IMPORTANCE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 367 Since this is so, the importance of making moral philoscphy a matter of reading and study is obvious. The morals of a community will be low and selfish unless they do so. But alas for them, when the philosophy that is received and taught is itself low and selfish, and, instead of raising the character, would persuade men that there is no need of any thing higher; that in fact there is no height above them, and that those generous and enthusiastic souls, who reject its clear, judicious, and prudent precepts, are fanatical and righteous overmuch. We are no advocates for fanaticism or mysticism; but we would assert with all possible distinctness, that there is something to live for that the eye cannot see and the hands cannot touch; that there is a wisdom which Experience cannot teach, that there is a way that is right which Prudence cannot find. If then we must have a philosophy of morals, and we have seen that we must, if not voluntarily, then in spite of ourselves, how unspeakably important is it that we have one that will elevate and purify rather than debase and sensualize our souls! The system, which has been most commonly taught in our community hitherto is Paley's, though we hope, for the good of our countrymen, that few if any of them have received that system entirely. It is a systematic embodyment of selfishness, which everybody knows does not need to be taught. This is precisely the system of Ethics which the worldly, selfish, unregenerate heart teaches. This system came from and tends to worldliness and selfishness. It is congenial to every soul, in which the conscience and the spiritual faculties are not sufficiently developed to counteract its influence, and force its way up to a higher view of things. But it is not every soul that has spontaneity and force enough to do this. There are many persons, also, whose thoughts are too much occupied with the business of their calling in life to allow them to give so much attention to the subject, as to discover the inadequacy and debasing tendency of Paley's system. These men would fulfil the sys moral law; but they are too busy to give much time to a study into its nature and requirements. They therefore take the most commonly received exposition of that law, as a standard of duty, trusting that those who make it their business to study into these matters would never approve and recommend a faulty or inadequate system. If this tem happen to be a low one, the characters which they form upon it will be low too. The Ethical system of any age is the exponent of the state of morals in that age. If the morals were better than the system, the people would repudiate the system; and if the system were much better than the morals, it would be regarded as extravagant, over scrupulous, and be modified or laid aside for another. Hence he that would labor most effectually for the improvement of a people's morals, must also labor to introduce a more perfect theory of morals. But as it is with a people so it is with individuals, every man's theory is the exponent of himself. A man may borrow a theory that is higher or lower than himself, but the dress never suits him; it can never be his. It is too small for him and he bursts it, or it is too large for him, and he is a David in Saul's armor. 66 DO THEY LOVE THERE STILL?" BY MRS. MARY R. PRATT. "Do they love there still? for no voice I hear," Said a maid as she thought of her childhood's home, Of the rural bower, and the streamlet clear, And the flowery fields where she used to roam; "Do they love there still?" in that ancient hall "Do they love there still?" where the young With elastic step trod the mazy dance, And words that the lips might never say Spoke to the heart in the passing glance? And the maiden wept when a stranger tone Told that her friends were gone - all gone! "Do they love there still?" where at early morn "Yes, they love there still!" and the golden chain Or, parting asunder all earthly ties, By Heaven's high mandate to glory rise. And then, O then, in the "better land," Where the good of earth shall together meet, BURNS AND COWPER. BY OLIVER W. B. PEABODY. From child WHAT a history was that of Robert Burns! hood to maturity, he is condemned by hopeless want to labor, till he exhausts a constitution of unusual vigor; his verses are composed and repeated to those around him, while he is following the plough; but the world goes hard with him, and he resolves to seek in another land the prosperous fortune which his own denies. In order to defray the expenses of his voyage, he publishes a collection of his poems: and then, for the first time, bursts upon the world the knowl edge of his power. He goes to Edinburgh; there he is courted by the wise, the brilliant, and the gay; the manly form and flashing eye of the young farmer are the attraction of the glittering saloon, while his conversation is the wonder of the philosophic circle; but these are unprofitable honors; and his country has no higher permanent reward for him, than the post of an exciseman. The principle, once superior to adverse fortune, melts beneath the morning sunbeams of prosperity; his prospects are now shrouded in deeper gloom; he retains virtue enough to lament his errors and infirmities, and too much strength of passion to correct them; instead of submitting to the evils incident to his condition, he exhausts his spirit in the vain attempt to war against them, as the imprisoned eagle dashes himself against the iron bars of his cage; till at length he sinks, in the prime of manhood, into an obscure and almost unhonored grave. Dugald Stewart expressed the opinion, that the intellect of Burns, bold, vigorous and commanding as it was, must BURNS AND COWPER. 371 have rendered him conspicuous, to whatever subject it might be applied. Others have believed that it was even better adapted to other departments of thought than that to which it was devoted; but it is on his poetry alone, that his fame will permanently rest. Much of this can be remembered only with regret, as the effusion of a reckless and ungoverned spirit, repelling by its coarseness more than it attracts by its power. He was formed for higher purposes than to grovel in rude invective, or to amuse a bacchanalian rabble with licentious songs. His heart was naturally a fountain of generous and manly feeling, whose waters gushed out in a sparkling tide, spreading around them a bright circle of living green. The secret of his attraction is his fidelity to nature. It is by this that he touches the most delicate chords of sympathy; and where shall we look for a finer example of this power, than in his Cotter's Saturday Night, so familiar, yet how beautiful! The peasantry of Scotland loved him; for he invested their feelings and sentiments, their joys and sorrows, with dignity and beauty; he redeemed their language from contempt; he made the heart of every true Scot burn within him, as he thought of the hills and valleys of his native land; he guided the footsteps of the pilgrim to the scenes of her traditional glories; he sung those glories in such lofty strains, that the world stood still to listen. 66 When the first shovel-full of earth sounded on his coffin lid," says his biographer, who was present at his funeral, "I looked up and saw tears on many cheeks, where tears were not usual." A just and touching tribute to the bard, who had led the Muses to dwell by the lowly cottage fireside; who had shown, by testimony not soon to be forgotten, that wherever human nature is, there are the elements of poetry. "Did you never observe," said Gray, ('when rocking winds are piping loud") "that pause when the gust is re-collecting itself, and rising on the air in a shrill and plaintive note, like the swell of an Æolian harp? I do assure you there is nothing in the world, so like the voice of a spirit." In his better moments, in the pauses of |