His strong constitution, which he was always the reverse of niggard in conserving, began to give way at last. He looked already prematurely old. An attack of rhuematic fever, from which he never properly recovered, hastened the catastrophe. In his intervals of relief, however, aye, and sometimes when racked with pain, both of body and mind, he still wrought on, building up that marvelous structure of Scottish song which is without its equal in the annals of the world's literature.

As a last resourse he went on the 4th July to Brow, a sea bathing hamlet on the Solway, in search of that health which he was doomed never to recover. He returned home again on the 18th, if anything, weaker, and more feverish. The hand of death was evidently upon him. He had to be assisted into the house from the cart which brought him to the foot of the Millhole Brae, and to his bed. His condition rapidly became worse. His mind was lost in delirium, and he expired on the 21st, shortly after daybreak..

SUMMARY OF THE POSTHUMOUS HISTORY OF BURNS.

HE sun of Robert Burns was eclipsed by the Great Shadow, before it had reached its meridian splendour, midst poverty and muttered execrations against the legal agent whose letters, threatening him with the horrors of a jail, are so agonizingly alluded to by the Poet in his letter to his cousin, Mr. James Burnes, Writer, Montrose, in which he asked to be accommodated, by return of post, with the loan of ten pounds.

The funeral is thus described by Dr. Currie: "The Gentlemen Volunteers of Dumfries determined to bury their illustrious associate with military honours, and every preparation was made to render this last service solemn and impressive. The Fencible Infantry of Angusshire, and the regiment of Cavalry of the Cinque Ports, at that time quartered in Dumfries, offered their assistance on this occasion; the principal inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood determined to walk in the funeral procession; and a vast concourse of persons assembled, some of them from a considerable distance, to witness the obsequies of the Scottish bard. On the evening of the 25th of July, the remains of Burns were removed from his house to the Town Hall, and the funeral took place on the succeeding day. A party of the Volunteers, selected to perform the military duty in the church-yard, stationed themselves in the front of the procession, with their arms reversed; the main body of the corps surrounded and supported the coffin, on which were placed the hat and sword of their friend and fellow-soldier; the numerous body of attendants ranged themselves in the rear; while the Fencible regiments of Infantry and Cavalry lined the streets from the Town Hall to the burial ground in the southern

church-yard, a distance of more than half-a-mile. The whole procession moved forward to that sublime and affecting strain of music, The Dead March in Saul; and three volleys fired over his grave marked the return of Burns to his parent earth! The spectacle was in a high degree grand and solemn, and accorded with the general sentiments of sympathy and sorrow which the occasion had called forth."

Dr. Currie, adds: "It was an affecting circumstance, that on the morning of the day of her husband's funeral, Mrs. Burns was undergoing the pains of labour, and that, during the solemn service we have just been describing, the posthumous son of our Poet was born."

The Edinburgh Advertiser for July 26th, contained the following announcement : "The public are respectfully informed, that contributions for the wife and family of the late Robert Burns, who are left in circumstances of extreme distress, will be received at the houses of Sir William Forbes & Co. ; of Messrs Mansfield, Ramsay & Co., and at the shops of the Edinburgh Booksellers.

"As it is proposed to publish, sometime hence, a posthumous volume of the poetical remains of Robert Burns, for the benefit of the author's family, his friends and acquaintances are requested to transmit such poems and letters as happen to be in their possession to Alexander Cunningham, Writer, George's Street, Edinburgh; or to John Syme, Esq. of Ryedale, Dumfries."

