SCOTLAND.

Mr. Charles Baillie, Lord Advocate of Scotland, was on Saturday, elected Member for the county of Linlithgow, in the room of Mr. George Dundas, appointed Governor of Prince Edward's Island. There was no opposition.

The educational reformers of Scotland held a meeting in Edinburgh on Monday. The Lord Provost occupied the chair, and Mr. Monerieff, Mr.. Black, and Dr. Candlish were among the speakers. The object of the agita- tion at present is not to obtain a general measure like that unsuccessfully prosecuted by Mr. Monerieff, but to abolish the teat imposed on school- masters. It is anticipated that, following the precedent of the Univer- sity tests, which Parliament abolished in 1853, the reformers will first obtain the removal of the test, and afterwards the appointment of an Edu- cational Commission, on the report of which as to the means of improve- ment and extension of the parochial system 'future legislation in the matter might proceed. It was urged that Scotland is nearly unanimous as to the character and substance of the education to be given, and that, with the parochial schools opened up to all denominations, with inter- mediate grammar schools established, and the Universities improved, a system of education might be instituted adequate to the wants of that country, and suited to the educational requirements of the ago. Resolu- tions were passed to the effect that strenuous exertions be made during the present session in Parliament to obtain the abolition of the test im- posed upon the teachers of the parochial schools of Scotland, binding them to conformity with, the established Presbyterian Church.

Last week, we noticed a very curious literary gathering in Madrid.* This week, our attention is called to the report of another encounter, at Dumfries, during the celebration of the Burns festival. Amongst the guests present was Colonel Fuller, who is well known on both sides of the Atlantic as the editor of the New York Mirror and author of the "Belle Britten Letters," the occasion of whose visit was told by himself. He was called upon to answer to the toast of "American literature," and, after the long and repeated cheering which saluted the toast had subsided, Mr. Fuller rose to return thanks, and was received by a new. burst of cheers. He said,

"Mr. Chairman and brother Scots, ' If there's a hole in a' your coats, I rede you tent it ; A chield's amang you takin' notes, And, faith, he'll prent it.'

(Laughter and cheers.) I came not hero to make a speech, but rather to report speeches. The instrument with which I am accustomed to speak is the quill, and I shall probably astonish you by saying that my account of this day's proceedings will reach, perhaps, five millions of readers ; for in our country we don't publish editions of newspapers by the thousand or ten thousand, but by the five hundred or six hundred thousand. I am here, gentlemen, a stranger in a strange land, and yet, strange as it may seem to you, I feel quite at home. I have come 3.500 miles across the broad Atlan- tic, a pilgrim to the tomb of Robert Burns. (Cheers.) I do not come here to represent.. America, although I have the honour to be a member of a Burns Club in the City of New York ; but I come hero from my own volition- -from a spontaneous desire to bring, as it were, a wild-flower from the far West to lay upon the shrine of the Immortal Bard. (Loud cheers.) I slept last night in a city which they told me was founded a thousand years before Christ was born,—the city of Carlisle,—and before retiring to rest, with the spirit of antiquity upon me, I read in the book of Job, and I thought as I read—What is a hundred years ? What is the life-time of my own young republic, compared with the duration of the temples, the castles, and the cathedrals that I see around me ? What is the generation of man ? or in the sublime language of the Hebrew bard, What is man that God should be mindful of him ! Everything seemed, so far as human existence was con- cerned, brief, transitory, flitting away. Yet in my own land this day, there is everywhere commemorated,—from the snow-clad hills of Maine, to the golden streams of California, from the fir-fringed hills of Oregon to the orange groves of Florida, the name of a poet whose fame is immortal—the name of Robert Burns. (Cheers.) There is a Burns Club in almost every city and town of the Union, and though you are five hours in advance of them in point of time in your celebration today,we can imagine thagat about this hour hundreds and thousands of people are convening in the far west around the festive board to commemorate the memory, and to honour the genius of Robert Burns. Your poet was born in Scotland : the sphere of his e was confined almost within theliorizon that lies around us. Ho scarcely visited England. He never went out of the island ; yet today he is one of the best known men that ever lived ; and taught, as I was, to love and revere his memory in childhood,—for the songs of Burns were the cradle hymns that my mother used to sing to me—studying him as I have from my youth up, I do not hesitate to say that I consider him one of the greatest lyric poets that ever lived ; and I tell you, Mr. Chairman, that your little city of Dumfries stands this night upon the very top of the world. Though invited to attend the celebrations in London and Edin- burgh, and having personal reasons to be in Glasgow, or to remain in Li- verpool tonight, I felt that this was the place where every true lover and admirer of Burns should assemble. It was here that that glowing eye took its last farewell look of the sun, and here his dust reposes, and may it

ever repose till the resurrection morn. You have a sacred trust, gentle- men, and many a pilgrim from the New World will yet come to pay his homage at that shrine. I have been interested, excited, delighted by all that I have seen and heard tonight. If I were to say briefly to you what • In which notice, by the bye, there was an erratum arising from an obscurity in the manuscript. The price of the dinner was not quite in low as we stated ; eight reale are equivalsot to about a dollar.

the ,people of America think of Burns, I would say they think and feel to- wards lum precisely what your eloquent chairman has expressed. We look upon him as immeasureably above all the lesser race of English, Scotch, American, or European poets, and far be that day from us when we shall borrow any theological telescope to descry spots on the sunshine of his genius. I believe that Robert Burns was one of the moat religious as well as pa- triotic of poets. (Loud cheers.) He bated and despised cane—he hated the God of the priest, who is a mere tyrant,—but the Divine, the All-loving Father of the Universe he adored. He hated and de9ised the religion of the fanatic, but the religion of Christ, the grand religion of nature was in him le proof that he was a religious man, let me quote only one verse from his epistle to a young friend- . When ranting round in pleasure's ring,

Religion may be blinded,

Or if she gis a random sting,

It may be little minded ; But when on life we're tempest driven, A conscience but a canker; A correspondence fli'd wi' Heaven Is sure a noble anchor.'

