350 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



I felt this more strongly than to-night, and never have I 

 felt it without thinking gratefully and tenderly of my 

 friend. I quitted the wood with its mournful-looking 

 trees, and its heaps of withered leaves, and came home 

 to write to you 



' It seems Allan Cunningham, the Galloway stone- 

 mason, is engaged at present in preparing a new r 

 edition of Burns with a memoir. He is desirous of 

 procuring all the unpublished information which still 

 exists regarding him, and as I once chanced to mention 

 to Mr Carruthers, with whom Cunningham is intimate, 

 that the Mr Russel whom the poet has brought so often 

 and so conspicuously forward in his satirical poems, re- 

 sided for several years as a schoolmaster in Cromarty, 1 

 was now applied to for all of his history I could glean from 

 tradition. I wrote as requested, and produced a letter 

 interesting for its facts. . . . They may serve to show 

 that Burns, in his quarrels with the evangelical clergy, 

 might possibly have been less piqued with what was 

 good in their religion, than with what was bad in some 

 of themselves, an opinion not generally entertained ; and 

 that his stinging sarcasms were no chance arrows sent 

 from a bow drawn at a venture, but true to character 

 and fact. The descriptions of Russel in the satires, 

 with the anecdotes of the latter which I have been able 

 to collect, piece completely into one character. 



' I am at present employed in the churchyard, and 

 busily employed too, for you must not suppose that I 

 am always as idle as when you were here ; on the con- 

 trary, there is perhaps scarcely a less indolent man in 

 the country-side ; though I love dearly to have the 

 choosing of my own employment, and could never yet 

 submit to be converted into a mere machine. I have at 

 times, for weeks together, been performing the labour of 



