ROBERT AINSLIE, ESQ.

THE numerous letters written by Burns to this gentleman, and the fact of their having performed a tour in the south of Scotland together, must be familiar to all who are acquainted with the biography and correspondence of the poet. It is a circumstance which speaks loudly in behalf of Mr Ainslie, that he had just completed his twentieth year and had not yet finished his apprenticeship, when he recommended himself to this remarkable friendship with a man several years his senior, and whose mind no one will deny to have been more mature for his age, than that of most of the children of Adam. This friendship was formed in Edinburgh, in the spring of 1787, and seems to have shot up with that tropical rapidity of growth which belongs to generous natures. Some insight into its physiology is afforded by the following letter of Burns, dated from Mauchline, July 23, in the year just mentioned: "My dear Ainslie,―There is one thing for which I set great store by you as a friend, and it is this, that I have not a friend upon earth, besides yourself, to whom I can talk nonsense without forfeiting some portion of his esteem. Now, to one like me, who never cares for speaking anything but nonsense, such a friend as you is an invaluable treasure. I was never a rogue, but I have been a fool all my life; and, in spite of all my endeavours, I now see plainly that I never shall be wise. Now it rejoices my heart to have met with such a fellow as you, who, though not just such a hopeless fool as I, yet I trust you will never listen so much to the temptations of the devil as to grow so very wise that you will in the least disrespect an honest fellow because he is a fool. In short, I have set you down as the staff of my old age, when the whole of my friends will, after a decent share of pity, have forgot me." Again, in November of the same year, from his Edinburgh lodgings—“ You will think it romantic when I tell you, that I find the idea of your friendship almost necessary to my existence. You assume a proper length of face in my bitter hours of blue-devilism, and you laugh fully up to my wishes at my good things. I don't know, upon the whole, if you are one of the first fellows in God's world, but you are so to me. I tell you this just now, in the conviction that some inequalities in my temper and manner may perhaps sometimes make you suspect that I am not so warmly as I ought to be your friend."

The subject of these eulogia closed his benevolent and useful life, April 11, 1838, in the 72nd year of his age. He was the eldest son of Mr Ainslie, who resided at Berrywell, near Dunse, in the capacity of land-agent for Lord Douglas over his lordship's Berwickshire estates. Of Douglas and Whitelaw, the only two brothers of Mr Ainslie, the latter became the author of an elaborate work on the Materia Medica of India, for which he was knighted by the late King William IV. Mr Douglas Ainslie, now the only surviving member of the family, occupies the situation once held by his father. Miss Rachel Ainslie, the only sister of these gentlemen, and whose personal elegance obtained

the commendations of the Ayrshire poet, is also dead. The subject of the present notice served his apprenticeship, as a writer to the signet, with Mr Samuel Mitchelson, in Carrubber's close, Edinburgh: the place is worth mentioning, for this was the individual at whose house took place the haggis-scene introduced by Smollett into his Humphrey Clinker.* We have heard Mr Ainslie dilate on the character of his master and fellow-apprentices, and the various circumstances under which he spent this pleasant part of his life. Mr Mitchelson, as a devout amateur of the musical art, was a leading member of the society which performed in the St Cecilia's Hall in the Cowgate. Mr Ainslie used to mention with great relish the indignant exclamation of an Italian whom these gentleman had engaged for a few nights, when some injustice, as he thought, was about to be done to him by the committee, in the settlement of their accounts-"Signor Tytleri and Signor Mitchelsoni, I vill make it known to every court in Europe!" Another Italian star, whose musical perceptions had not been very favourably impressed by these Scottish amateurs, being much offended one evening at some remark which one of them (a flutist) made to him, only answered, "Pooh, pooh, Signor blow your stick!" Mr Ainslie and his brethren at Mr Mitchelson's desks, amongst whom was the late Lord Cringletie, afterwards kept up the remembrance of these early days by forming themselves into a little private association, the chief purpose of which was a weekly meeting in each others' houses by rotation-meetings which Mr Ainslie used to say had been pronounced by his wife as the most agreeable that ever took place within their mansion. The practice was not, we believe, given up till the most of the members were dispersed or dead. The acquaintance formed by Mr Ainslie with Burns, while still an apprentice, led to their making an excursion together in Berwickshire and Teviotdale in May 1787. Burns thus opens a series of memoranda on this tour: "Reach Berrywell-old Mr Ainslie an uncommon character; his hobbies agriculture, natural philosophy, and politics. In the first he is unexceptionably the clearest-headed, best-informed man I ever met with; in the other two very intelligent. As a man of business he has uncommon merit, and by fairly observing it, has made a very decent independence. Mrs Ainslie, an excellent, sensible, cheerful, amiable old woman. Miss Ainslie her person a little embonpoint, but handsome; her face, particularly her eyes, full of sweetness and good humour. She unites three qualities rarely to be found together; keen, solid penetration; sly, witty observation and remark; and the gentlest, most unaffected female modesty. Douglas a clever, fine promising young fellow. The family meeting with their brother, my compagnon de voyage, very charming; particularly the sister. The whole family remarkably attached to their menials. Mrs Ainslie full of stories of the sagacity and sense of the little girl in the kitchen. Mr Ainslie high in the praises of an African, his house-servant—all his people old in his service-Douglas's old nurse came to Berrywell yesterday, to remind them of its being his birth-day." After spending two nights at Berrywell, the poet, accompanied by his young friend, proceeded to Coldstream, where, according to the recollection

* The house is in a little square at the bottom of the close-distinguished by a large representation of a clam shell over the door.

of Mr Ainslie, he expressed a wish to cross the Tweed, that he might for the first time stand on English ground. Here a remarkable scene occurred. Burns suddenly threw himself on his knees, and turning towards the side of the river which he had just left, poured forth the ardent apostrophe to Scotland which concludes his Cotter's Saturday Night

"O Scotia, my dear, my native soil," &c.

