ch the young Lochinvar bore away
his stolen bride. We passed also Branksome Tower, the scene of the "Lay
of the Last Minstrel," and reached Selkirk in the early evening. The
next day I spent at Abbotsford. The Great Magician had been dead only
ten years, and his family still occupied the house with some of his old
employees who figure in Lockhart's biography. I sat in the great
arm-chair where Sir Walter Scott wrote many of his novels, and looked
out of the window of his bedchamber, through which came the rippling
murmurs of the Tweed, that consoled his dying hours. I heartily
subscribe to the opinion, expressed by Tennyson, that Sir Walter Scott
was the most extraordinary man in British literature since the days of
Shakespeare.

After reaching Glasgow I made a brief trip into the Land of Burns. At
the town of Ayr I found an omnibus waiting to take me down to the
birthplace of the poet. At that time the number of visitors to these
regions was comparatively few, and the birthplace of the poet had not
been transformed, as now, into a crowded museum. On reaching a slight
elevation, since consecrated by the muse of Burns, there broke upon the
view his monument, his native cottage, Alloway Kirk, the scene of the
inimitable Tam o' Shanter, and behind them all the "Banks and Braes of
Bonnie Doon." I went first to the monument, within which on a centre
table are the two volumes of the Bible given by Burns to Highland Mary
when they "lived one day of parting love" beneath the hawthorn of
Coilsfield. One of the volumes contains, in Burns' handwriting, "Thou
shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thy vows,"
and a lock of Mary's hair, of a light brown color, given at the time, is
preserved in the treasured volumes. A few steps away is Alloway Kirk.
The old sexton was standing by the grave of Burns' father, and described
to me the route of "Tam o' Shanter." He showed me the chinks in the
sides through which the kirk seemed "all in a bleeze," and he pointed
out the identical place on the wall where Old Nick was presiding over
the midnight revels of the beldames when--

"Louder and louder the piper blew,
Swifter and swifter the dancers flew."

After the old man had finished his recital, I asked him whether he had
ever seen the poet. "Only aince," he replied. "That was one day when he
was ridin' on a road near here. I met a friend who told me to hurry up,
for Rabbie Burns was just ahead. I whippit up my ho