resque old country seat, situate
on the river Teith, and commanding, down the vista of its old
lime-tree avenue, so romantic a view of Stirling Castle rock. There
Burns made the acquaintance of Mr. Ramsay, the laird, and was charmed
with the conversation of that "last of the Scottish line of Latinists,
which began with Buchanan and ended with Gregory,"--an antiquary,
moreover, whose manners and home Lockhart thinks that Sir Walter may
have had in his recollection, when he drew the character of Monkbarns.
Years afterwards, in a letter addressed to Dr. Currie, Ramsay thus
wrote of Burns:--"I have been in the company of many men of genius,
some of them poets, but I never witnessed such flashes of intellectual
brightness as from him, the impulse of the moment, sparks of celestial
fire. I never was more delighted, therefore, than with his company two
days _tete-a-tete_. In a mixed company I should have made little of
him; for, to use a gamester's phrase, he did not know when to play
off, and when to play on.... When I asked, whether the Edinburgh
literati had mended his poems by their criticisms, 'Sir,' said he,
'these gentlemen remind me of some spinsters in my country, who spin
their thread so fine, that it is neither fit for weft nor woof."

There are other incidents recorded of that time. Among these was a
visit to Mrs. Bruce, an old Scottish dame of ninety, who lived in the
ancient Tower of Clackmannan, upholding her dignity as the lineal
descendant and representative of the family of King Robert Bruce, (p. 078)
and cherishing the strongest attachment to the exiled Stuarts. Both of
these sentiments found a ready response from Burns. The one was
exemplified by the old lady conferring knighthood on him and his
companion with the actual sword of King Robert, which she had in her
possession, remarking as she did it, that she had a better right to
confer the title than some folk. Another sentiment she charmed the
poet by expressing in the toast she gave after dinner, "_Hooi Uncos_,"
that is, Away Strangers, a word used by shepherds when they bid their
collies drive away strange sheep. Who the strangers were in this case
may be guessed from her known Jacobite sentiments.

On his way from Clackmannan to Edinburgh he turned aside to see Loch
Leven and its island castle, which had been the prison of the hapless
Mary Stuart; and thence passing to the Norman Abbey Church of
Dunfermline, with deep emotion he looked on the grave o