hing they might have combined to do,
was to have compelled Dundas, or some other of the men then in power,
to grant Burns a pension from the public purse. That was the day of
pensions, and hundreds with no claim to compare with Burns's were then
on the pension list: 300_l._ a year would have sufficed to place him
in comfort and independence, and could public money have been better
spent? But though the most rigid economist might not have objected,
would Burns have accepted such a benefaction, had it been offered?
And if he had accepted it, would he not have chafed under the (p. 093)
obligation, more even than he did in the absence of it? Such questions
as these cannot but arise, as often as we think over the fate of
Burns, and ask ourselves, if nothing could have been done to avert it?
Though natural, they are vain. Things hold on their own course to
their inevitable issues, and Burns left Edinburgh, and set his face
first towards Ayrshire, then to Nithsdale, a saddened and embittered
man.

CHAPTER V. (p. 094)

LIFE AT ELLISLAND.

"Mr. Burns, you have made a poet's not a farmer's choice." Such was
the remark of Allan Cunningham's father, land-steward to the laird of
Dalswinton, when the poet turned from the low-lying and fertile farm
of Foregirth, which Cunningham had recommended to him, and selected
for his future home the farm of Ellisland. He was taken by the
beautiful situation and fine romantic outlook of the poorest of
several farms on the Dalswinton estate which were in his option.
Ellisland lies on the western bank of the river Nith, about six miles
above Dumfries. Looking from Ellisland eastward across the river, "a
pure stream running there over the purest gravel," you see the rich
holms and noble woods of Dalswinton. Dalswinton is an ancient historic
place, which has even within recorded memory more than once changed
its mansion-house and its proprietor. To the west the eye falls on the
hills of Dunscore, and looking northward up the Nith, the view is
bounded by the heights that shut in the river towards Drumlanrig, and
by the high conical hill of Corsincon, at the base of which the infant
stream slips from the shire of Ayr into that of Dumfries. The
farmsteading of Ellisland stands but a few yards to the west of the
Nith. Immediately underneath there is a red scaur of considerable (p. 095)
height, overhanging the stream, and the rest of