Meanwhile, the subscription went on, but not flourishingly. In Dumfriesshire somewhat more than £100 had been contributed within the first three months. In Liverpool, Dr. Currie gathered seventy guineas. By the end of the year, Edinburgh had sent in about eighty pounds. In London, there was greater success, and the entire sum realised was £700. Mr. James Shaw, subsequently Sir James Shaw, Baronet, (a native of Ayrshire, to whose memory a statue was erected at the Cross of Kilmarnock) and Chamberlain of London, besides contributing £100, took upon himself the whole trouble connected with the subscription in the metropolis. He purchased £400 of the 3 per cent Reduced Stock in June 1797, at £505%, and £100 of the same Stock in October 1799, at £59; and

this £500 of Stock was transferred in May 1800, to the Magistrates of Ayr, for the benefit of the Poet's family. With Sir James's £100, which was also invested in the same stock, £676, 19s. 10d., 3 per cents stood in the name of the Provost and Bailies of the town of Ayr, for the benefit of the widow and children of Robert Burns. The worthy Baronet on learning that Burns had left two daughters, natural children, who had not hitherto benefited by the liberality of the public to their father's family, was induced to renew a subscription for making a small provision for the destitute girls. From the newspapers of the time we learn that "the subscriptions have amounted to £310, 11s., at the head of which is fifty guineas from William Fairlie, Esq., Calcutta, with this sum £523 have been purchased in the reduced 3 per cents., which added to that already purchased in the same fund, and together standing in the name of the Provost and Bailies of the town of Ayr, makes a total of £1200, of which £800 is to be appropriated to the use of Mrs. Burns and her three sons, and £400 to the use of the two girls; one moiety payable to each on marriage, or on attaining the age of twenty-one, and in the event of either of them dying under these periods, the moiety due to her to go to the survivor."

During this time preparations were being made, by collecting the poet's manuscripts, for publishing a new edition of his works, the proceeds of which were to be handed over to his family. After some delay in the selecting of a suitable person to edit the publication, it was finally agreed that Dr. James Currie should undertake the duties. In 1800 appeared

"THE WORKS OF ROBERT BURNS;

with an account of his Life and a Criticism of his Writings. To which are prefixed some observations on the Character and Condition of the Scottish Peasantry. In Four Volumes." Two thousand copies were printed, price 31s. 6d. This realised £1,400 for the benefit of the Poet's family.

Immediately after the death of Burns there was much talk of a subscription for a monument to mark the spot where he was buried, and which he himself had selected in the north-east corner of St. Michael's Church-yard, but nothing came of it at the time. In one of his letters we find him using this proud

language: "When I am laid in my grave, I wish to be stretched at my full length, that I may occupy every inch of ground that I have a right to!" Mrs. Burns, beginning to think that her husband had got every inch of ground he had a right to, covered his grave at her own expense with a plain tombstone, inscribed simply with the name and age of the Poet. In 1813 a public meeting was held at Dumfries, General Dunlop, son of Burns's friend and Patroness, being in the chair; a subscription was opened, and contributions flowing in rapidly from all quarters, a costly Mausoleum was at length erected on the most elevated site which the churchyard presented.

Thither the remains of the Poet, and those of his two boys, Maxwell, a posthumous child, who lived two years and nine months, and Francis Wallace, who died in 1803, aged fourteen, were solemnly transferred on the 12th September, 1815. The original tombstone of Burns was sunk under the pavement of the Mausoleum; and the grave which first received his remains is now occupied, according to her own dying request, by the eldest daughter of Mrs. Dunlop Mrs. Perochon, who died in October, 1825.

A ponderous Latin inscription was composed with the view of informing visitors that "Hoc Mausoleum" was built "in æternum honorem Roberti Burns, Poetarum Caledonia." By the rarest good fortune it was never put up, although some of the Poet's biographers have quoted the whole inscription as "noted down from the original," and Allan Cunningham laments that "the merits of him who wrote Tam O'Shanter, and the Cottar's Saturday Night, are concealed in Latin!”

Mrs. Burns continued to live in the same small house in which her husband died, an object of general respect on account of her modest and amiable character, and the interest associated with the memory of the Poet. She died on March 26th, 1834. At the opening of the Mausoleum for the interment of Mrs. Burns, it was resolved by some citizens of Dumfries, with the concurrence of the nearest relatives of the widow, to raise the cranium of the Poet from the grave, and have a cast moulded from it, with a view to gratifying the interest likely to be felt by the students of phrenology respecting its peculiar development. This purpose was carried into effect during the