A tour of ten days by Kelso, Jedburgh, Melrose, Inverleithen, and Earlstoun, brought the pair back to Berrywell, whence they once more set out next day, proceeding by Berwick to Eyemouth and Dunbar. It was not till after a second return to Berrywell, that Burns parted with his young companion, and set out on his further travels by himself.

In the course of the same year, while Burns continued to reside in Edinburgh, he had frequent meetings with Mr Ainslie. The latter gentleman, in mature life, used to advert with peculiar satisfaction to one meeting above all others which they had at his lodgings in James's Square. He had then what he called a small wine-cellar-properly only a recess under a window-seat, Scottice, a bunker; and this bunker contained some two or three bottles of tolerable port, the remains of a half dozen which had been sent from Berrywell. He proposed to place these at the disposal of his poetical visitor; but Burns declined the treat. They had no need, he said, of wine to sharpen or brighten their wits. Rather let them go out to the King's Park, and have a quiet chat. Ainslie readily acceded to this sober proposal, and he used to say that he never enjoyed the conversation of Burns so much as during that walk and the undebauching tea which followed it after they had returned to his lodgings.

Burns, after his departure from Edinburgh, wrote many confiding letters to Ainslie, some of which have been printed. They also met once at Ellisland,-where the poet gave him a written copy of his Tam o' Shanter, which Mr Ainslie afterwards presented to Sir Walter Scott. Before this visit-in 1789-the subject of our memoir had become a member of the society of writers to the signet, and commenced business in Edinburgh. He prosecuted this calling with success, and, by a lady named Cunningham, the daughter of a colonel of the Scots Brigade in the Dutch service, became the father of a numerous family, of whom two daughters alone survive. Mr Ainslie had at all times of his life a taste for literature, and could write well, whether to a humorous or grave purpose. Of the former class of his compositions, some papers in the Edinburgh Magazine for 1824, on the reform of the Scottish judicatures, may be cited as a favourable specimen. Two little volumes, respectively entitled "A Father's Gift to his Children," and "Reasons for the Hope that is in us," both embodying the evidences of Christianity, are the principal examples of his grave style. He was for many years an elder in the Old Church, St Giles's. His personal deportment was remarkable for an unfailing flow of benevolent feeling and good humour. His conversation was cheerful, full of whimsical and well-told anecdote, and altogether untinctured by ill-nature or harshness. The accompanying portrait is a faithful representation of his features, as he appeared a few years

ago; but it would be difficult, by this art, to convey an adequate impression of the playful and benignant smile which usually sat upon those features, the outward token of that delightfully tempered spirit which won the heart of Burns fifty years ago, and continued to attach to him most of the other eminent literary persons who successively arose in Scotland during his time.

ABERFELDY.

BURNS, in the course of his Highland tour, September 1787, visited the celebrated waterfalls of Moness, in the neighbourhood of the village of Aberfeldy in Strath Tay. These falls, which occur in a deep and narrow chasm behind Moness House, are described by Pennant in language sufficiently complimentary" an epitome," he calls them, “of every thing that can be admired in the curiosity of waterfalls." Another tourist speaks of them as a miniature of the Swiss Meyringhen. They comprehend not only the usual phenomenon of a rivulet dashing down a rocky recess in the side of a range of hills, but several accessory cascades, which pour down the precipitous sides of that recess, and unite their waters with those of the principal stream below. The visitor of this beautiful scene first enters a glen, called the Den of Moness, clothed with hazel and birch in great luxuriance. As he advances, the sides of this den become sheer precipices, of about two hundred feet in height, so near each other, that the trees shooting out from the respective sides almost intermingle their branches. To quote the accurate description of a recent observer, "The lowest (falls) consist of a series of cascades, formed by a small tributary rivulet pouring down the east side of the dell, and seemingly altogether about eighty feet of perpendicular height. These join the main burn at the base of a little fall, which forms a conspicuous object in the sweet view obtained from the channel of the stream. From the end of a clear pool, where the motion of the water is indicated only by the bells of foam gliding slowly down, the spectator sees, at the further extremity of a low narrow chasm of black moistened rock, the small waterfall, at such a distance that its noise reaches the ear in a soft lulling murmur. On either hand rise high sloping banks, adorned with trees. A sweep of one side of the dell terminates the opening with a steep face of wood. From the edge of the fall shoots up a long slender spruce, succeeded by straight elms, and lofty beech trees. Young drooping ashes from the opposite banks, dip their tapering branches in the pool; each little protruding rock is covered with moss, and curtained with pendent ferns. Through the trees the other streamlet is beheld descending in sidelong haste.

"Let the visiter, however, hasten on to the next series, for they demand particular examination. They consist of a succession of falls, comprising a perpendicular height of not less than a hundred feet, and occupying in length a space of more than the like number of yards. A prolonged sheet of descending water, alternately perpendicular and slanting, is