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a tear as ever woman shed, and I trust the balsam would remove every sense of the pain from his breast which my friendly candour could occasion."

And again :

"I can only say there is no piece in the whole I would vote to leave out, tho' severals where I would draw my pen over lines, or spill the ink-glass over a verse, from the esteem which I nevertheless entertain for the author."

Divested of her robes of state, here stands the real woman-the woman whose beauty of soul Burns worshipped. She meant well, and Burns knew it. In taking full advantage of the privileges of the candid friend, she forestalled the critics who came after her, for there is scarce a loose joint in his harness she did not do her best, according to her light, to mend and strengthen.

The truth is, Mrs Dunlop could not, and never did, realise that Burns came not to fulfil but to destroy the artificial school of poetry in which she had been reared; that he was a solid reality, and not a veneered article; that his genius would have drooped and died within the prison walls to which she and Dr Moore would have consigned him. To reply to all her letters he knew right well would be the beginning of acrid controversy; he therefore systematically ignored all contentious questions, preferring to exasperate her by silence rather than risk a quarrel by asserting himself. But though he thus treated the critic with scant courtesy, for the woman he ever retained the profoundest respect. Whether or not her friendship waxed dim in the gloaming of Dumfries, certain it is that it shone bright in the after darkness. Burns's reverential regard for her never wavered to the last hour of his existence. The moving words in the last letter he wrote to her, a few days before he died, despite their dignified and distant tone, sound like a stifled sob:

"MADAM,

I have written you so often, without receiving any answer, that I would not trouble you again but for the circumstances in which I am. An illness which has long hung about me, in all probability

will speedily send me beyond that bourne whence no traveller returns. Your friendship, with which for many years you honoured me, was a friendship dearest to my soul. Your conversation, and especially your correspondence, were at once highly entertaining and instructive. With what pleasure did I use to break up the seal! The remembrance yet adds one pulse more to my poor palpitating heart!

Farewell!!!

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"last post for

him had sounded; the rest was silence-silence eternal. On the 20th of July, the day before he died, she penned the following note, from Dunlop, to Gilbert Burns at Mossgiel*:

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It gives me real concern to hear your brother has been in a bad state of health for some time past. Will you forgive me taking the liberty to beg you will be so good as let me know what were your last accounts of him, when you heard, and what was the nature of his complaints, which I sincerely hope are not of the nature to be attended with any danger? I shall also be happy to learn that your own family are as well as I can wish them, and your cousin Fanny, to whom pray remember me.

humble servt.

From, Sir, Your most FRAN. A. DUNLOP."

From what source did she learn of his bad state of health, and why were her enquiries not made direct to Dumfries? We cannot tell. This letter, however, is another proof of the unreliability of the Currie narrative. It also establishes beyond doubt that Mrs Dunlop's friendship for the Poet continued unabated to the last.

Mrs Dunlop was born twenty-nine years before Burns, and outlived him nineteen years, dying in 1815, at the age of eighty-five. She was only daughter of Sir Thomas Wallace, of Craigie, advocate, and his spouse, Dame Eleanora Agnew, of Lochryan, Wigtownshire. Craigie

*Burns Chronicle, 1904, No. XIII.

Castle, in the parish of Craigie, the ancient fortalice of the Wallaces, was forsaken in the fifteenth century, when Newton Castle, in Newton of the town of Ayr, became the family residence.

As this building became ruinous about

1730, it is more than probable she was born in Craigie House, which is situated within three miles, as the crow

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John Dunlop, of Dunlop, a descendant of one of the oldest families in Ayrshire, who died in 1785. Thirteen children were born of the marriage. Thomas, the eldest surviving son, succeeded to the Craigie estate, which, however, he was obliged to sell, in 1783, to the present owners, the Campbells of Craigie. His wife, who was daughter of Sir Wm. Maxwell, of Monreith, and sister of the celebrated Duchess

of Gordon, did not commend herself to her mother-in-law,* and this led to a family rupture. Andrew, the fourth son, the "Major" of the correspondence, rose to the rank of General (as did others of the family), and was the Parliamentary representative of the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright from 1813 to 1816. James, the fifth son, also a soldier, succeeded him in Dunlop in 1804; and he, again, was succeeded by his eldest son, John, who rebuilt Dunlop House in 1833, represented his native county in Parliament for several years, and was created a baronet in 1838. The baronetcy became extinct on the death of his son, James, in 1858. The natural predilection of the family was for a military or naval career, and most of them served in either of these capacities. Two of her daughters, Agnes and Susan, married French refugees (Joseph Perochon, merchant, London; and James Henri, landed proprietor, France); Frances, the fourth daughter, married Robert Vans Agnew, of Sheuchan and Barnbarroch, Wigtownshire; Rachel, the fifth daughter, married Robert Glasgow, of MountGreenan, Ayrshire; Keith, the youngest, died unmarried in 1858.

The

A portrait of Mrs Dunlop, painted by Gill Mossman in 1747, appears as frontispiece in Dr Wallace's work; and another, said to be also in the possession of the family, was engraved for the "Land of Burns " in 1840, and reproduced in Blackie's edition of Burns, in 1846. former represents her at the age of seventeen; the latter looks the portrait of a woman between fifty and sixty, and differs so widely from the earlier one that it is hard to believe they are presentments of the same person; but time often works wondrous changes on the human countenance. In the one, she appears a bright, lively, young woman, in the flower of maidenhood; in the other, the countenance is that of a comely old lady of ripe years, of

* She was something of a hoyden in her youth, if all stories are true; and she wrote plays in her maturer years. As "Lady Wallace," she was well known in the Edinburgh and London of her day.

benign aspect, wearing the matron's head-dress of the period.

We have been unable to ascertain definitely the place of her sepulture, notwithstanding many enquiries and personal investigation on our part. As the property remained in the family till 1843, the probability is that she was interred in the family vault at Dunlop. Her fifth son, we know for certain, was buried there in 1832, but there is no reference whatever to his mother in record or on memorial tablet in the parish of Dunlop, nor is there any indication in the vault that she rests beside him. This son was a Lieutenant-General, and fellowofficer of Sir John Moore, the hero of Corunna

EDITOR.

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