Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451, page 29 by Various Authors
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g into some openings which had been made in the earth for building materials, we readily observed that the internal constitution of the mass was precisely like that of the moraines of the existing glaciers of the Alps, and of the similar masses of drift scattered over Sweden--a confused mixture of angular, slightly-worn blocks of all sizes, bedded in clayey gravel of a brown colour. Such objects are rare in Scotland; but here is undoubtedly one, though we cannot pretend to tell from what quarter it has come. The thing most nearly resembling it in general appearance, which we have ever seen, is an undoubted ancient moraine at a place called Mosshuus, in the Valley of the Laug, in Norway.
One reflection arises at the conclusion of this trivial investigation, and it is this--If so much doubt and obscurity have already settled on circumstances which took place scarcely beyond the recollection of living people, can we wonder at that which invests the events of a more remote epoch? If editors in our enlightened time have contrived so soon to give the history of Burns a mythical character, what safety have we in trusting to such ancient narrations as those of Plutarch or Thucydides? On the other hand, where even such a biography as that of Burns is placed by sound and carefully-examined evidence upon an irrefragable basis, a service is rendered to the public beyond the merits of any immediate question that may be under discussion, in the encouragement which it gives to historical inquirers of all grades, to rest satisfied with nothing on vague assertion, but to sift everything to the bottom.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Life and Works of Robert Burns, edited by Robert Chambers. 4 vols. Edinburgh: W. & R. Chambers.
ONE-SIDEDNESS.
Plantagenet. The truth appears so naked on my side, That any purblind eye may find it out. Somerset. And on my side it is so well apparelled, So clear, so shining, and so evident, That it will glimmer through a blind man's eye.