the Dee was Thrieve Castle,
begun by Archibald the Grim, and later used as a stronghold by the
famous Black Douglas.

The ancient district of Galloway, in which the Selkirk home was
situated, had long been known as the Whig country. It had been the
chosen land of the Covenanters, the foes of privilege and the defenders
of liberal principles in government. Its leading families, the
Kennedys, the Gordons, and {5} the Douglases, formed a broad-minded
aristocracy. In such surroundings, as one of the 'lads of the Dee,'
Thomas Douglas inevitably developed a type of mind more or less
radical. His political opinions, however, were guided by a cultivated
intellect. His father, a patron of letters, kept open house for men of
genius, and brought his sons into contact with some of the foremost
thinkers and writers of the day. One of these was Robert Burns, the
most beloved of Scottish poets. In his earlier life, when scarcely
known to his countrymen, Burns had dined with Basil, Lord Daer, Thomas
Douglas's eldest brother and heir-apparent of the Selkirk line. This
was the occasion commemorated by Burns in the poem of which this is the
first stanza:

This wot ye all whom it concerns:
I, Rhymer Robin, alias Burns,
October twenty-third,
A ne'er-to-be-forgotten day,
Sae far I sprachl'd up the brae
I dinner'd wi' a Lord.

One wet evening in the summer of 1793 Burns drew up before the Selkirk
manor-house in company with John Syme of Ryedale. The two friends were
making a tour of Galloway on horseback. The poet was in bad humour.
{6} The night before, during a wild storm of rain and thunder, he had
been inspired to the rousing measures of 'Scots wha hae wi' Wallace
bled.' But now he was drenched to the skin, and the rain had damaged a
new pair of jemmy boots which he was wearing. The passionate appeal of
the Bruce to his countrymen was now forgotten, and Burns was as cross
as the proverbial bear. It was the dinner hour when the two wanderers
arrived and were cordially invited to stay. Various other guests were
present; and so agreeable was the company and so genial the welcome,
that the grumbling bard soon lost his irritable mood. The evening
passed in song and story, and Burns recited one of his ballads, we are
told, to an audience which listened in 'dead silence.' The young mind
of Thomas Douglas could not fail to be influenced by such associations.

In 1786 Thomas Douglas entered the Universit