lives,
The lassie I lo'e best.

His disparagement of Nithsdale people, Allan Cunningham, himself a
Dumfriesshire man, naturally resents, and accounts for it by supposing
that the sooty hovel had infected his whole mental atmosphere. "The
Maxwells, the Kirkpatricks, and Dalzells," exclaims honest Allan, "were
fit companions for any man in Scotland, and they were almost his (p. 098)
neighbours; Riddell of Friars Carse, an accomplished antiquarian,
lived almost next door; and Jean Lindsay and her husband, Patrick
Miller, the laird of Dalswinton, were no ordinary people. The former,
beautiful, accomplished, a writer of easy and graceful verses, with a
natural dignity of manners which became her station; the latter an
improver and inventor, the first who applied steam to the purposes of
navigation." But Burns's hasty judgments of men and things, the result
of momentary feeling, are not to be too literally construed.

He soon found that there was enough of sociality among all ranks of
Dumfriesshire people, from the laird to the cotter, indeed, more than
was good for himself. Yet, however much he may have complained, when
writing letters to his correspondents of an evening, he was too manly
to go moping about all day long when there was work to be done. He
was, moreover, nerved to the task by the thought that he was preparing
the home that was to shelter his wife and children. On the laying of
the foundation-stone of his future house, he took off his hat and
asked a blessing on it. "Did he ever put his own hand to the work?"
was asked of one of the men engaged in it. "Ay, that he did, mony a
time," was the answer, "if he saw us like to be beat wi' a big stane,
he would cry, 'Bide a wee,' and come rinning. We soon found out when
he put to his hand, he beat a' I ever met for a dour lift."

During his first harvest, though the weather was unfavourable, and the
crop a poor one, we find Burns speaking in his letters of being
industriously employed, and binding every day after the reapers. But
Allan Cunningham's father, who had every opportunity of observing,
used to allege that Burns seemed to him like a restless and (p. 099)
unsettled man. "He was ever on the move, on foot or on horseback. In
the course of a single day he might be seen holding the plough,
angling in the river, sauntering, with his hands behind his back, on
the banks, looking at the running water, of which he was very fond,
walking round h