e whose knowledge of men was severely scholastic; and we can well
imagine that he quitted Edinburgh in no amiable mood.

From Edinburgh the two journeyed by the Lammermuirs to Berrywell, near
Duns, where the Ainslie family lived. On the Sunday he attended church
with the Ainslies, where the minister, Dr. Bowmaker, preached a sermon
against obstinate sinners. 'I am found out,' the poet remarked,
'wherever I go.' From Duns they proceeded to Coldstream, where, having
crossed the Tweed, Burns first set foot on English ground. Here it was
that, with bared head, he knelt and prayed for a blessing on Scotland,
reciting with the deepest devotion the two concluding verses of _The
Cotter's Saturday Night_.

The next place visited was Kelso, where they admired the old abbey, and
went to see Roxburgh Castle, thence to Jedburgh, where he met a Miss
Hope and a Miss Lindsay, the latter of whom 'thawed his heart into
melting pleasure after being so long frozen up in the Greenland Bay of
indifference amid the noise and nonsense of Edinburgh.' When he left
this romantic city his thoughts were not of the honour its citizens had
done him, but of Jed's crystal stream and sylvan banks, and, above all,
of Miss Lindsay, who brings him to the verge of verse. Thereafter he
visited Kelso, Melrose, and Selkirk, and after spending about three
weeks seeing all that was to be seen in this beautiful country-side, he
set off with a Mr. Ker and a Mr. Hood on a visit to England. In this
visit he went as far as Newcastle, returning by way of Hexham and
Carlisle. After spending a day here he proceeded to Annan, and thence to
Dumfries. Whilst in the Nithsdale district he took the opportunity of
visiting Dalswinton and inspecting the unoccupied farms; but he did not
immediately close with Mr. Miller's generous offer of a four-nineteen
years' lease on his own terms. From Nithsdale he turned again to his
native Ayrshire, arriving at Mossgiel in the beginning of June, after an
absence from home of six eventful months.

We can hardly imagine what this home-coming would be like. The Burnses
were typical Scots in their undemonstrative ways; but this was a great
occasion, and tradition has it that his mother allowed her feeling so
far to overcome her natural reticence that she met him at the threshold
with the exclamation, 'O Robert!' He had left home almost unknown, and
had returned with a name that was known and honoured from end to end of
his native land. He h