etical scenery of his own country. Many of her rivers and mountains, formerly unknown to the mufe, are now confecrated by his immortal verfe. The Doon, the Lugar, the Ayr, the Nith, and the Cluden-will in future, like the Yarrow, the Tweed, and the Tay, be confidered as claffical streams, and their borders will be trod with new and fuperior emotions. "The greater part of the fongs of Burns were written after he removed into the county of Dumfries. Influenced perhaps by habits formed in early life, he ufually compofed while walking in the open air. When engaged in writing thefe fongs, his favourite walks were on the banks of the Nith or of the Cluden, particularly near the ruins. of Lincluden Abbey; and this beautiful fcenery he has very happily defcribed under various apects, as it appears during the foftnefs and ferenity of evening, and during the ftilnefs and folemnity of the moon-light night. There is no fpecies of poetry, the productions of the drama not excepted, fo much calculated to influence the morals, as well as the happiness of a people, as thofe popular verfes which are affociated with national airs, and which, being learnt in the years of infancy, make a deep impreffion on the heart, before the evolution of the powers of the understanding. The compotions of Burns of this kind now prefented in a collected form to the world, make a most important addition to the popular fongs of his nation. Like all his other writings, they exhibit independence of fentiment; they are peculiarly calculated to increase those ties which bind generous hearts to their native foil, and to the domeftic circle of their infancy; and to che rifh those fenfibilities which, under due reftriction, form the pureft happiness of our nature. If in his unguarded moments he composed fome fongs on which this praise cannot be bestowed, let us hope that they will speedily be forgotten. In feveral inftances, where Scottish airs were allied to words objectionable in point of delicacy, Burns has fubftituted others of a purer character. On fuch occafions, without changing the subject, he has changed the fentiments. A proof of this may be feen in the air, John Ander fon my Joe, which is now united to words that breathe a ftrain of conjugal tenderness, that is as highly moral as it is exquifitely affecting. "Few circumstances could afford a more ftriking proof of the ftrength of Burns' genius than the general circulation of his poems in England, notwithstanding the dialect in which the greater part are written, and which might be fuppofol to render them here uncouth or obfcure. In fome inftances he has ufed this dialect on subjects of a fublime nature; but in general he confines it to fentiments or defcription of a tender or humorous kind; and where he rifes into elevation of thought, he affumes a purer English ftyle. The fingular faculty he poffeffed of mingling in the fame-poem humorous fentiments and defcriptions, with imagery of a fublime and terrific nature, enabled him to ufe this variety of dialect on fome occafions with striking effect. His poem of Tam o'Shanter affords an inftance of this. There he paffes from a scene of the lowest humour, to fituations of the most awful and terrible kind. He is a musician that runs from the lowest to the higheft of his keys, and the ufe ufe of the Scottish dialect enables him to add two additional notes to the bottom of his fcale. "Great efforts have been made by the inhabitants of Scotland, of the fuperior ranks, to approximate in their speech to the pure English standard; and this has made it difficult to write in the Scottish diale& without exciting in them fome feel ings of difguft, which in England are fcarcely felt. An Englifhman, who understands the meaning of the Scottish words, is not offended, nay on certain fubjects he is perhaps pleased with the ruftic dialect, as he may be with the Doric Greek of Theocritus. "But a Scotchman inhabiting his own country, if a man of education, and more efpecially if a literary character, has banished fuch words from his writings, and has attempted to banish them from his fpeech; and being accustomed to hear them from the vulgar daily, does not easily admit of their ufe in poetry, which requires a ftyle elevated and ornamental. A dislike of this kind is, however, accidental, not natural. It is of the fpecies of difguft which we feel at feeing a female of high birth in the drefs of a ruftic; which, if he be really young and beautiful, a little habit will enable us to overcome. A lady who affumes fuch a drefs puts her beauty indeed to a feverer trial. She rejects-fhe indeed oppofes the influence of fabion; the poffibly abandons the grace of elegant and flowing drapery; but her native charms remain, the more ftriking perhaps because the lefs adorned; and to thefe fhe trufts for fixing her empire on thofe affections over which fashion has no fway. If fe fucceeds, a new affociation arifes. The drefs of the beautiful ruftic becomes itself beautiful, and establishes a new fashion for the young and the gay. And when in after ages the contemplative obferver fhall view her picture in the gallery that contains the portraits of the