r did not desire, to conceal
his emotions--that he commended with more rapture than was courteous,
and contradicted with more bluntness than was accounted polite. It was
thus with him in the company of men: when woman approached, his look
altered, his eye beamed milder; all that was stern in his nature
underwent a change, and he received them with deference, but with a
consciousness that he could win their attention as he had won that of
others, who differed, indeed, from them only in the texture of their
kirtles. This natural power of rendering himself acceptable to women had
been observed and envied by Sillar, one of the dearest of his early
comrades; and it stood him in good stead now, when he was the object to
whom the Duchess of Gordon, the loveliest as well as the wittiest of
women--directed her discourse. Burns, she afterwards said, won the
attention of the Edinburgh ladies by a deferential way of address--by an
ease and natural grace of manners, as new as it was unexpected--that he
told them the stories of some of his tenderest songs or liveliest poems
in a style quite magical--enriching his little narratives, which had one
and all the merit of being short, with personal incidents of humour or
of pathos.

In a party, when Dr. Blair and Professor Walker were present, Burns
related the circumstances under which he had composed his melancholy
song, "The gloomy night is gathering fast," in a way even more
touching than the verses: and in the company of the ruling beauties of
the time, he hesitated not to lift the veil from some of the tenderer
parts of his own history, and give them glimpses of the romance of
rustic life. A lady of birth--one of his must willing listeners--used,
I am told, to say, that she should never forget the tale which he
related of his affection for Mary Campbell, his Highland Mary, as he
loved to call her. She was fair, he said, and affectionate, and as
guileless as she was beautiful; and beautiful he thought her in a very
high degree. The first time he saw her was during one of his musing
walks in the woods of Montgomery Castle; and the first time he spoke
to her was during the merriment of a harvest-kirn. There were others
there who admired her, but he addressed her, and had the luck to win
her regard from them all. He soon found that she was the lass whom he
had long sought, but never before found--that her good looks were
surpassed by her good sense; and her good sense was equalled by her