gold; may I not be forgiven if my business should have more
to do with the feet, which were of clay?


YOUTH.


Any view of Burns would be misleading which passed over in
silence the influences of his home and his father. That
father, William Burnes, after having been for many years a
gardener, took a farm, married, and, like an emigrant in a
new country, built himself a house with his own hands.
Poverty of the most distressing sort, with sometimes the near
prospect of a gaol, embittered the remainder of his life.
Chill, backward, and austere with strangers, grave and
imperious in his family, he was yet a man of very unusual
parts and of an affectionate nature. On his way through life
he had remarked much upon other men, with more result in
theory than practice; and he had reflected upon many subjects
as he delved the garden. His great delight was in solid
conversation; he would leave his work to talk with the
schoolmaster Murdoch; and Robert, when he came home late at
night, not only turned aside rebuke but kept his father two
hours beside the fire by the charm of his merry and vigorous
talk. Nothing is more characteristic of the class in
general, and William Burnes in particular, than the pains he
took to get proper schooling for his boys, and, when that was
no longer possible, the sense and resolution with which he
set himself to supply the deficiency by his own influence.
For many years he was their chief companion; he spoke with