was so struck with the genius displayed in it, that he suggested to Thom to complete the group by adding Souter Johnny. That was soon done; and then, by the assistance of Mr. Auld, the well-known group was cut in stone. The enterprising hairdresser now prepared to set out on a tour of exhibition of this group, the proceeds of which, I understand, were agreed to be equally divided between Auld, Thom, and a committee for a monument to Burns, near his birthplace. Such was the success of the scheme, that Thom, I am told, received £4,000 as his share of the proceeds, which, however, he soon contrived to lose by taking stone-quarries, and entering on building schemes. Having lost his money, he retired to America Auld, more careful, quitted the wig-block and lather-brush, and building himself a house, sat down as a country gentleman opposite to the monument, which seems to be in his keeping. It has been said, that the monument committee never received anything like a third of the proceeds of the exhibition, or the monument might now be opened free of cost to the public. That, however, is a point which the committee and Mr. Auld must be best informed about. One thing is certain, that Mr. Auld's present residence is a grand specimen of the effect of the united genius of Burns, Thom, and Auld; an exciseman, a stone mason, and a barber. To the left hand of the road, opposite to this monument, stands, in a pleasant garden, the other monument of Burns, as already described, and which also, it seems, partly owed its existence to the same bold enterprise of this barber of Ayr, who seems actually to have had the art of "cutting blocks with a razor." In this monument is no statue of Burns, but merely a framed copy of that admirable coloured print of Burns, published by Mr. Maxwell Dick, of Irvine, from Nasmyth's picture; and on the table in the centre, the Bible and Testament given by Burns to his Mary at their last parting near Montgomerie castle. These are two separate volumes, and are displayed at the beginning of each, where Burns has placed a masonic sign, and written his name, now nearly obliterated; adding the two texts,—Leviticus xix. 12; Matthew v. 33: which are, Ye shall not swear by my name falsely; I am the Lord;" and "Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths." These precious volumes were known to be in the possession of the sister of Burns's "Mary," in America; and a society of young men, ardent admirers of Burns, resolved to regain them, if possible, for the public. This, after great trouble and expense, they finally effected; and here they are, objects certainly of the deepest interest. In a separate and small building in the same garden stands the celebrated group by Thom, of Tam and Souter Johnny. This, however, being Sunday, was by an order of the authorities of Ayr not allowed to be seen, though the monument was. I asked the youth who showed the monument, if he could explain to me why it was a sin to show the group, and not a sin to show the monument on a Sunday; but the lad very properly replied that he did not pretend to a metaphysical sagacity so profound; his business was to show the monument, and not to show either the group or the reason why; for that he referred me to the superior hair-splitting piety and acumen of the corporate authorities of Ayr. Quitting this garden, you encounter, at the foot of the new bridge, a new inn, called Burns's Inn and Hotel, with a fine painted sign, of a blackbird singing upon a bough, with a crook and a house, and an oak in the centre of a shield laid on branches of olive and oak; and over it the words-" Better a small bush than nae bield." The Auld Brig is some little distance up the stream; and the view from it is very beautiful. You are surrounded by "the banks and braes o' bonnie Doon," steep, hung with orchards and fine woodland trees. At some little distance still farther up the stream, you descry the old mill of Alloway, half buried in umbrageous trees, and all round rise sweet woodland fields at the feet of the hills. The bridge is well carved over with names, and overgrown with masses of ivy. Standing on this remarkable old grey bridge, my companion exhibited a trait of delicate and genuine feeling, which no man of the most polished education in the school of politeness could have surpassed. Gathering a sprig of ivy, he said, presenting it," May be ye would like to send this to your leddy in England; it's gathered just frae the keystane." I accepted it with the liveliest pleasure, and it is now carefully preserved where the good man wished it. We then returned to Ayr, talking of Burns, his history, his poetry, and his fine qualities all the way; and after one of the pleasantest rambles I ever made in any company, I bade my old friend good-bye at his door, leaving in his hand a trifle to mend his Sunday supper. But," said he, as I was going away, "might I request the favour of your name, that I may know who it was that I had the honour of a walk with to Burns's monument, when I am thinking of it?" I told him; his face passed from its usual paleness to a deep flush; and he exclaimed,-"Eh, Sir! I