contriving and assisting by word and by pen, always sagacious, always to the point, whether commissioner or plenipotentiary, he steers the bark of his country to the desired haven. He signs with Jay the preliminary Treaty of Peace with Great Britain and its final ratification, September 3d, 1783. Continuing his duties for awhile, he finally, burdened with infirmities, left Paris in July, 1785, passed a few days in England, and reached Philadelphia in September. A grateful nation, from the highest to the lowest, honored his return. America, too, had yet other duties in store for her representative son. He held for three years the Presidency of Pennsylvania under its old Constitution, and when, at the instigation of Hamilton and Madison, the chiefs of the nation assembled, under the Presidency of Washington, to form the Constitution of the United States, Franklin was there, counselling and suggesting as ever, and pouring oil on the troubled waters of controversy.

The venerable Nestor of three gene. rations; born in the old Puritan time, with the shades of the past hanging about his home; traversing the military period of two wars, from Wolfe to Washington, from Quebec to Yorktown; privileged to partake of the new era of laws and legislation-the old sage, full of years and honors, has now at length finished his work. He has inaugurated a new period in philosophy; he has heralded new principles in politics; he has shown his countrymen how to think and write; he has embalmed the wisdom of his life in immortal compositions; he has

blessed two great cities with associa
tions of pleasure and profit clustering
about his name; he has become the
property of the nation and the world:
there is nothing further but retirement
and death. His daughter, Mrs. Bache,
and his family of grandchildren were
with him in his home in Market Street,
Philadelphia, as the inevitable day
came on. He suffered much from his
disorder, the stone, but was seldom
without his mental employments and
consolations. His homely wisdom and
love of anecdote, it is pleasing to learn,
He
kept him company to the last.
died about eleven o'clock at night,
April 17th, 1790.

Is it necessary to describe the person or draw the character of Franklin? His effigy is at every turn; that figure of average height, full—a little pleth oric, perhaps the broad countenance beaming benevolence from the spectacled grey eye-the whole appearance indicating calmness and confidence. Such in age, as we all choose to look upon him, was the man Franklin. Within, who shall paint, save himself, in the small library of his writings, the mingling of sense and humor, of self-denial and benevolence, the whimsical, sagacious, benevolent mind of Franklin, ever bent upon utility, ever conducting to something agreeable and advantageous; the great inventor, the profound scientific inquirer, the farseeing statesman; masking his worth by his modesty; falling short, perhaps, of the loftiest heights of philosophy, but firmly treading the path of common life, sheltering its nakedness, and ministering in a thousand ways to its comforts and pleasures.

ROBERT BURNS.

ROBERT BURNS belonged by severe storm, and the building so shat

inburo to

birth to the peasant or small farmer class of Scotland, his father, William Burness, as he wrote the name, the son of a farmer in Kincardineshire, having been driven by family misfor tunes in his youth, on the breaking up of his home, to seek employment as a gardener in the neighborhood of Edwhence he travelled to Ayrshire, and after some employment in gardening took a lease of seven acres of land hard by the town of Ayr, with the intention of carrying on the business of a nurseryman. He married in December, 1757, Agnes Brown, the daughter of a Carrick farmer, whom he brought to res

tered that the mother was compelled to flee with her son through the inclemency of the weather and take refuge in a neighbor's house.

The father of the poet was a man of integrity and strength of character, and had that trait of the best Scottish peasantry, which has done so much to raise them in the estimation of the world, a high regard for the value of education to his children. He is described by his son as possessed, from his many wanderings and sojournings, of "a pretty large quantity of observation and experience." He had met with few, he says, "who understood reside in a humble clay men, their manners and their ways cottage which he had built with his equal to him," and that he was inown hand on his land. On that spot, debted to him "for most of his little The world within a short distance of two famous pretensions to wisdom." objects celebrated in his writings, the bridge of Doon and Kirk Alloway, the poet, Robert Burns, was born, on the 25th of January, 1759. The cottage, which now presents a pretty stable appearance to the observation of literary pilgrims, at the time of Robert's birth was but a crude attempt at architecture, for a few nights after that event, the gable was driven out in a

know something of the man and of his
earnest religious feelings from that
genial picture of a Scottish peasant's
household, "The Cotter's Saturday
Night," in which-

Kneeling down to heaven's eternal King,
The saint, the father and the husband prays.

The poem was inspired by the author's
vivid impressions of the simple ser-

vices daily before him at home. It is
customary to refer the abilities of men
of genius to qualities derived from their
mothers, perhaps without sufficient ex-
amination of the claims of their fathers:
but Burns certainly owed much to his
father; while he was no doubt also
greatly indebted to his mother, the
worthy, patient, affectionate wife who
relieved the hours of wearisome toil
by chaunting the old ballads of Scot-
land, one of which in particular as it
came from her lips, "The Life and Age
of Man," made a great impression upon
Robert, and is said to have left its literary excellence which
traces in his well-known lyric, "Man
was made to Mourn."

At the time of the birth of the poet, his father, not having succeeded in establishing the nursery which he proposed, engaged as gardener and overseer to a gentleman who had a small estate in the neighborhood. He continued in this position for six or seven years and acquitted himself so well in it that at the expiration of that time Mr. Ferguson, his employer, leas ed him a farm of about seventy acres called Mount Oliphant, assisting him with a loan for stocking it, and the next twelve years of his life were passed in laborious and unprofitable efforts in its cultivation. The land was of the poorest quality, involving the father with his increasing family in a hard fight for existence-a contest which he maintained with heroic resolution that he might assist his children at home. In 1777 this barren farm was left for another named Lochlea, with a better soil, some ten miles distant; but difficulties arose respecting the lease, the elder Burns was harassed by a law

suit growing out of them, and in this state of perplexity and despair, ruined in fortune, died a broken-hearted man in 1784. The period of these strug gles, twenty-five years, passed in hardship and privation, fully developed the character of Robert Burns, one of Scotland's greatest poets. It is a mistake to rank him at any time of his life with rude, uneducated peasant poets. He had humble fortunes, want, penury, involving coarse and hard labor, to contend with; it was a wonderful thing for him to arise to the height of he attained, requiring that species of inspiration which is called genius; but from his earliest years he was never without some good influences of education and even of literature and learning. In his sixth year he was sent to a school in the vicinity of his birth-place at Alloway Miln, kept by a teacher named Campbell, and when this person left to take charge of the workhouse at Ayr, William Burns, Robert's father, with several of his neighbors, engaged a new instructor to take his place. This was John Murdoch, a man worthy of honorable mention in the biography of Burns. He was of an amiable disposition, skilled in grammatical studies, with an excellent knowledge of French, indeed a proficient in that language, having taught it in France and being the author of one or two books on its pronunciation and orthography. After two or three years Murdoch left Ayrshire for another part of the country.

In the absence of the teacher the father supplied his place. When the labors of the day were over, he instruc