biggin,' he put in two stone-jambs, as they are called, and a lintel, carrying up a chimney in his clay-gable. The consequence was, that as the gable subsided, the jambs, remaining firm, threw it off its centre; and one very stormy morning, when my brother was nine or ten days old, a little before day-light, a part of the gable fell out, and the rest appeared so shattered, that my mother, with the young poet, had to be carried through the storm to a neighbour's house, where they remained a week till their own dwelling was adjusted." When the father of Burns removed to Lochlea, he sold his leasehold of the New Gardens, as his grounds were called, and of the Clay Bigging, to the corporation of shoemakers in Ayr, to whom they still belong. For the last thirty-seven years, the property has been leased, at the rent of £33. per annum, by a person named Gowdie, formerly a miller, and who has some recollections of Burns. Gowdie occupies the cottage as an ale-house, and his tidy spouse keeps it in a state of the most laudable cleanness. In the accompanying print of the interior of the kitchen, the honest pair are represented as sitting at their twal hours, or lunch. The house is, as may well be supposed, in no want of custom. A correspondent had the curiosity to reckon up the number of names of strangers inserted in its album, during one month-September 1838-and found it to be three hundred and fifty. The accommodations have been extended since the poet's time, by the addition of a second cottage at the south gable, and by a barn at the opposite extremity; from which buildings it will be readily distinguished, in the print, by the sign boards which Gowdie has erected on the respective sides of the door. It is not unworthy of notice, that the thatched cottage opposite was that in which Murdoch taught his little school, when attended by Robert and Gilbert Burns. BURNS'S COTTAGE, INTERIOR. THE subject of this print has been described in the preceding article: it is the interior of the kitchen or inferior apartment of the clay cottage in which Burns first saw the light. The artist has so chosen his position, as to render very conspicuous a recess in the angle of the apartment, containing a bed. The bed in which the poet was born, stood here. According to the narrative of Mrs Gowdie, it was a square wooden conveniency, of the fashion still prevalent in Scottish cottages. In the course of time, it found its way to Brownhill Inn, in Dumfriesshire-probably through the connection of Burns with that district, and the sale of his property at Ellisland. When the furniture of the inn was on one occasion disposed of by roup, Burns's bed went for a trifle to the stable-boy; but afterwards its value as a curiosity became appreciated, and the happy purchaser obtained twenty guineas for it. MOSSGIE L. THE various letters of Mr Gilbert Burns to Dr Currie inform us that he and his brother took the farm of Mossgiel about the time when the affairs of their father were approaching the crisis of bankruptcy; that they entered upon the possession of it at Martinmas 1783 (some months before the death of their father); and that it consisted of 118 acres, at a rent of £90, and was stocked by the individual savings of the whole family, being a joint concern amongst them. The Earl of Loudoun was the proprietor; but the family of William Burns took the farm on a sub-lease from Mr Gavin Hamilton of Mauchline, who had attempted to cultivate it as a means of healthy recreation from the labours of his profession, and had built a rather superior house upon it, in which he designed partly to live. Mossgiel (originally Mossgavel) lies on the summit of a swelling piece of ground, somewhat more than a mile from Mauchline, and upon the road from that village to Kilmarnock. It not only is thus exposed to blasts, but has a cold wet till beneath it, so that ungenial weather is particularly unfavourable to its crops. From these causes, the first four seasons of the tenancy of the Burns family were unprofitable, and occasioned the loss of a considerable part of their original stock. Though the bard of Coila laboured upon it with untiring zeal, and was restricted (as was his brother) to a personal expenditure of only seven pounds a year, it is well known that the summer of 1786 found him a penniless and hopeless man. Gilbert, nevertheless, when relieved from immediate difficulties by part of the unexpected profits of his brother's poems, continued upon the farm for ten or twelve years more, when he removed to Dinning in Dumfriesshire, a farm belonging to Sir G. S. Menteath of Closeburn. The farm-steading of Mossgiel is, by reason of its elevated situation, conspicuous from a great distance around. It is closely surrounded by a very tall hedge and some wellgrown trees, the original purpose of which has evidently been to afford shelter, but which now confer ornament. The buildings have a quadrangular arrangement, with the manureheap in the centre, much after the style of Glaud's steading in the Gentle Shepherd: "A snug thack house, before the door a green; A peat-stack joins, and forms a rural square—” except that the various offices are of substantial masonry, and not thatched. A lane near by is said to have been a favourite walk of the poet: the field in which he turned up the mouse's nest with the plough is pointed out; and a tree is shown, underneath which he |