"My cave wad be a lover's bower,

Tho' raging winter rent the air;
And she a lovely little flower,

That I wad tent and shelter there.

"O, sweet is she in yon town,

Yon sinkin sun's gane down upon!

A fairer than's in yon town,

His setting beam ne'er shone upon.

"If angry fate is sworn my foe,

And suffering I am doom'd to bear;
I careless quit aught else below,
But spare me, spare me Lucy dear.

"For while life's dearest blood is warm,
Ae thought frae her shall ne'er depart,
And she-as fairest is her form!

She has the truest, kindest heart."

Alas for beauty-fortune-affections-and hopes!

This lovely and accomplished woman had not blessed Mr Oswald above a year beyond this period, when she fell into pulmonary consumption. A removal to a warmer climate was tried, in the hope of restoring health; but she died at Lisbon, in January 1798, at an age little exceeding thirty.

MAUCHLINE,.

GAVIN HAMILTON'S HOUSE.

THE village of Mauchline, twelve miles to the south of Kilmarnock, on the road from Glasgow to Dumfries, is peculiarly well entitled to a place among these sketches, from its connection with the personal and literary history of Burns. The years of his life between the twenty-fifth and twenty-eighth were spent at Mossgiel, a mile from Mauchline,— the years during which he wrote his principal poems, and when, to use the language of Mr Lockhart, "his character came out in all its brightest lights, and in all but its darkest shadows." As the chief seat of an assembled population in his neighbourhood, this village, all humble as it was, appropriated a large share of the notice of the poet, during this important era. To it he resorted, after labour, for the pleasures of society-there he presided in his debating club, or shone over his bowl, or addressed the daughters of beauty in that language which no man ever could use as he. Mauchline and its people, accordingly, are very conspicuous in his writings. It was the scene of the Holy Fair, and of the Jolly Beggars. Here dwelt his hosts, John Dow and Nanse Tinnock. His mistress, Jean Armour, was one of the "six proper young belles" of Mauchline, whom he celebrates. He proposes to meet Lapraik at "Mauchline race," or "Mauchline fair." Its minister was the unfortunate Daddy Auld, whom he has characterised so ungently; and one of its elders

was that Holy Willie into whose mouth he has put so remarkable an exposition of rigid Calvinism. And here was the residence of his friend Gavin Hamilton, to whom he inscribes a Dedication, and whose friendship was unquestionably one of the most important circumstances of his early life.

Mauchline is described, in the ordinary topographical authorities, as a neatly built village of upwards of thirteen hundred inhabitants, situated on the face of a slope, about a mile from the Ayr. The present minister, in his statistical account of the parish, states that it was formerly a burgh of barony, but that the charter was lost an hundred and twenty years ago, and has never been renewed. We might at first suppose that a rustic population, like that of Mauchline, would form but a poor field for the descriptive and satirical genius of Burns. It is wonderful, however, how variously original many of the inhabitants of the most ordinary Scottish village will contrive to be. Human nature may be studied every where; and perhaps it no where assumes so many strikingly distinct forms as in a small cluster of men, such as is to be found in a town of a thousand inhabitants. In such a place, every individual luxuriates in his own particular direction, till the whole become as well individualised as the objects of inanimate nature; while in a city, the individual is lost in the mass, and no one is greatly different from another. In a small town, the character of every man is well known, so that every thing he says or does appears to his fellows as characteristic. One is a wag, another is a miser, a third exaggerates all that he has to relate, a fourth delights (but this perhaps is little distinction) in strong waters. Every one is more or less a humorist, and, as such, affords a perpetual amusement to his compeers. If Shakspeare could draw lively delineations of human character from such persons as the originals of Silence and Shallow, it may well be conceived that a genius like Burns must have seen as good subjects in many of the villagers of Mauchline. To give an idea of the taste for wit and humour which might exist in such a scene as this, we may quote what was said by a shopkeeper named D, when on his deathbed, in reference to a person who had been to him and all the other inhabitants as the very sun and soul of fun for many years, and was recently deceased. Even in this melancholy condition, D said he accounted it no small consolation to reflect, that he had lived in the same days with John Weir. The mind of the honest trader might no doubt have been filled with reflections more fitting to his situation; but it is impossible to doubt that it was from such escapes of natural character that the very happiest touches of both Shakspeare and Burns. were derived.

The church, seen in the view, is a recent substitute for a low ungainly building which existed in Burns's time. The burial ground surrounding the old edifice was more particularly the scene of the Holy Fair,-in other words, of the out-door preachings attending

The church of Mauchline was a cell or appendage of Melrose Abbey. George Wishart, the celebrated martyr of the Reformation, was, in 1544, invited to preach at Mauchline kirk; but, on arriving at the place, found that the sheriff of Ayr, an opponent of the Protestant doctrines, had planted a guard on the church to keep him out. Some of the country people proposed to force an entrance; but he forbade them, saying, "It is the word of peace I preach unto you. The blood of no man shall be shed for it this day. Christ is as mighty in the fields as in the church; and he himself preached oftener in the desert and on the sea-side than in the temple of Jerusalem." Then walking to the edge of the moor, on the south side of the town, he held forth to the multitude for upwards of three hours.