His songs of TRUTH all creeds uphold-
"A man's a man for a' that!
An honest man's as good as gold,
An' nane can yet misca' that!
He had his faults, and so have we,
His virtues let us cherish;

His songs are sung from sea to sea,
Burns's name shall never perish!

THE LAND OF BURNS.

BY EDGAR L. WAKEMAN.

Some of the Scenes and Places Connected With His Famous Poems-Much that Will Prove Interesting About the Poet and His Life.

IN that broad and measureless sense in which a poet of the people knits his personality adorably into the hearts of an entire nation, all of grand old Scotia is truly the "land of Burns." In a closer geographical respect, where both personality and genius have been all-pervading, and have left on every hand some memory of association and enduring reminder of the bard's actual presence, there are, provincially, distinctively two "Burns's Lands" in Bonnie Scotland.

These are Ayrshire, on the Firth of Clyde, and Dumfriesshire, on the Solway Firth, adjoining counties of southwestern Scotland. From the top of Merrick Mountain in the northern part of Kirkcudbrightshire, which wedges a strip of glorious hill country to the north between the two former shires, to which I had tramped to wander down the Doon from its very source, the sight can traverse the entire breadth of both the Ayrshire Land of Burns and the Land of Burns of Dumfriesshire. There is not another scene in all the world more fraught with glowing natural beauty; not another one more mournfuly sweet and tender in gentle and pathetic memories.

To the eye the panorama of all the lovely land in which the brief life of the bard was passed is practically complete. To the mind all the vast host of his poetic creations; the joy and sadness of the man in their doing: the penury, struggle, glory and despair, from birth to death, are here massed with overwhelming impressiveness. To the west is

Ayrshire, at first, by the birth-spot near pleasant Ayr, sunny and low beside the sea. Then, following the vale of the Doon, it comes all the way to your feet, in gentle uplands, then in rugged hills and shadowy burns, and finally in huge mountains and savage glens. Passing over into Dumfriesshire, the mountains spread into broad, luxurious vales. One, where the murmuring Nith winds to the Solway, is a dream of opulence and rest. Then as the spires of old Dumfries town blend with the ragged solway edge, hoary Criffel" looms threateningly. At last a glint of blue shows where is Brow Well, from which the poet, close to death, was carried back to the little Dumfries cottage and his loyal Jean; and like a tiny dazzling cone of white is seen the dome of the huge mausoleum where old Scotia's dearest bard is at rest in eternal peace.

The two shires and their very topography-the western sea and its soft shores, the vales, the uplands, the midshire rugged heights, the sweet valley where the bard's most fecund and his happiest hours were passed at Ellisland beside the Nith, the lowering mountain again, the glint of the sea and a nation's grave-powerfully suggest the two epochs of Burns's eventful life. Ayrshire saw his youthtide; his feverish, fervent early struggles. Dumfriesshire gave the only blessed calm he knew; the sad and desperate later days; and yet it was in Dumfriesshire that the great heart grew still. Ayrshire glories in his birthplace, the scenes of his youth, the unfolding of his genius, the first acknowledgement of his fame. Dumfriesshire is glorified by his riper fame, his better accomplishment, even by the pathos of his later days, and by the precious heritage of cherishing his mortal remains.

Though here to wander by the Doon, to which the mind unconsciously reverts at mention of the poet's name, while pilgriming among the countless shrines created by his living presence in these two shires, and looking down along the flaming shaft of light that links his genius and world-girding human love and magnanimity to the fadeless immortality of his name, I cannot but feel that the scenes which most breathe to the beholder the spirit of ineffable pathos and tenderness belong to the second epoch of his life, and lie along the Nith instead of clustering about "the banks and braes o' bonnie Doon." True, from where you may stand here with me on Merrick's heights the Ayrshire shrines,

almost within the limit of vision, are rich and countless. You may not discern each one with the naked eye, but you can plainly see where all may be found in a short day's journey.

The spires of Ayr seem almost beneath your feet. Just outside the rim of verdure shutting in the city, where a faint curling line of misty purple outlines the sinuous course of the Doon as it nears the sea, are the low-roofed thatched cottage where Burns was born, beside the splendid seat of Roselle, on the little farm of seven acres which was rented by the poet's father, and the spot where the Gipsy hag foretold, as the father was riding in haste for the doctor, that

We'll a' be proud of Robin.

Not a half mile distant can be descried the rotting belltower of" Alloway's Auld Haunted Kirk." All about are the scenes of "Tam O'Shanter," and near on a slight eminence can be see the white, colonnaded shafts of the great Burns monument. But a few miles to the northeast in a pleasant champaign country, now dotted by thriving villages and threaded with emerald lines of hedge, coppice and plantations, are Tarbolton and Mauchline, but four miles apart.