"The poetry and songs of Burns have nerved the soldier in the day of battle; they have kindled the heavenward flame of devotion in the house of God ; and where is the young man who, in the blissful rapture of love's young dream,' does not borrow the golden chalice of Burns to carry the libation of his heart to the lips that he loves ? Everything he touches he has immortalised. Even old Nance Tinnock, who is mentioned in his works but once, is embalmed and preserved like a fly in amber. (Great laughter and cheers.) Burns was a lover, and that made him a poet : he worshipped at the shrine of woman—woman

' Whom God created with a smile of grace. And left the smile that made her on her face.'

The lowly maid whom he addressed as 'Mary in Heaven,' will live for ever, encusalea by the bright aureole of his genius—the very Madonna of passionate devotion. Where is the queen that will outlive in story the sweet flower of Burns, commemorated in such lines as these ?-

'Let Let Bourbon exult in his gay gilded lilies, And England triumphant display her proud rose ; A fairer than either adorns the green valleys, Where Devon, sweet Devon, meandering flows."

After relating an anecdote of our soldiers in the Crimea singing "Annie Laurie" in chorus on the eve of an engagement in illustration of the power of song, Mr. Fuller quoted a saying of his friend Mackay the poet, that be- fore we can estimate the effect which that simple but noble song "A man's a man for a' that" has produced in raising the dignity, and patriotism, and loyalty of Britons, and indeed all throughout the world wherever it was known, we must first try and estimate the value of one day's sunshine in ripening the cotton and the corn. In conclusion, said; Mr. Fuller, 'I will simply express my gratitude to the gentleman who did me the honour of mentioning my name in connection with this toast, and I thank you all for the cordiality with which it was received. Though I do not take the compliment to myself, yet I accept it for my country. I can assure you that Scotsmen are in that country found to be a very intelligent, industri- ous, enterprising, thrifty people. I had the good fortune to be born a New Englander, my ancestors having gone over in the Mayflower, and we have always considered it a great compliment as New Englanders to be called the Scotsmen of America."

There ia no need to say that the applause was renewed most vocifer- ously as Colonel Fuller sat down. It is amongst the traits of American character that ought to command the sympathy of Englishmen that they claim their fair share of a property in British literature. A man does not part with the character of his house and lineage because he emigrates to Australia or America ; but on the contrary, the Americans have shown that they carry with them the memory of their ancestors. On the other hand, the man who rises in Australia or America becomes the pride of his family ; and that which is true of the individual and the family must be in the long run equally true of the nation with interests and language identical. We all have memories and hopes which are inseparable ; and an aggregate of strength that when once thoroughly understood will command the world.

The bursting of a reservoir has destroyed the Crinan Canal—a water- way of great importance to the west coast of Scotland. The incident is thus described in a letter to the Times.

"After an unprecedented wet season, on the evening of the 2d, about eight o'clock, one of those reservoirs, becoming overcharged, suddenly burst and precipitated itself into the one beneath, which also giving way, the contents of both bounded into a third, and, with a roar which shook the country for miles round, an avalanche of water, rocks, and earth rolled down the mountain aide, furrowing a deep watercourse in its way, and instantly obliterating the canal under a mountain of thousands of tons of rocks and stones. The vast body of water, separating into two great tide waves, rolled away to the east and west, breaking up lock-gates like tinder ; and, tun- nelling vast chasms through the banks, the waters found vent over the open country, the one by the town of Lochgilphead into Loch 'Fyne, the other over the Crinan mosses into the western sea, both strewing the face of the country with mud, stones, peat, fragments of corn-stacks, uprooted bushes, and broken timber, in a most wonderful manner. Even the loch for many miles out to sea is quite turbid, and its surface speckled over with floating debris.

"Though the loss of property is at present incalculable, yet, most mi- raculously, there has not been a single life lost, though the alarm of the people of Lochgilphead may be conceived when they heard the distant bel- lowing of the torrent and rolling and grating of rocks, and then saw through the darkness of the night the moving flood all around them.

About half a mile of canal is buried under a chaotic heap of Cyclopian stones, like a rugged sea beach. In this part of Glen Crinan Nature has completely resumed her sway ,- towpath and high road, and all appearance of the hand of man, have totally disappeared. For two miles the canal is destroyed, the banks being cut up by chasms like railway cuttings; but the remaining portions, about four miles at either end, are intact, though pro- bably injured by the quantity of mud injected into them. The pressure upon their banks must have been great, as the waters swelled over their edges for their whole length, and Ardrispaig was probably only saved by the immediate opening of the sluices and giving vent to the water, which must, had the bank given way, have swept the village into the sea.

Alexander Robertson, an engine driver employed by the North British Railway Company, has been convicted of having caused a fatal accident by neglecting to obey the Company's regulations, and has been sentenced by the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh, to six months' imprisonment. The punishment was fixed at this amount because there were extenuating circumstances. But the Lord Justice Clerk said that the prisoner should have obeyed the rules and not have proceeded upon calculations of chances and probabilities at any time, co tainly not in a fog.