beauties of fucceffive centuries, each in the dress of her refpective day, her drapery will not deviate more than that of her rivals from the ftandard of his taste, an! he will give the palm to her who excels in the lineaments of nature. "Burns wrote profeffedly for the peafantry of his country, and by them their native dialect is univerfally relifhed. To a numerous clafs of the natives of Scotland of another defcription it may alfo be confidered as attractive in ' a different point of view. Efranged from their native foil, and fpread over foreign lands, the idiom of their country unites with the fentiments and the defcriptions on which it is employed, to recall to their minds the interefting fcenes of infancy and youth-to awaken many pleafing, many tender recollections. Literary men, refiding at Edinburgh or Aberdeen, cannot judge on this point for one hundred and fifty thoufand of their expatriated countrymen*. "Thefe obfervations are excited by fome remarks of refpectable correfpondents of the defcription alluded to. This calculation of the number of Scotchmen living out of Scotland is not altogether arbitrary, and it is probably below the truth. It is in iome degree founded on the proportion between the number of the fexes in Scotland, as it appears from the invaluable Statiflies of Sir John Sinclair.--For Scotchmen of this defcription more particularly, Burns feems to have written his fong beginning Their groves o' fweet myrtle, a beautiful ftrain, which, it may be confidently predicted, will be fung with equal or fuperior interest on the banks of the Ganges or of the Miffilippi, as on those of the Tay or the Tweed." To "To the ufe of the Scottish dialect in one fpecies of poetry, the compofition of fongs, the tafte of the public has been for fome time reconciled. The dialect in queftion excels, as has already been obferved, in the copioufnefs and exactness of its terms for natural objects; and in paftoral or rural fongs it gives a Doric fimplicity, which is very generally approved. Neither does the regret feem well founded which fome perfons of tafte have expreffed, that Burns ufed this dialect in fo many other of his compofitions. His declared purpose was to paint the manners of ruftic life among his humble compeers;' and it is not eafy to conceive, that this could have been done with equal humour and effect, if he had not adopted their idiom. There are fome indeed who will think the fubject too low for poetry. Perfons of this fickly tafte will find their delicacies confulted in many a polite and learned author; let them not feek for gratification in the rough and vigorous lines, in the unbridled humour, or in the overpowering fenfibility of this bard of nature. "To determine the comparative merit of Burns would be no eafy tafk. Many perfons afterwards diftinguifhed in literature have been born in as humble a fituation of life; but it would be difficult to find any other, who, while earning his fubfiftence by daily labour, has written verfes which have attracted and retained univerfal attention, and which are like ly to give the author a permanent and diftinguished place among the followers of the mufes. If he is deficient in grace, he is diftinguifhed for ease, as well as energy; and these are indications of the higher order of genius. The father of epic poetry exhibits one of his heroes as excelling in ftrength, another in fwiftness-to form his perfect warrior, these attributes are combined. Every fpecies of intellectual fuperiority admits perhaps of a fimilar arrangement. One writer excels in force; another in eafe-he is fuperior to them both, in whom these qualities are united. Of Homer himself it may be faid, that, like his own Achilles, he furpaffes his competitors in mobility as well as strength. "The force of Burns lay in the powers of his understanding and in the fenfibility of his heart; and thefe will be found to infufe the living principle into all the works of genius which feem destined to immortality. His fenfibility had an uncommon range. He was alive to every species of emotion. He is one of the few pets that can be mentioned, who have at once excelled in humour, in tenderness, and in fublimity; a praife unknown to the ancients, and which in modern times is only due to Ariofto, to Shakespear, and perhaps to Voltaire. To compare the writings of this Scottish peafant with the works of these giants in literature might appear prefumptuous; yet it may be afferted, that he has difplayed the foot of Hercules. How near he might have approached them by proper culture, with lengthened years, and under happier autpices, it is not for us to calculate. But while we run over the melancholy ftory of his life, it is impoffible not to heave a figh at the afperity of his fortune; and as we furvey the records of his mind, it is eafy to fee, that out of fuch materials have been reared the fairest and the most durable of the monuments of genius." PHILOSOPHICAL PAPERS. ACCOUNT of the PETROLEUM WELLS in the BURMHA DOMINIONS. [Extracted from a JOURNAL in the Sixth Volume of the ASIATIC RESEARCHES.] "Thermometer at fun rife 52°, at noon 74°, in the evening 69°; general courfe of