after the (p. 163)
ladies had retired. He was now, it seems, more disliked by ladies than
by men,--a change since those Edinburgh days, when the highest dames
of the land had spoken so rapturously of the charm of his
conversation.

Amid the gloom of this unhappy time (1791), Burns turned to his old
Edinburgh friend, Alexander Cunningham, and poured forth this
passionate and well-known complaint:--"Canst thou minister to a mind
diseased? Canst thou speak peace and rest to a soul tossed on a sea of
troubles, without one friendly star to guide her course, and dreading
that the next surge may overwhelm her? Of late, a number of domestic
vexations, and some pecuniary share in the ruin of these cursed
times,--losses which, though trifling, were what I could ill
bear,--have so irritated me, that my feelings at times could only be
envied by a reprobate spirit listening to the sentence that dooms it
to perdition.--Are you deep in the language of consolation? I have
exhausted in reflection every topic of comfort. A heart at ease would
have been charmed with my sentiments and reasonings; but as to myself,
I was like Judas Iscariot preaching the Gospel.... Still there are two
great pillars that bear us up amid the wreck of misfortune and misery.
The one is composed of a certain noble, stubborn something in man,
known by the names of Courage, Fortitude, Magnanimity. The other is
made up of those feelings and sentiments which, however the sceptic
may deny them, or the enthusiast may disfigure them, are yet, I am
convinced, original and component parts of the human soul, those
senses of the mind--if I may be allowed the expression--which connect
us with, and link us to those awful obscure realities--an all-powerful
and equally beneficent God, and a world to come, beyond death and the
grave. The first gives the nerve of combat, while a ray of hope (p. 164)
beams on the field: the last pours the balm of comfort into the wounds
which time can never cure."

This remarkable, or, as Lockhart calls it, noble letter was written on
February 25, 1794. It was probably a few months later, perhaps in May
of the same year, while Burns was still under this depression, that
there occurred an affecting incident, which has been preserved by
Lockhart. Mr. David McCulloch, of Ardwell, told Lockhart, "that he was
seldom more grieved, than when, riding into Dumfries one fine summer's
evening, to attend a country ball, he saw Burns walking alone, on t