ken yer name, and that o' yer leddy too, right weel!" Depend upon it, the recollection of that walk has been as pleasant to my old friend as to myself. The next day, with a driver well acquainted with the country, I issued forth in a gig, to visit all the various residences of Burns between Ayr and Mauchline. Burns in his life seemed like a bird leaving its nest. He took two or three short flights, till he flew quite away to Dumfries. At every move he got farther from Ayr. He was like an emigrant, still going on and on in one direction, and his course was south-east. First, he went, that is, with his father, to Mount Oliphant, a farm about four miles from Alloway, where he lived from his sixth to his twelfth year. This farm has nothing particular about it. It lies on a bare ridge of hill, an ordinary little Scotch farm-steading, with bare and treeless fields Then he went on to another farm-to Lochlea, still farther out on this long, high, and bleak tract of country, near Tarbolton. This farm ruined his father, and there he died. Lochlea is a neat farm-house, lying in a hollow more sheltered than Mount Oliphant, but still possessing no picturesque features. In fact, the family was seeking not the picturesque, but a livelihood. At Lochlea, Burns lived till he was twenty-four, and here he attended the masonic lodge at the Cross-keys, at Tarbolton, which still remains. There he became acquainted with Mr. David Sillar, the schoolmaster of Tarbolton, and addressed to him his Epistle to Davie. It was about three miles from Tarbolton, but that was nothing to Burns, full of life and poetry. The Bachelor's Society, which, with David Sillar and other young men, he formed there, had infinite charms for him. Humble were these companions; in David Sillar's words "Of birth and blood we do not boast, No gentry does our club afford, but they were men after Burns's own heart. He judged of men as his father had taught him : My father was a farmer upon the Carrick Border, And carefully he bred me up in decency and order; He bade me act a manly part, though I had ne'er a farthing, For without an honest manly heart no man was worth regarding." It was during his abode here that he wrote John Barleycorn; Coruriggs are bonnie; Winter, a Dirge; the Death of Poor Mailie; Mailie's Elegy; and Now Whistling Winds, etc. But the love affairs he was at this time continually getting into, and the dissipations that he became acquainted with at Kirkoswald and Irvine, at which places he spent some months, rendered his poetical growth far less than it otherwise might have been there. One incident in his life, and one of his most beautiful poems consequent on it, however, arose out of an attachment, which, though said to be formed at Mauchline, was certainly cultivated here. Just below Tarbolton lies Montgomerie castle, beautifully situated amidst its woods on the banks of the Faile, where he fell in love with Mary Campbell. Here, near the house, it was, according to his own beautiful poem, that he used to meet, and here that he finally took leave of her. She was dairymaid in the house then belonging to Colonel Hugh Montgomerie, afterwards Earl of Eglinton, and grandfather of the present earl. "Ye banks and braes and streams around The castle of Montgomerie, Green be your woods, and fair your flowers, Your waters never drumlie; There summer first unfauld her robes, And there the longest tarry, For there I took my last farewell There is a story mentioned in the Lives of Burns, of this parting being on the banks of Ayr, and Cromek repeats it, adding that "the lovers stood on each side of a small purling brook-they laved their hands in the limpid stream, and holding a Bible between them, pronounced their vows to be faithful to each other." All this may be true, for they took a day to this final solitary enjoyment of each other's society in the woods before parting. They might wander by the Ayr, and so on up to the Faile, and at some small rivulet on the way perform this simple and affecting ceremony. Mary was going to the Western Highlands, to see her friends before she married Robert Burns, but she died on her way back, and they never met again. This Bible, as we have seen, has been recovered, and is deposited in the monument at Alloway. Wherever this ceremony took place, the parting assuredly took place here. says, not only that "there I took my last farewell," but also "How sweetly bloomed the gay green birk, How rich the hawthorn's blossom, As, underneath their fragrant shade, I clasped her to my bosom!" Burns There still stands the thorn, called by all the country, "Highland Mary's Thorn." The house and park are sold or leased by the Earl of Eglinton to a solicitor in Ayr. My driver appeared afraid of going into the park, saying "the writer," that is, the solicitor, was a queer fellow, and would not let anybody go to the thorn, and certainly a large board at each park gate, warning all persons to avoid those hallowed precincts, appeared to confirm the man's opinion; but, having come so far, I did not mean to pass without a glance at the parting scene of Burns and Highland Mary. I bade him drive down to the house, where I was speedily assured by the servants about that I was quite at liberty to go to the tree. "How shall I know it?" "Oh! a child may know it-it is all hacked and the twigs broken, by people who carry away some of it to keep." By these signs I readily recognised the tree. It is not far from the house, close to the carriage-drive, and on the top of the slope that descends to the Faile, which murmurs on beneath its sweet woodland shade.