bitation is calculated to
make beasts of men and women; and it indicates a degree of barbarism
which I did not imagine to exist in Scotland, that a tiller of broad
fields, like the farmer of Mauchline, should have his abode in a
pig-sty. It is sad to think of anybody--not to say a poet, but any
human being--sleeping, eating, thinking, praying, and spending all his
home-life in this miserable hovel; but, methinks, I never in the least
knew how to estimate the miracle of Burns's genius, nor his heroic
merit for being no worse man, until I thus learned the squalid
hindrances amid which he developed himself. Space, a free atmosphere,
and cleanliness have a vast deal to do with the possibilities of human
virtue.

The biographers talk of the farm of Moss Giel as being damp and
unwholesome; but I do not see why, outside of the cottage-walls, it
should possess so evil a reputation. It occupies a high, broad ridge,
enjoying, surely, whatever benefit can come of a breezy site, and
sloping far downward before any marshy soil is reached. The high
hedge, and the trees that stand beside the cottage, give it a pleasant
aspect enough to one who does not know the grimy secrets of the
interior; and the summer afternoon was now so bright that I shall
remember the scene with a great deal of sunshine over it.

Leaving the cottage, we drove through a field, which the driver told
us was that in which Burns turned up the mouse's nest. It is the
inclosure nearest to the cottage, and seems now to be a pasture, and a
rather remarkably unfertile one. A little farther on, the ground was
whitened with an immense number of daisies,--daisies, daisies,
everywhere; and in answer to my inquiry, the driver said that this was
the field where Burns ran his ploughshare over the daisy. If so, the
soil seems to have been consecrated to daisies by the song which he
bestowed on that first immortal one. I alighted, and plucked a whole
handful of these "wee, modest, crimson-tipped flowers," which will be
precious to many friends in our own country as coming from Burns's
farm, and being of the same race and lineage as that daisy which he
turned into an amaranthine flower while seeming to destroy it.

From Moss Giel we drove through a variety of pleasant scenes, some of
which were familiar to us by their connection with Burns. We skirted,
too, along a portion of the estate of Auchinleck, which still belongs
to the Boswell family,--the present possessor being Sir