s absence, of his
youngest child. Writing in January, 1796, he says: "I had scarcely begun
to recover from that shock, when I became myself the victim of a most
severe rheumatic fever, and long the die spun doubtful, until, after
many weeks of a sick-bed, it seems to have turned up life, and I am
beginning to crawl across my room, and once indeed have been before my
own door in the street."

But a few days after this Burns was so imprudent as to join a festive
circle at a tavern dinner, where he remained till about three in the
morning. The weather was severe, and he, being too much intoxicated,
took no precaution in thus exposing his debilitated frame to its
influence. It has been said that he fell asleep upon the snow on his way
home. The result was an acute return of his rheumatism, and his health
gradually got worse. He went to the Solway for sea-bathing, but came
back to Dumfries "visibly changed in his looks, being with difficulty
able to stand upright and reach his own door."

It soon became known that he was dying, and the anxiety, not of the rich
and the learned only, but of the mechanics and peasants, exceeded all
belief. Wherever two or three people stood together their talk was
solely of Burns. His good humour was unruffled, and his wit never
forsook him; but he repressed with a smile the hopes of his friends, and
told them he had lived long enough. The fever increased, and his
strength diminished, and he died on July 21, 1796. His funeral, attended
by ten or twelve thousand people, was an impressive and mournful sight.
The grave was at first covered by a plain tombstone; but a costly
mausoleum was subsequently erected on the most elevated site which the
churchyard presented. Thither the remains of the poet were solemnly
transferred on June 5, 1815.

It requires a graver audacity of hypocrisy than falls to the share of
most men to declaim against Burns's sensibility to the tangible cares
and toils of his earthly condition; there are more who venture on broad
denunciations of his sympathy with the joys of sense and passion.

That some men in every age will comfort themselves in the practice of
certain vices, by reference to particular passages both in the history
and in the poetry of Burns, there is all reason to fear; but surely the
general influence of both is calculated, and has been found, to produce
far different effects. The universal popularity which his writings have
all along enjoyed among one of