THOMAS COOPER, author of the _Purgatory of Suicides_, &c., has been on a lecturing tour through Ireland and Scotland, lately, and has given an account of what he observed, in several letters to the London _Leader_. We copy from them a few paragraphs: I had two hours delightful conversation with Mr. de Quincy, at Lasswade, and was as deeply impressed with his intellectual power in talking, as I was with his writing when, in my boyhood, I read his "Confessions of an English Opium Eater." On my return from visiting Kirk Alloway, and the cottage of Burns, I called on his remaining sister, Mrs. Begg, a highly intelligent woman of eighty, who gave me some information of an important character, as I deem it to be. Her daughter, Isabella, was present while I had the short conversation with her. I told her that I entertained strong doubts of the truth of many things which were said about her illustrious brother, and I wished to have the benefit of her own personal knowledge respecting him. She replied that she would have pleasure in giving me all the information in her power. I told her that a person in Glasgow had declared to me, the other day, that he believed all the accounts of her brother's irregular life; for a friend of his had called on Mrs. Begg lately, and _she_ had said that she had often seen her brother sit at the table in a morning, after a night's debauch, shading his face with his hand, while the big tears of remorse were dropping on the board before him. Mrs. Begg seemed moved painfully. "Nothing is more false," she replied; "I never had such a conversation; and never could say so, for I never saw my brother either drunk, or showing any such feeling; nor did I ever know him to be drunk. It is true, I saw but little of him in the latter part of his life; but his son, who was with him almost constantly, told me that he never saw his father the worse for liquor but once; and then he was sick, but yet perfectly conscious. His son also said, that though his father would come home late during the latter part of his life, when they lived in Dumfries; yet he was always able to examine bolts and bars, went to observe that the children were right in bed and always acted like a sober man. Besides," added the intelligent old lady, "how was it possible that my brother could be a drunkard, when he had so small an income, and yet, a few weeks before his death, owed nobody a shilling? That speaks for itself." Mrs. Begg furthermore confirmed what I also learned in Glasgow from persons conversant with those who had known every circumstance of the close of Burns's life, that Allan Cunningham has sorely misstated many matters. Burns did _not_ die in the dramatic style which Allan tells of. Allan was never in Ayrshire in his