supply, were confided by British generosity to Spanish honour; and it would have been no less invidious to limit too narrowly the service of our troops, than to interfere in the destination of the money or arms so liberally furnished. But it is not with any view either to blame or exculpation that we question the wisdom or policy of the measure; it is for the purpose of examining what consequences might be reasonably expected from its adoption, under the supposition that our armies had been able to form a junction at the expected time and place, and to proceed to their original destination. Now it was known at the time that the provinces to which they were invited afforded no opportunity for active enterprise. No moral advantage could be hoped from their presence in a part of the country where languor and apathy had succeeded to enthusiasm, and where the protection which they were likely to afford might serve as a plau sible excuse to those who were unwilling to enlist under the national standard. That such a British corps, had it reached Burgos, would have opposed a far more formidable barrier to the invading enemy than he had yet encountered, we are ready to admit. But Napoleon, who well knows the spirit and discipline of our troops, knows also that there is a time when the stoutest arm must faint through fatigue; and when the stoutest heart will struggle in vain to exert the means of defence. He knows that incessant assaults are irresistible; and, sure of success through the superiority of numbers, he would have delayed his blow till his daily accession of fresh troops had enabled him to purchase victory, by devoting the necessary portion of his men to previous slaughter. Such has been his invariable policy; and from this policy every man would have anticipated the ultimate destruction of our army, had it been possible to foresee the extreme insufficiency of the force on which the supreme government of Spain thought fit to rely for the salvation of the monarchy. We trust, however, that the persevering confidence and generosity of Great Britain will henceforth be met by equal sincerity, and that the valour of our countrymen will be exerted on a theatre rather more distant from the immediate resources of the enemy, where success may promise more advantage, and where failure may be less fatal. The victories of Buonaparte have been great and rapid, and he will and must pursue his blow. He must strike terror into the most distant parts of Spain; he must there rivet the chains of Europe, or his throne may shortly totter under him; because all his tributary kingdoms in Germany, and his equally tributary allies in the north, will never indemnify him for the loss of the Spanish peninsula. We will now take our leave of the subject at least for the present. Our readers have seen that the changes which have taken place in the political state of Spain will, in a great measure, account for all those alternations of success and defeat, of vigour and indecision, which have produced, in the minds of the British public, such extra vagant hopes and such gloomy despondency. Whether the long interregnum, during which Napoleon had full time and leisure to make his formidable preparations, has left the seeds of disunion amongst the subordinate Juntas, or whether that supreme elective government, which has been so tardily recognised, and so suddenly driven into banishment, will retain its authority, it is as yet impossible to foresee; but until the nation shall disown its delegates we shall not despair of Spanish emancipation. Not that we under-rate either the means of conquest or the means of corruption which are at the disposal of the greatest general and subtlest politician in the world. We are aware that sending from the centre of Spain his legions in every direction, he is likely in every direction to overcome for a time all the obstacles opposed to him. But it is far easier to over-run a country than to secure the conquest. There is, we think, a considerable analogy between the present history of Spain and that of Scotland about the close of the 13th century. Edward I. was, like Napoleon, the boldest, the most politic, and the wealthiest monarch of his time. Like him, he condescended to interfere, as an ally and mediator, between two candidates for a disputed crown. Like him, he seized the object of the dispute. Like him, he was hailed as a saviour by a corrupt and venal party. Like him, he garrisoned with his troops all the fortresses of the country to which he granted his protection; like him formed a new constitution for his intended subjects; and, when resisted, punished by all the horrors of war their delinquincy and rebellion. He more than once conquered or at least over-ran the whole country, yet--we trust that the parallel will continue to the end; and that national vengeance has in store some future Bannockburn. All the provincial Juntas may be dispersed; but their boldest deputies will carry with them the affection and confidence of the nation, and, even when driven under the walls of Cadiz or of Gibraltar, may yet effect the salvation of their country. Armies may be defeated by superior discipline or by superior numbers; generals may be corrupted; but that the whole active population of a great country, in which the strongest passions of the human heart have been excited almost to madness, can be terrified into quiet and permanent submission is, we think, extremely improbable and contrary to all experience. ART. II. Reliques of Robert Burns, consisting chiefly of original Letters, Poems, and Critical Observations on Scottish Songs. Collected and published by R. H. Cromek. Svo. pp. 453. London, Cadell and Davies. 