the river north 20° weft, main breadth from one to one mile and a half, current about two miles and a half per hour. "Eaft bank, high, rugged, barren downs, with precipitous cliffs towards the river; of free ftone intermixed with ftrata of quartz, martial ore and red ochre; beach moderately fhelving, covered with fragments of quartz, filex, petrifactions and red ochre, and with rocky points projecting from it into the river. "Wettern bank, a range of low fandy iflands covered with luxu riant growth of reeds. Thefe at prefent narrow the ftream to three quarters, and in fome places to half a mile, but are overflowed in the rains; the main bank rather low and fandy, fubject to be overflowed; its whole breadth about three miles to the foot of a range of low woody hills, which, in point of vegetation, form an agreeable contralt to the eaftern fhore; thefe hills are bounded to the weftward, at the distance of about twenty miles from the river, by an extensive range of high mountains, clothed with wood to their fummits. "At half past ten A. M. came to the lower town of Rainanghong, a temple in it of the antique Hindoo ftyle of building. "At noon came to the centre town of Rainanghong (literally the town through which flows a river of earth oil), fituated on the eaft bank of the river, in latitude 20o 26' north, and longitude 94' 45' 54" east of Greenwich. Halted to examine the wells of Petroleum. "The town has but a mean appearance, and feveral of its teinples, of which there are great numbers, falling to ruins; the inhabitants however are well dreffed, many of them with gold spiral ear ornaments, and are undoubtedly rich, from the great profit they derive from their oil wells, as will be feen below. "At two P. M. I fet off from my boat, accompanied by the methaghee or zemindar of the diftrict, and feveral of the merchant pro proprietors, to view the wells. Our road led to the E. N. E. through dry beds of loofe fand in the water courses, and over rugged arid downs and hillocks of the fame foil as described above; the growth on them confifting of fcattered plants of euphorbium, the caffia tree, which yields the terra japonica, commonly called cutch or cut, and used throughout India as a component part of a beera of paun, alfo a very durable timber for lining the oil wells, and lastly the hardy biar or wild plum common in Hindoftan. "The sky was cloudlefs, fo that the fun fhone on us with undiminifhed force; and being alfo unwell, I walked flowly; and as we were an hour walking to the wells, I therefore conclude they are about three miles diftant from the river; those we faw are scattered irregularly about the downs, at no great diftance from each other, fome perhaps not more than thirty or forty yards. At this particular place we were informed there are one hundred and eighty wells; four or five miles to the N. E. three hundred and forty more. "In making a well, the hill is cut down fo as to form a fquare table of fourteen or twenty feet for the crown of the well, and from this table a road is formed by fcraping away an inclined plane for the drawers to defcend, in raifing the excavated earth from the well, and fubfequently the oil. The fhaft is funk of a fquare form, and lined, as the miner proceeds, with fquares of caffia-wood ftaves; thefe ftaves are about fix feet long, fix inches broad, and two thick; are rudely jointed and pinned at right angles to each other, forming a fquare frame, about four and a half feet in the clear for the upper moft ones, but more contracted below. When the miner has pierced fix or more feet of the fhaft, à feries of these fquare frames are piled on each other, and regularly added to at top; the whole gradually finking, as he deepens the fhaft, and fecuring him againft the falling-in of the fides. "The foil, or ftrata to be pierced, is nearly fuch as I have defcribed the cliffs to be on the margin of the river; that is, first, a light fandy loam intermixed with fragments of quartz, filex, &c.; fecond, a friable fand-ftone, eafily wrought, with thin horizontal strata of a concrete of martial ore, talc and indurated argill (the talc has this fingularity, it is denticulated, its lamina being perpendicular to the horizontal lamina of the argill on which it is feated) at from ten or fifteen feet from the surface, and from each other, as there are feveral of these veins in the great body of free ftone. Thirdly, at feventy cubits, more or lefs, from the furface, and immediately below the free ftone, a pale blue argillaceous earth (fchiftus) impregnated with the petroleum, and finelling ftrongly of it. This they fay is very difficult to work, and grows harder as they get deeper, ending in fchift or flate, fuch as found covering veins of coal in Europe, &c. Below this fchift, at the depth of about 130 cubits, is coal. I procured fome, intermixed with fulphur and pyrites, which had been taken from a well deepened a few days before my arrival, but deemed amongst them a rarity, the oil in general flowing at a smaller depth. They were piercing a new well when I was there, had got to the depth of eighty cubits, and expected oil at ten or twenty cubits more. "The |