enormous Highland broadsword. It was
Burns. He received them with great cordiality, and asked them to share
his humble dinner--an invitation which they accepted. "On the table
they found boiled beef, with vegetables and barley broth, after the
manner of Scotland. After dinner the bard told them ingenuously that
he had no wine, nothing better than Highland whiskey, a bottle of
which he set on the board. He produced at the same time his punch-bowl,
made of Inverary marble; and, mixing it with water and sugar, filled
their glasses and invited them to drink. The travellers were in haste,
and, besides, the flavour of the whiskey to their southern palates was
scarcely tolerable; but the generous poet offered them his best, and
his ardent hospitality they found impossible to resist. Burns was in
his happiest mood, and the charm of his conversation was altogether
fascinating. He ranged over a variety of topics, illuminating whatever
he touched. He related the tales of his infancy and youth; he recited
some of his gayest and some of his tenderest poems; in the wildest of
his strains of mirth he threw in some touches of melancholy, and
spread around him the electric emotions of his powerful mind. The
Highland whiskey improved in its flavour; the marble bowl was again
and again emptied and replenished; the guests of our poet forgot the
flight of time and the dictates of prudence; at the hour of midnight
they lost their way to Dumfries, and could scarcely distinguish it
when assisted by the morning's dawn. There is much naivete in the way
the English visitor narrates his experience of that 'nicht wi' Burns."

Mr. Carlyle, if we remember aright, has smiled incredulously at (p. 132)
the story of the fox-skin cap, the belt, and the broadsword. But of
the latter appendage this is not the only record. Burns himself
mentions it as a frequent accompaniment of his when he went out by the
river.

The punch-bowl here mentioned is the one which his father-in-law had
wrought for him as a marriage-gift. It was, when Chambers wrote his
biography of Burns, in the possession of Mr. Haistie, then M.P. for
Paisley, who is said to have refused for it three hundred guineas--"a
sum," says Chambers, "that would have set Burns on his legs for ever."

This is the last glimpse we get of the poet in his home at Ellisland
till the end came. We have seen that he had long determined if
possible to get rid of his farm. He had sunk in it all the proceeds