1808. WE opened a book bearing so interesting a title with no little anxiety. Literary reliques vary in species and value almost as much as those of the catholic or of the antiquary. Some deserve a golden shrine for their intrinsic merit, some are valued from the pleasing recollections and associations with which they are combined, some, reflecting little honour upon their unfortunate author, are dragged by interested editors from merited obscurity. The character of Burns, on which we may perhaps hazard some remarks in the course of this article, was such as to increase our apprehensions. The extravagance of genius with which this wonderful man was gifted, being in his later and more evil days directed to no fixed or general purpose, was, in the morbid state of his health and feelings, apt to display itself in hasty sallies of virulent and unmerited severity: sallies often regretted by the bard himself; and of which, justice to the living and to the dead, alike demanded the suppression. Neither was this anxiety lessened, when we recollected the pious care with which the late excellent Dr. Currie had performed the task of editing the works of Burns. His selection was limited, as much by respect to the fame of the living, as of the dead. He dragged from obscurity none of those satirical effusions, which ought to be as ephemeral as the transient offences which called them forth. He excluded every thing approaching to license, whether in morals or in religion, and thus rendered his collection such as doubtless Burns himself, in his moments of sober reflection, would have most highly approved. Yet applauding, as we do most highly applaud, the leading principles of Dr. Currie's selection, we are aware that they sometimes led him into fastidious and overdelicate rejection of the bard's most spirited and happy effusions. A thin octavo published at Glasgow in 1801, under the title of 'Poems ascribed to Robert Burns, the Ayrshire bard,' furnishes valuable proofs of this assertion. It contains, among a good deal of rubbish, some of his most brilliant poetry. A cantata in particular, called The Jolly Beggars, for humorous description and nice discrimination of character, is inferior to no poem of the same length in the whole range of English poetry. The scene indeed is laid in the very lowest department of low life, the actors being a set of strolling vagrants, met to carouse, and barter their rags and plunder for liquor in a hedge alehouse. Yet even in describing the movements of such a group, the native taste of the poet has never suffered his pen to slide into any thing coarse or disgusting. The extravagant glee and outrageous frolic of the beggars are ridiculously contrasted with their maimed limbs, rags, and crutches-the sordid and squalid circumstances of their appearance are judiciously thrown into the shade. Nor is the art of the poet less conspicuous in the individual figures, than in the general mass. The festive vagrants are distinguished from each other by personal appearance and character, as much as any fortuitous assembly in the higher orders of life. The group, it must be observed, is of Scottish character, and doubtless our northern brethren are more familiar with its varieties than we are: yet the distinctions are too well marked to escape even the South'ron. The most prominent persons are a maimed soldier and his female companion, a hackneyed follower of the camp, a stroller, late the consort of an Highland ketterer or sturdy beggar, but weary fu' the waefu' woodie!'-Being now at liberty, she becomes an object of rivalry between a 'pigmy scraper with his fiddle' and a strolling tinker. The latter, a desperate bandit, like most of his profession, terrifies the musician out of the field, and is preferred by the damsel of course. A wandering ballad-singer, with a brace of doxies, is last introduced upon the stage. Each of these mendicants sings a song in character, and such a collection of humorous lyrics, connected by vivid poetical description, is not, perhaps, to be paralleled in the English language. As the collection and the poem are very little known in England, and as it is certainly apposite to the Reliques of Robert Burns, we venture to transcribe the concluding ditty chanted by the ballad-singer at the request of the company, whose mirth and fun have now grown fast and furious, and set them above all sublunary terrors of jails, stocks, and whipping posts. It is certainly far superior to any thing in the Beggars Opera, where alone we could expect to find its parallel. Then ou're again, the jovial thrang The poet did request, To loose his pack an' wale a sang, A ballad o' the best: He rising, rejoicing Between his twa Deborahs, Looks round him, an' found them Impatient for the chorus. AIR. TUNE.-Jolly mortals fill your glasses. I. See the smoking bowl before us, CHORUS. A fig for those by law protected! II. What is title? what is treasure? If we lead a life of pleasure, III. With the ready trick and fable, IV. Does the train-attended carriage V. Life is all a variorum, We regard not how it goes; VI. Here's to budgets, bags, and wallets! We are at a loss to conceive any good reason why Dr. Currie did not introduce this singular and humorous cantata into his collection. It is true, that in one or two passages the muse has trespassed slightly upon decorum, where, in the language of Scottish song, High kilted was she As she gaed ower the lea. Something however is to be allowed to the nature of the subject, and something to the education of the poet: and if from veneration to the names of Swift and Dryden, we tolerate the grossness of the one, and the indelicacy of the other, the respect due to that of Burns, may surely claim indulgence for a few light strokes of broad humour. The same collection contains Holy Willie's Prayer,' a piece of satire more exquisitely severe than any which Burns afterwards wrote, but unfortunately cast in a form too daringly profane to be received into Dr Currie's Collection. Knowing that these, and hoping that other compositions of similar spirit and tenor, might yet be recovered, we were induced to think that some of them, at least, had found a place in the collection now given to the public by Mr. Cromek. But he has neither risqued the censure, nor laid claim to the applause, which might have |