coasts, which however destructive to the interests of the kingdom at large, certainly enriches this corner of it, but too often at the expense of our morals. However, it enables individuals to make, at least for a time, a splendid appearance; but Fortune, as is usual with her when she is uncommonly lavish of her favours, is generally even with them at the last; and happy were it for numbers of them if she would leave them no worse than when she found them.

My mother sends you a small present of a cheese; 'tis but a very little one, as our last year's stock is sold off.

I shall conclude this long letter with assuring you that I shall be very happy to hear from you, or any of our friends in your country, when opportunity serves.

My father sends you, probably for the last time in this world, his warmest wishes for your welfare and happiness; and my mother and the rest of the family desire to enclose their kind compliments to you, Mrs. Burness, and the rest of your family, along with those of, dear sir, your affectionate cousin.

LOCHLEA, 17th February 1784.

DEAR COUSIN,-I would have returned you my thanks for your kind favour of the 13th of December sooner, had it not been that I waited to give you an account of that melancholy event which, for some time past, we have from day to day expected.

On the 13th current I lost the best of fathers, Though, to be sure, we have had long warning of the impending stroke, still the feelings of nature claim their part, and I cannot recollect the tender endearments and parental lessons of the best of friends and ablest of instructors, without feeling what perhaps the calmer dictates of reason would partly condemn.

I hope my father's friends in your country will not let their connection in this place die with him. For my part, I shall ever with pleasure, with pride, acknowledge my connection with those who were allied by the ties of blood and friendship to a man whose memory I shall ever honour and

revere.

I expect, therefore, my dear sir, you will not neglect any opportunity of letting me hear from you, which will very much oblige, my dear cousin, yours sincerely.

Every unprejudiced reader will gladly agree with Lockhart when he says of these letters:-"They are worthy of the strong understanding and warm heart of Burns; and, besides opening a pleasing view of the manner in which domestic affection was preserved between his

father and the relations from whom the accidents of life had separated that excellent person in boyhood, they appear to me-written by a young and unknown peasant, in a wretched hovel, the abode of poverty, care, and disease-to be models of native good taste and politeness."

February 13, 1784, the day on which William Burnes died, witnessed at Lochlea a truly touching and prophetic deathbed scene.

Mrs. Begg [the Poet's youngest sister, then in her fourteenth year]— says Chambers-remembers being at her father's bedside that morning, with no other company besides her brother Robert. Seeing her cry bitterly at the thought of parting with her dear father, he endeavoured to speak, but could only murmur a few words of comfort, such as might be suitable to a child, concluding with an injunction to her "to walk in virtue's paths, and shun every vice." After a pause, he said there was one of his family for whose future conduct he feared. He repeated the same expression, when the young Poet came up and said, “Oh, father, is it me you mean?" The old man said it was. Robert turned to the window, with the tears streaming down his manly cheeks, and his bosom swelling as if it would burst from the very restraint he put upon himself. The father had marked his son

"Misled by fancy's metor ray,
By passion driven."

All the world knows that the dying parent's fears were only too well grounded. But, be it remembered, if William Burnes lived long enough to tremble for Robert's future amid life's snares and pitfalls, he also lived long enough to experience bright hope in the rich promise, and joyous admiration in the actual perusal, of some of the unsurpassed early productions of his marvellously-gifted

son.

Over the mortal remains of his beloved and venerated father, which were conveyed to their resting-place in Alloway Kirkyard, Robert reared a simple tombstone, and for an epitaph he wrote the well-known lines inscribed thereon :

O ye whose cheek the tear of pity stains,
Draw near with pious rev'rence, and attend!
Here lie the loving husband's dear remains,
The tender father, and the gen'rous friend;
The pitying heart that felt for human woe;
The dauntless heart that fear'd no human pride;
The friend of man-to vice alone a foe:

For "even his failings lean'd to virtue's side."

May we not regard Burns as herein imparting to his father a share in his own deathless fame-a share wellmerited, indeed, by the essential worth of this man "of stubborn, ungainly integrity," and because of the unwearying pains and ungrudging self-sacrifices he underwent to help Robert, through training of head and heart, to be what he is, as a Poet, to Scotland and the world.

C

CHAPTER III.

FROM 1784-1786. AGE, 25-27.

MAUCHLINE.

I mind it weel in early date,

MOSSGIEL AND

When I was beardless, young, and blate,
And first could thresh the barn,
E'en then a wish, I mind its power,
A wish that to my latest hour

Shall strongly heave my breast;
That I, for puir auld Scotland's sake,
Some useful plan or book could make,
Or sing a sang at least.

Epistle to the Guidwife o' Wauchope House.

SHORTLY before the death of their father, Robert and Gilbert had leased the farm of Mossgiel, situated on the parish road between Tarbolton and Mauchline, distant about two miles from Lochlea and one mile from Mauchline village. The farm consisted of 118 acres of clayey upland, and, in its then undrained condition, must have been a very cold and backward subject for cultivation. During the latter years at Lochlea, the affairs of William Burnes were, as already noticed, sorely embarrassed; hence Mossgiel was but indifferently stocked with what remained after settlement with the creditors at Lochlea.

In March 1784, however, the family entered the new farm, which was a joint concern among them, with a united determination toward frugal industry, and not without considerable prospect of success. Robert was strong and skilful in all kinds of farm-work; Gilbert was steady and prudent in business affairs; while Mrs. Burnes and her daughters were available for the duties of the household and dairy. But, in little over a year, the

family was again confronted with disheartening failure and harassing poverty. The Poet thus sketches the

situation :

I entered this farm with a full resolution-Come, go to, I will be wise! I read farming books, I calculated crops, I attended markets; and, in short, in spite of "the devil, and the world, and the flesh," I believe I should have been a wise man; but the first year, from unfortunately buying bad seed, and the second, from a late harvest, we lost half our crops. This overset all my wisdom, and I returned like "the dog to his vomit, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire." My brother wanted my hare-brained imagination, as well as my social and amorous madness; but, in good sense, and every sober qualification, he was far my superior.

Notwithstanding these resolutions, no doubt sincere at the time, it might have been suspected that, so far as success on the farm depended on Robert, it rested on an unstable foundation. It is indeed conceivable that such an one as he was as a poet might also prove, in backward times, a drudging successful farmer on a fully-rented farm such as Mossgiel. But experience has nearly always pointed the other way. His field was the wide world of human nature and experience. His gifts and destinies were those of an unrivalled national poet, and for this let us be duly glad and thankful. The lives of not a few famous votaries of the muse join with Burns's life in lending point to his facetious lines

His personal expenditure at this period cannot, however, be deemed in any sense lavish; for we are emphatically