CHAPTER XXIV.
"This modest stone, what few vain marbles can,
May truly say, here lies an honest man:
A poet, blest beyond the poet's fate,
Whom heaven kept sacred from the proud and great."
While on a recent visit to Dumfries, I lodged in the same house with Robert Burns, the eldest son of the Scottish bard, who is now about sixty-five years old. I also visited the grave of the poet, which is in the church-yard at the lower end of the town. A few days afterwards I arrived at Ayr, and being within three miles of the birth-place of Burns, and having so lately stood over his grave, I felt no little interest in seeing the cottage in which he was born, and the monument erected to his memory; and therefore, after inquiring the road, I started on my pilgrimage. In going up the High Street, we passed the Wallace Tower, a Gothic building, with a statue of the renowned chief, cut by Thorn, the famed sculptor of "Tam O'Shanter and Souter Johnny," occupying the highest niche. The Scottish hero is represented not in warlike attitude, but in a thoughtful mood, as if musing over the wrongs of his country. We were soon out of