* The last abode of Burns in Ayrshire was at Mossgiel. This is some four miles beyond Tarbolton, and close to Mauchline, which is merely a large village. Mossgiel farm lies, as it were, at the end of that long, high, barren ridge of hills, which extends almost all the way from Ayr thither, and on which Burns's father had sought a poor living, and found ruin. It stands near the line of the slope which descends into Mauchline, and overlooks a large extent of bleak and bare country, and distant bare hills. In the vales of the country, however, lie many scenes of great beauty and classic fame. Such are the banks of the Ayr, which winds on deep between its braes and woods, like the Nith, the Doon, and the higher Clyde. Such are Stair, Logan, Crukerne, Catrine, Dugald Stewart's place, and many others. The farm of Mossgiel, which consists of about 118 acres, lies, as observed, high, and as Gilbert, the brother of Burns, described it, "on a cold, wet bottom." The farms occupied by the Burns family in this part of the country were all of a thankless and ungenial kind; in fact, they lacked the means to command better. The two brothers, I am still, however, afraid that it is too true that the country people are not allowed to visit "Mary's Thorn," though held in such high honour by them. Not only the boards at the park gates, but other information, confirmed this fact; and my passing the house to the tree brought all the family to the window, servants as well as gentlemen, ladies, and children, and no few in number, as if some extraordinary circumstance had occurred. Robert and Gilbert, had taken this farm some time before their father's death, in the hope of assisting the family in that poverty which came still after them, like an armed man, spite of the most laborious exertion, and which was weighing their father to the grave. At his death they removed altogether from Lochlea, and with their mother and sisters became here one household. Here Burns made the firmest resolves of steadiness, industry, and thriving; but the seasons were against him, and he soon became mixed up with all the dissipations of Mauchline, where he established a club after the fashion of that at Tarbolton. Very soon, too, he plunged into the midst of church disputes, in which his friend Gavin Hamilton, a lawyer of the place, was personally embroiled. Here he wrote The Holy Tuilzie, Holy Fair, Holy Willie's Prayer, The Ordination, The Kirk's Alarm :-those scalping poems, in which he lays bare to the skull bone, bigotry, hypocrisy, and all sanctimonious bitterness in religion. Here he fell in love with Jean Armour, the daughter of a stonemason of Mauchline, who, after many troubles, and much opposition on the part of the family, became afterwards his wife. Here he wrote the greater part of his poems, and of his very finest ones; and here he broke forth upon the world like a new-risen sun, his poems, which were first published at Kilmarnock, attracting such extraordinary attention, that he was called to Edinburgh, and a new and more complete edition there published, while he himself was introduced as a sort of miracle to the highest circles of aristocracy and literature. The four years which he lived here, though they were sinking him in a pecuniary point of view into such a slough of despair, that he seriously resolved to emigrate to the West Indies, and only published his poems to raise the means, were, as regarded his fame, glorious and most interesting years. It was here that he might be said, more expressly than anywhere else "To walk in glory and in joy, Following his plough along the mountain side;" for, spite of the iron destiny which seemed to pursue him, and in an ungenial soil and the most untoward seasons, to endeavour to crush him with "carking care," he was full of life and vigour, and often rose in the entrancement of his spirit above all sense of earth and its darkness. By the testimony of his cotemporaries, in all the operations of the farm,-in mowing, reaping, binding after the reapers, thrashing, or loading, there were few who could compete with him. He stood five feet ten in height, and was of singular strength and activity. He prided himself on the straightness of the furrow that he drew, and the skill with which he threw his corn in sowing. On one occasion, a man having succeeded in a hard strife in setting up as many shocks in a given time, said, "There, I am not far behind this time;" to which Burns replied, "In one thing, John, you are still behind; I made a song while I was stooking" Allan Cunningham says that his father, who was steward to Miller of Dalswinton, Burns's landlord, and lived just opposite to him at |