ing ten languages and many sciences, as for
wandering adventurously over the world, winning tilting matches at the
Louvre, and the love of ladies at Padua and Venice.

Mrs. James had bought a book with quotations from a diary of Burns, and
she read out to us while the car stopped at Sanquhar what he had written
about one specimen day:

"Left Thornhill at five in the morning. Rode four miles to Enterkinfoot
and made a call: thence three miles to Slunkerford with another call:
thence six miles to Sanquhar, where there were twenty official visits to
be made: thence two miles to Whitehall, with two more calls: and a
return journey to Sanquhar, finishing the day's work at seven in the
evening."

Poor poet. But he had always his glowing fancies to keep his heart warm.
We felt almost guilty because we had no horrid calls to make, as he had;
nothing to do but enjoy the scene made magical by his love of it: the
valley with its near green hills and distant peaks of Galloway and
Lowther; the river girdling wooded reaches with a belt of silver, or
burrowing through deep rocky channels, purple as heather petrified. It
was all as different from yesterday's Crockettland as if we had crossed
the ocean from one to the other.

At Carronbridge we saw the woods of Drumlanrig on our right hand; and
Sir S. told me about the Duke of Queensberry who spent all his money in
building the splendid castle, slept in it one night, saw the bills for
it, cursed himself and it, and went away with nothing left but a broken
heart. "Deil pyk out the een of him who sees this," he wrote on the back
of the biggest bill.

There's a Burns museum at lime-tree-shaded Thornhill, but I refused to
go in and stare at an original cast of his skull. I do think a man,
especially a great genius, ought to be allowed the privacy of his own
skull!

Closeburn is the place where the Kirkpatricks, the Empress Eugenie's
family, used to live before they went to Spain. At Auldgirth we went
over a bridge built by Carlyle's father. At Mauchline Burns grew from a
boy into a man and fell in love. At Ellisland, Burns lived for a long
time with his handsome wife, Jean Armour. At Dalswinton the first
steamboat made its first trip, and Burns was on it. All round us now was
Scott's "Red-gauntlet" country; and the bridge crossing the Nith at
Dumfries was built by Devorgilla. There was something to see and think
of every minute; and in fifty-nine miles we had followed Burns's whole