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sixteen hours a day, robed only in his shirt and morning gown, with a green veil over his eyes, which were usually weak and inflamed. Sunday was the only day he ventured over the Strand which divided the Sanctuary from the gay outside world, in which Heron liked to bask in the sunshine of freedom for a brief space and forget his misery and misfortunes. He lingered once too long among his more free fellow-men, and was arrested and lodged in jail, where he lay for several months. His friends suggested that he should write a history of Scotland to liquidate his debts, the publishers agreeing to pay him three guineas a sheet. The first volume of this history was written in jail, but his creditors agreed that if Messrs Morrison, the publishers, would guarantee them fifteen shillings in the pound, the copyright to be held by them as security, they would set him at liberty. Heron, though highly imprudent, was honest, and honourably completed the work in six volumes. It is elegantly written, and probably unrivalled by any other publication in the same field, except the more erudite work of George Buchanan. The first volume was published in 1793, and completed at the rate of one volume every year. About this time he published A Journey through the Western Parts of Scotland-a work which was greatly appreciated by the Galloway antiquarian, and indeed is still regarded as an interesting production. Then came A Topographical Account of Scotland, Extracts of Elegant Literature, A New and Complete System of Universal Geography in two volumes octavo. also employed by Sir John Sinclair to superintend the publication of his Statistical Account of Scotland. He also wrote a short life of Robert Burns, with whom he had a personal acquaintance. In Burns's "Epistle to Dr Blacklock," dated 1789, the Poet thus lampoons Heron for the non-delivery of a letter to that gentleman which was entrusted to him :—

"The ill-thief blaw the Heron south,
And never drink be near his drouth,
He tauld mysel' by word o' mouth
He'd tak' my letter ;
I lippen'd to the chiel in truth,
And bade nae better.

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As we have already said, Heron had a strong, vindictive, and ungovernable temper, and there is a strong presumption that he avenged himself on the dead Poet in the "Life" he wrote. Far too much importance has been attached to the fact that Heron was a contemporary and the Poet's first biographer. Reading between the lines there is ground for suspicion that Heron is grossly inaccurate in some of his statements. For instance :

"Foolish young men, such as writers, apprentices, young surgeons, merchants, clerks, and excisemen flocked eagerly about him, pressing him to drink, so that they might enjoy his wicked wit; and when his friend Nichol came to visit him at Dumfries, they drank together till they were as dead drunk as ever Silenus was.

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"The morals of the town," he continues, were in consequence of it becoming so much the scene of public amusement, not a little corrupted, and though a husband and a father, poor Burns did not escape suffering by the general contamination in a manner I forbear to describe."

Even in the beginning of the twentieth century, when the population of Dumfries is probably more than double what it was in Burns's day, one wonders where the army of young writers, surgeons, merchants, clerks, and excisemen is to be found, unless in the imagination of a similarly gifted writer. Doubtless Heron was an accomplished scholar, but he was no match for the keen satire and rapartee of Burns. Hence it is highly probable that his method of revenge was to depict the Poet's character in a lurid light, and conceal the object he had in view by a wail of counterfeit compassion. This was eminently characteristic of the man; he was jealous and revengeful, consequently his friendships were generally of brief duration. letter to the Literary Fund reflects a man who, after having lived his life in persistent defiance of every principle of temperance and foresight, and felt that he was hoplessly vanquished, whines and whimpers for the compassion and assistance of his stronger and

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more prudent fellow-mortals.

