by the way, came to
Ecclefechan, where we're arriving now. He had an uproarious time, and
wrote verses to the Lass of Ecclefechan, which shows the place must have
been a good deal livelier then than now. Or else, which is as likely, he
had a faculty of squeezing the juice out of the driest, most unpromising
fruit--the same faculty you have."

"Perhaps the fruit dried up later," I suggested. "Burns died soon after
Carlyle was born, didn't he? And maybe people began to be primmer when
they were forgetting his influence."

"No. Those of us Scots who were meant to be dour were always dour," Sir.
S argued, "since the days of John Knox, and long before. It was partly
climate--partly persecution. Both agreed with our constitutions. But
look, here's the little house where one of the greatest geniuses who
ever saw the light in Scotland first opened his eyes. I dare say he
didn't get much light--but he spent most of his life in giving it to
other people, out of his own gloom. Wouldn't Burns have been interested,
passing that house (as he must have, in the 'uproarious time' at
Ecclefechan), if his prophetic soul had said, 'Here, in this little
dwelling as humble as your own birthplace, will be born a man as great
as you--and one of your keenest critics?'"

I didn't answer, because no answer was needed, and because we were both
gazing hard at a small, whitewashed, double house made into one by an
archway joining the two parts together. Coming from Gretna Green it was
on our left in the midst of a gray and white village which would have
looked commonplace if it had not been framed by an immense sky. It was
as if this vast blue crystal case had been set down over Carlyle's
birthplace to protect and mark it out from other places. There was the
narrow, high-banked brook--"the gentle Kuhbach kindly gushing by" (as
Sir S. quoted)--which had made music in Carlyle's childish ears, to echo
through them all his life. Perhaps he paddled in the brook on hot summer
days, just as little boys were paddling when our Gray Dragon suddenly
broke the respectable silence of Ecclefechan; and I know that he must
have seen stormy sun-rises and fiery sunsets reflected in it as in a
mirror, just as the Lady of Shalott saw all the things that really
mattered passing in her looking-glass.

It is the kind of village, and the gray or whitewashed houses with their
red door-sills are the kind of houses, where you would say, rushing
through in a motor, "Nothi