissaries, he was struck aghast by discovering through the horrors of the storm and stormy night a light, which, on his nearer approach, plainly showed itself to proceed from the haunted edifice. Whether he had been fortified from above, on

Robert Burns to Francis Grose-Legends of Alloway Kirk.

his devout supplication, as is customary with people when they suspect the immediate presence of Satan, or whether, according to another custom, he had got courageously drunk at the smithy, I will not pretend to determine; but so it was that he ventured to go up to, nay into, the very kirk. As luck would have it, his temerity came off unpunished.

The members of the infernal junto were all out on some midnight business or other, and he saw nothing but a kind of kettle or cauldron, depending from the roof over the fire, simmering some heads of unchristened children, limbs of executed malefactors, etc., for the business of the night. It was in for a penny in for a pound, with the honest ploughman; so, without ceremony, he unhooked the cauldron from off the fire, and pouring out the damnable ingredients, inverted it on his head, and carried it fairly home, where it remained long in the family, a living evidence of the truth of the story.

Another story, which I can prove to be equally authentic, was as follows:

On a market day, in the town of Ayr, a farmer from Carrick, and consequently whose way lay by the very gate of Alloway Kirkyard, in order to cross the river Doon at the old bridge, which is about two or three hundred yards farther on than the said gate, had been detained by his business, till by the time he reached Alloway it was the wizard hour, between night and morning.

Though he was terrified with a blaze streaming from the kirk, yet it is a well-known fact that to turn back upon these occasions is running by far the greatest risk of mischief; he prudently advanced on his road. When he had reached the gate of the kirkyard he was surprised and entertained through the ribs