At the former was laid the scene of "Death and Dr. Hornbrook," and it was here that the pathetic parting of Burns and his Highland Mary occurred. You can see the square tower of Mauchline Castle, whose owner, Gavin Hamilton, became Burns's patron, and will know that at this village was "Johnnie Dow's " house, and still remains unaltered the public house of "Poosie Nansie," scene of the "Jolly Beggars;" while over there but a mile and a half west of Mauchline is the noted farm of Mossgiel, once conducted with such ruinous heroism by the poet and his brother, Gilbert. It was here that the "Cottar's Saturday Night" and others of Burns's greatest poems were written, and where the poet, after preparing to fly to Jamaica and, suddenly being called by Dr. Blacklock to Edinburgh, from which he had returned in triumph, was clasped in his poor old mother's embrace while her ecstatic lips could only utter the cry, "Oh, Robert! Robert!"

These and countless other interesting with many tender identifications of bard and place or object are yours when wandering in or near the vale of the Doon. They are all

fine and good, and worth coming a long way to enjoy, but I do not think any or all of them take hold of the heart as does the spell which broods on the other side of these mountains in the Dumfriesshire land of Burns. Perhaps it is your own attitude and sentiment. Perhaps in the Doon country the suggestiveness of the youthful, vagarous, impulsively riotous earlier years of the plowman poet, when he himself sang of the

"Rakish art of Rob Mossgiel !"

haunts you like hints of hovering shadows. Perhaps, too, it is the occasional shock to your own reverence that now and then comes from the holiday sort of levity in thousands from all lands who come and poke about and go, as though there were a certain kind of purient gratification in fine remarks on the sacred episodes of Highland Mary, and gentle, loyal Jean, and on finding where immortal poet soul was sent among the human harmonies in the dark recess of the Ayr cottage-forgetting that the Master in the lowly manger came.

So if you know all the strange story and double picture, you instinctively turn from the vague buffoonery casual pilgrims interpret in the first part, to the later and better part where the strong, fine tread of poet and man first truly set in; to the scenes where few irreverent pilgrims come; and here at the utmost source of the bonnie Doon, with misting eyes you look over into Nith-vale past old Dumfries town to the roaring Solway tides and seem to know, as of a loved one gone, the deeper, tenderer mysteries of his environment and life. The period covers the ten years preceding his death, from his twenty-seventh to his thirtyseventh year of age; a period into which was crowded more personal hope and disappointment, joy and suffering, remorse for impulsive wrong-doing, heaven of purest domestic bliss, temptation and victory, agonized despair and triumph, than fall to the lot of most great men in their entire lives. There were first the disownment and desertion by Jean Armour; the betrothal to Highland Mary, with the sad parting and her tragic death; the publication of the now priceless though then humble Kilmarnock edition of his poems; the preparation for flight to Jamaica; the triumphant visit to Edinburgh; the generous caring for the mother and brothers; the glad reunion with his Jean,

and the homebuilding at Ellisland over there by the songful Nith.

Then came the brief, bright days. The proceeds of settlement with Creech, his Edinburgh publisher, netted him the then munificent sum of about £500. Magnanimously generous always, much of this sum, the first and last material good fortune Burns ever knew, went to Jean's parents, and to assist his brother Gilbert Burns in averting disaster in the latter's farm-life efforts. His lucky meeting with the ingenious and kindly Patrick Miller of Dalswinton Hall, had occurred. It had been settled that the poet, who hated the city with a royal hatred, should return to the plough. The nobility of the day never quite forgave his plebian longing and love, the source of his grandest inspirations. The beautiful farm of Ellisland, five miles above Dumfries, was taken at a rental of £50 per year. Burns unaided began his farm labors the first Monday after Whitsunday, 1788. He toiled manfully until the autumn of that year, meantime singing many a lusty song to his absent wife, and built the lovely cottage which stands embowered in roses to this day.

And then was celebrated the simple but glorious homecoming, when, with rustic rites, and his bonnie Jean upon his arm, "preceded by a peasant-girl carrying the family Bible and a bowl of salt," he marched proudly into his little home-heaven beside the winding Nith. All evidences agree that in the brief period of a trifle over two years, between Whitsunday, 1788, and Martinmas, 1691, Burns and his good Jean experienced an Eden of labor and love, despite their final enforced departure. It was also the period of Burns's best and greatest poetic accomplishment. But more children came to them. These must be supported. The crops failed, and inevitable ruin was approaching. It was then, with nowhere else on earth to turn, with no one on earth to defend him from the wretched influences of environment, that to save his wife and children from actual want, he was forced to accept the government position of exciseman at the beggarly pittance of £50 per year. The five remaining years of his life, after the poet, his Jean and their three children, Robert, Francis Wallace and William Nicol, removed to the humble lodgings, and then their cottage home in Dumfries, checkered, sad, pathetic beyond comprehension, are known to all.