the ensuing year, 1795, his duties as supervisor led
him to what he describes as the "unfortunate, wicked little village"
of Ecclefechan in Annandale. The night after he arrived, there fell
the heaviest snowstorm known in Scotland within living memory. When
people awoke next morning they found the snow up to the windows of the
second story of their houses. In the hollow of Campsie hills it lay to
the depth of from eighty to a hundred feet, and it had not disappeared
from the streets of Edinburgh on the king's birthday, the 4th of June.
Storm-stayed at Ecclefechan, Burns indulged in deep potations and in
song-writing. Probably he imputed to the place that with which his own
conscience reproached himself. Currie, who was a native of Ecclefechan,
much offended, says, "The poet must have been tipsy indeed to abuse
sweet Ecclefechan at this rate." It was also the birthplace of the (p. 169)
poet's friend Nicol, and of a greater than he. On the 4th of December
in the very year on which Burns visited it, Mr. Thomas Carlyle was
born in that village. Shortly after his visit, the poet beat his
brains to find a rhyme for Ecclefechan, and to twist it into a song.

In March of the same year we find him again joining in local politics,
and writing electioneering ballads for Heron of Heron, the Whig
candidate for the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, against the nominee of
the Earl of Galloway, against whom and his family Burns seems to have
harboured some peculiar enmity.

Mr. Heron won the election, and Burns wrote to him about his own
prospects:--"The moment I am appointed supervisor, in the common
routine I may be nominated on the collectors' list; and this is always
a business of purely political patronage. A collectorship varies much,
from better than 200_l._ to near 1000_l._ a year. A life of literary
leisure, with a decent competency, is the summit of my wishes."

The hope here expressed was not destined to be fulfilled. It required
some years for its realization, and the years allotted to Burns were
now nearly numbered. The prospect which he here dwells on may,
however, have helped to lighten his mental gloom during the last year
of his life. For one year of activity there certainly was, between the
time when the cloud of political displeasure against him disappeared
towards the end of 1794, and the time when his health finally gave way
in the autumn of 1795, during which, to judge by his letters, he
indulged much less in outburst