ituary notice of Mrs Cunningham--an old
friend of his, and still older of his wife. He was then too ill to be
applied to on any subject, or to be told of his old friend's death.

For several days at that time he was alarmingly ill from bronchitis,
accompanied by unusually high fever. This passed off but slowly. The
bodily health and strength appeared to be fully restored at the end of a
few weeks, but there was an undefinable change. Shortly after this
illness, though not in consequence of it, Dr Burton resigned his office
of Prison Manager. He retired on an allowance of two-thirds of his
former salary, remaining chairman of the Board of Prisons and
Statistics, of which he was an honorary member.

He had not fully regained strength when, to the unspeakable sorrow of
its inmates, they learned that Craighouse was sold to the Committee of
the Lunatic Asylum, was to be immediately adapted to the purposes of an
asylum, and that they must quit it at Whitsuntide.

They had held it first on a lease, then on a second short lease, but
afterwards had merely rented it from year to year, not imagining that
any other tenant would covet it with all its pretty heavy
responsibilities. Dr Burton had, from his natural irritability,
sometimes said he would prefer to be elsewhere; but when it came to
finding some other place which would hold his books--some place not too
far to move them to--to the abandonment of his own carpentery, &c.,--he
lamented the departure as much as others. His one proviso as to the new
abode was, that it was not to be in the town, or nearer the town than
Craighouse.

The whole spring Dr Burton's family sought in all directions for a
suitable abode, and at last pitched on that left vacant by Mrs
Cunningham's death as most nearly combining all the various requisites.
On the 20th of May 1878 the flitting from Craighouse to Morton was
completed. Morton is fully two miles farther from Edinburgh than
Craighouse, the approach to it from the town being a continuous ascent
on to a shoulder of the Pentlands. Its situation is pretty and entirely
rural, but with nothing of the unrivalled beauty of that of Craighouse,
which commanded a view extending from North Berwick Law to Ben Lomond,
yet lay well sheltered among its lovely hills and splendid trees. The
great drawback of Morton House, for Dr Burton's family, lay in the
greater distance from the town. The time spent in travelling the up-hill
road was a serious loss, to s