, and which he still owned when he settled at Ellisland. He
was accompanied by his bosom friend, Robert Ainslie. The letters and
journals written during the four weeks of this tour give evidence of
his appreciation of scenery and his shrewd judgment of character. He
was received with much consideration in the houses he visited, and was
given the freedom of the burgh of Dumfries. On the ninth of June,
1787, he was back at Mauchline; and, calling at Armour's house to see
his child, he was revolted by the "mean, servile complaisance" he met
with--the result of his Edinburgh triumphs. His disgust at the family,
however, did not prevent a renewal of his intimacy with Jean. After a
few days at home, he seems to have made a short tour in the West
Highlands. July was spent at Mossgiel, and early in August he returned
to Edinburgh in order to settle his accounts with Creech, his
publisher. On the twenty-fifth he set out for a longer tour in the
North accompanied by his friend Nicol, an Edinburgh schoolmaster, the
Willie who "brewed a peck o' maut." They proceeded by Linlithgow,
Falkirk, Stirling, Crieff, Dunkeld, Aberfeldie, Blair Athole,
Strathspey, to Inverness. The most notable episode of the journey
northwards was a visit at the castle of the Duke of Athole, which
passed with great satisfaction to both Burns and his hosts, and of
which his _Humble Petition of Bruar Water_ is a poetical memorial. At
Stonehaven and Montrose he extended his acquaintance among his
father's relatives. He reached Edinburgh again on September sixteenth,
having traveled nearly six hundred miles. In October he made still
another excursion, through Clackmannanshire and into the south of
Perthshire, visiting Ramsay of Ochtertyre, near Stirling, and Sir
William Murray of Ochtertyre in Strathearn. In all these visits made
by Burns to the houses of the aristocracy, it is interesting to note
his capacity for pleasing and profitable intercourse with people of a
class and tradition far removed from his own. Sensitive to an extreme
and quick to resent a slight, he was at the same time finely
responsive to kindness, and his conduct was governed by a tact and
frank naturalness that are among the not least surprising of his
powers. In spite of the fervor and floridness of some of his
expressions of gratitude for favors from his noble friends, Burns was
no snob; and it was characteristic of him to give up a visit to the
Duchess of Gordon rather than separate from