_’Now in her green mantle blythe Nature arrays,_ _And listens the lambkins that bleat o’er the braes,_ _While birds warble welcome in ilka green show,_ _But to me it’s delightless—my Nannie’s awa’._ _The snaw-drap and primrose our woodlands adorn,_ _And violets bathe in the weet o’ the morn;_ _They pain my sad bosom, sae sweetly they blow,_ _They mind me o’ Nannie—and Nannie’s awa’._ _Thou lav’rock that springs frae the dews o’ the lawn,_ _The shepherd to warn o’ the grey-breaking dawn;_ _And thou mellow mavis that hails the night-fa’_ _Give over for pity—my Nannie’s awa’.’_ And also of this curious farewell were born those lines in which is reached, perhaps, the very topmost summit of the lyrical genius of Burns—those lines which are the epitome of all love-tragedy—of all hopeless passion—of all parting woe. And these shall the painstaking reader, who toils to the end of this history, read on the last page for his reward. Sylvander and Clarinda continued to correspond with considerable desultoriness during the few years of life that remained to the Rhymer, and sad to state, in these communications there is to be traced a very decided recriminative tartness, which is a blow to the ingenuous and sentimental reader. So sputtered out, in rather fiery sparks—as, indeed, is the too common wont of such—one of the most curious of the world’s classic flirtations. Mrs. Maclehose lived to a great age, becoming a most _espiègle_ and charming old lady—the centre of a large and admiring acquaintance. Years after the poet’s death, when all danger was over, and passion, too, dead, it was her chief boast, her ’meed of fame,’ to figure as Burns’s ’Clarinda.’ She kept, and would exhibit, many little souvenirs of the Bard, and on all matters pertaining to the history of his Edinburgh visits, she was for many years the greatest living authority. She publicly and impartially would maintain till the last that the poet’s marriage with a peasant was the greatest mistake of his life, dragging him down to a low level, intellectually as well as socially; whereas with higher companionship he might have risen to heights incalculably nobler, both of prosperity and of fame. To her dying day she expressed a pious wish that she might meet in heaven the Bard whose soul she felt that she alone had understood as it deserved in the imperfect communionship of earth. All things considered, the hope of meeting in quite another quarter might have seemed more justifiable. But so—exit our charming Nancy from these veracious pages.