Tam
O'Shanter blazing with devilish light as he approached it along the road
from Ayr, and there is a small square one on the side next the road;
there is also an odd kind of belfry, almost the smallest ever made, with
a little bell in it,--and this is all. But no grand and storied
cathedral pile in all Europe is better known, and to no shrine of famous
minster do more pilgrims journey than to this wee kirk immortalized by
the pen of Burns.

The father of Burns has been thus described by one who knew him well:--

"He was a tender and affectionate father; he took pleasure in
leading his children in the path of virtue, not in driving them as
some parents do to the performance of duties to which they are
themselves averse. He took care to find fault but seldom; and
therefore when he did rebuke, he was listened to with a kind of
reverential awe. A look of disapprobation was felt; a reproof was
severely so; and a stripe even on the skirt of the coat, gave
heartfelt pain."

He was, indeed, a frugal, industrious, and good man, and his wife seems
to have been a woman of good report; so that the little group of
children, in spite of their poverty, were really happily situated in
life, compared with many of their neighbors. There was always a tinge of
melancholy in Robert's disposition, however, and in his earliest youth
he used to embody it in verse. The sensibility of genius was his by
birthright, and the depressions and exaltations of spirit which marked
his later life began at a very early day. He himself describes his
earliest years thus:--

"I was by no means a favorite with anybody. I was a good deal noted
for a retentive memory, a stubborn, sturdy something in my
disposition, and an enthusiastic, idiot piety."

Again he says:--

"This kind of life--the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the
unceasing toil of a galley-slave--brought me to my sixteenth year;
a little before which period I first committed the sin of rhyme."

It was at this time that he first fell in love, and it may be added that
after this he was never out of that interesting state. He says:--

"My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her justice in
that language; but you know the Scottish idiom,--she was a bonnie,
sweet, sonsie lass. In short, she, altogether unwittingly to
herself, initiated me into that delicious passion, which in spite
of