I have, for a long time, been somewhat familiar with the history and writings of the “Peasant Poet,” whose birthplace I now visit, and I have often read Carlyle’s caustic essay on Burns. I have just finished reading his life, written by James Currie. I have read, to-day, “The Holy Fair,” “Tam O’Shanter,” “Man Was Made to Mourn,” and “To Mary, in Heaven,” and now, as I sit in the room where this High Priest of Nature first saw light, as I sit at the table whereon he used to write, and view the relics which once belonged to him, I am carried back for a hundred years and made to breathe the atmosphere of the eighteenth century. As I sit within these silent walls, a strange feeling comes over me. I hear, or seem to hear, the lingering vibrations of that golden lyre, whose master indeed is dead, but whose music still finds a responsive echo in every human heart. Robert Burns, the man, was born of a woman but Robert Burns, the poet, was born of Nature! He stole the thoughts of Nature and told them to man. It was believed long ago that Burns was the High Priest, the interpreter, of Nature, and “Time but the impression deeper makes, As streams their channels deeper wear.” The multitudes who hither come, prove by their coming that “Such graves as his are pilgrim shrines, Shrines to code nor creed confined— The Delphic vales, the Palestines— The Meccas of the mind.” Some three hundred yards beyond the cottage, we come to the “Burns’ Monument,” beautifully situated on “The braes and banks o’bonnie Doon, Tugar’s winding stream.” A more appropriate location could not have been selected for this monument, as near by are the “Alloway Kirk,” the “Wallace Tower,” the “Auld Mill,” and the “Auld Hermit Ayr,” and other localities rendered famous by the muse of the ploughman poet. I stand on the “Brig o’ Doon” before reaching the keystone of which Meg, Tam O’Shanter’s mare, “left behind her ain grey tail.” [Illustration: BURNS’ MONUMENT.] From the top of this towering monument, which stands in the midst of a beautiful flower-garden, I for once take a “broad view of life.” With one sweep of the eye, I see the Doon, the Ayr, the Clyde, the ocean! The scene is made more grand and inspiring, more picturesque and beautiful, by the lakes, plains, hills and mountains which lie between, overhang, and tower above, these laughing rivers. Ah! me, how my spirit is stirred! Like Father Ryan, I have thoughts too lofty for language to reach. In describing what I now see and feel, silence is the most impressive language that can be used. Thought is deeper than speech. Feeling is deeper than thought. CHAPTER IV. EDINBURGH.