Heron, in his later days, was a typical example of the confirmed dipsomaniac who has lost his moral balance, and bade good-bye to principle and respectability. Obviously this was not the man to sit in judgment on Burns. Yet his characterisation of the Poet has entered into the weft and woof of nearly all subsequent biographies. Moreover, Heron's own dissolute habits were so well known that the presumption is that he unduly exaggerated the failings of Burns as a set-off against his own. As a matter of fact Heron's statements are negatived by a reputable Burns contemporary, in the person of Mr Gray, the Rector of Dumfries Grammar School. The impression Gray's pen-and-ink picture conveys to most minds is that it is more consistent with real facts than the tavern brawler so picturesquely outlined by Heron. If the fool is to be judged according to his folly, poor Heron suffered more in his lifetime than ever Burns did, and since his death both works and author have been condemned to a neglect and oblivion their merits scarcely deserve. It is but justice to Heron to say of his published works that they do not convey an adequate idea of his accomplishments, natural and acquired. The greater number of them were written for bread or to pay his debts, and their subjects were chosen by booksellers. His style, though frequently declamatory and pompous, is often elegant and animated. addition to the works already mentioned, he produced, in 1798, a play entitled "St. Kilda," which was hissed off the stage for its coarse and indecent wit in the presence of its author. Stung to the quick by this unexpected reverse of fortune, he hurried home to his apartments, and took to his bed for several days, but he still hugged the delusion that this play was a masterly production, which had been wrongly condemned by the prejudice and malignity of the dunces. Nor would he be deterred from publishing it; but the public refused to accept it at its author's exaggerated estimate, and it fell from the press still-born. Heron also wrote verses for the magazines; and he sketched the plan of an extended poem entitled the " Schoolmaster," but he did not live to complete it. In 1799 he removed to London, where he

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engaged in various kinds of literary work, and, at the request of the English Government, he edited a newspaper in the French language for circulation amongst the Royalists in France. Moreover, he was employed by several newspapers as Parliamentary reporter, but no sooner did he earn a little money than he squandered it in dissipation, frequently betraying the confidence of his patrons.

The result was that he was constantly rendering himself less capable of successfully grappling with his debts and difficulties. Finally he was thrown into Newgate prison for debt, from whence he dispatched his famous letter to the Literary Fund, which is quoted by Isaac Disraeli in his "Calamities and Quarrels of Authors." Disraeli concludes by saying that "the fate of Heron is the fate of hundreds of authors by profession in the present day--of men of some literary talent who can never extricate themselves from a degrading state of poverty.” Genius can scarcely be claimed for Robert Heron, but few of his contemporaries in any branch of literature possessed his learning and talent, and perhaps none were more the victims of their own folly. Deprived of his liberty and broken in health and spirit, Heron was removed to the hospital connected with the Newgate prison, where he died in April, 1807, at the age of forty-two. Only those who know the solitary wilds which surround the birthplace of Robert Heron and can form an adequate conception of the Arcadian simplicity of his youthful days can realise the tragedy of his dissolute and wasted life.

WM. M'ILWRAITH.

THE RESTORATION OF THE AULD

BRIG O' AYR.

T

HE Brig proper consists of four beautifully shaped segmental arches, each from 52 to 53 feet span, three massive piers of 15 feet in thickness with triangular cutwaters and heavy land abutments on either bank. It rises 27 feet above high-water mark, and the tidal fall is about 8 feet. The width of the Brig footway averages 12 feet between the parapets, and the steeply sloping roadways that at the south end between houses gives the Brig and approaches an approximate length of over 500 feet; but the Brig proper between the abutments is 255 feet long. About the Brig there is nothing mechanical either in the setting out of the work or in the building, and it has all that indescribable charm of humanness which is a distinctive feature of all old work. For instance, no two arches or cutwaters are exactly similar; and the northmost arch, the last built, is two feet less in height than the others. None of the arches spring too accurately from the piers, and there is that delightful honesty of procedure manifested throughout the work, showing so frankly that where a pier and its lower arch stones had been built four inches overmuch to one side and the variation discovered, the builders accepted the fact and laid the next arch course four inches over and into the true line. The very spur stones of the piers' bases vary, and one of them has on its upper surface a large incised heart.

This, then, is the Brig we set out to preserve with all its curves, and twists, and settlements, that when the work should be completed few might know it had been touched at all; moreover, we desired that each separate movement of the fabric might be preserved and clearly shown on its face. The resolution of

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