lings went not.

The monument erected to Burns, near the bridge, is an ostentatious thing,
with a gilt tripod on its summit. I was only interested to see some of the
relics of Burns which it contains, among which is the Bible given by him
to his Highland Mary. A road from the monument leads along the stream
among the trees to a mill, at a little distance above the bridge, where
the water passes under steep rocks, and I followed it. The wild rose and
the woodbine were in full bloom in the hedges, and these to me were a
better memorial of Burns than any thing which the chisel could execute. A
barefoot lassie came down the grassy bank among the trees with a pail, and
after washing her feet in the swift current filled the pail and bore it
again over the bank.

We saw many visitors sauntering about the bridge or entering the
monument; some of them seemed to be country people,--young men with their
sisters and sweethearts, and others in white cravats with a certain
sleekness of appearance I took to be of the profession of divinity. At the
inn beside the Doon, a young woman, with a face and head so round as
almost to form a perfect globe, gave us a dish of excellent strawberries
and cream, and we set off for the house in which Burns was born.

It is a clay-built cottage of the humblest class, and now serves, with the
addition of two new rooms of a better architecture, for an ale-house. Mrs.
Hastings, the landlady, showed us the register, in which we remarked that
a very great number of the visitors had taken the pains to write
themselves down as shoemakers. Major Burns, one of the sons of the poet,
had lately visited the place with his two daughters and a younger brother,
and they had inscribed their names in the book.

We returned to Ayr by a different road from that by which we went to
Alloway. The haymakers were at work in the fields, and the vegetation was
everywhere in its highest luxuriance. You may smile at the idea, but I
affirm that a potato field in Great Britain, at this season, is a prettier
sight than a vineyard in Italy. In this climate, the plant throws out an
abundance of blossoms, pink and white, and just now the potato fields are
as fine as so many flower gardens.

We crossed the old bridge of Ayr, which is yet in good preservation,
though carriages are not allowed to pass over it. Looking up the stream,
we saw solitary slopes and groves on its left bank, and I fancied that I
had in my eye the sequestered