ar to discern the right, even when the will was least
able to fulfil it. The excitements of a great city, and the loud
praises of his fellow-men might enable him momentarily to forget, but
could not permanently stifle inward voices like these. So it was with
a heart but ill at ease, bearing dark secrets he could tell to no one,
that Burns passed from his Ayrshire cottage into the applause of the
Scottish capital.

CHAPTER II (p. 042)

FIRST WINTER IN EDINBURGH

The journey of Burns from Mossgiel to Edinburgh was a sort of
triumphal progress. He rode on a pony, lent him by a friend, and as
the journey took two days, his resting-place the first night was at
the farm-house of Covington Mains, in Lanarkshire, hard by the Clyde.
The tenant of this farm, Mr. Prentice, was an enthusiastic admirer of
Burns' poems, and had subscribed for twenty copies of the second
edition. His son, years afterwards, in a letter to Christopher North,
thus describes the evening on which Burns appeared at his father's
farm:--"All the farmers in the parish had read the poet's then
published works, and were anxious to see him. They were all asked to
meet him at a late dinner, and the signal of his arrival was to be a
white sheet attached to a pitchfork, and put on the top of a corn-stack
in the barn-yard. The parish is a beautiful amphitheatre, with the
Clyde winding through it--Wellbrae Hill to the west, Tinto Hill and
the Culter Fells to the south, and the pretty, green, conical hill,
Quothquan Law, to the east. My father's stack-yard, lying in the
centre, was seen from every house in the parish. At length Burns
arrived, mounted on a borrowed _pownie_. Instantly was the white flag
hoisted, and as instantly were seen the farmers issuing from their (p. 043)
houses, and converging to the point of meeting. A glorious evening, or
rather night, which borrowed something from the morning, followed, and
the conversation of the poet confirmed and increased the admiration
created by his writings. On the following morning he breakfasted with
a large party at the next farm-house, tenanted by James Stodart; ...
took lunch with a large party at the bank in Carnwath, and rode into
Edinburgh that evening on the _pownie_, which he returned to the owner
in a few days afterwards by John Samson, the brother of the immortal
_Tam_."

This is but a sample of the kind of receptions which were henceforth