LITERARY AND DOMESTIC LD7E. 395 



inn in the pass of Dalvine ? Is Penpont habitable quietly for a few 

 days, or any of the pretty village-inns in that district ? Pray let me 

 hear from you at your leisure how the land lies. Perhaps I may 

 afterwards step down to your town for a day, but I wish, if I make 

 out a week's visit to Nithsdale or neighborhood, to do so unknown 

 but to yourself. Affectionately yours, John Wixsox." 



Four months later we find him writing again to the same friend : — 



" Edinburgh, Sept. 24, 1840. 



" My dear Mr. Aird : — I have at last set to work — if that be not 

 too strong an assertion — on my paper about Burns, so long promised 

 to the Messrs. Blackie of Glasgow, for The Land of Burns. They 

 have in hand about fifty printed quarto pages, but some of it has not 

 been returned to me to correct for press. They expect, I believe, 

 thirty or fifty more. 



" Can you find out from good authority in Dumfries (Jessie 

 Lewars, they say, is yet alive, and is Mrs. Thomson) if Burns was 

 a church-goer at Dumfries, regular or irregular, and to what church? 

 2. If he was on habits of intimacy with any clergyman or clergymen 

 in the town — as, for example, Dr. Burnside ? In 1803, 1 stayed two 

 days with the Burnsides — all dear friends of mine then, and long 

 afterwards, though now the survivors are to me like the dead. I 

 then called with Mary Burnside,* now Mrs. Taylor, in Liverpool, on 

 Mrs. Burns. Robert I remember at Glasgow College, but hardly 

 knew him, and I dare say he does not remember me. 3. Did any 

 clergyman visit him on his dying bed ; and is it supposed that when 

 dying the Bible was read by him more than formerly or not ? 4. 

 Had Burns frequent, rare, or regular family worship at Dumfries ? 

 At Ellisland I think he often had. If these questions can be answered 

 affirmatively, in whole or in part, I shall say something about it ; if 

 not, I shall be silent, or nearly so. In either case I hope I shall say 

 nothing wrong. 



" I have not left Edinburgh since I saw you, but for a day or so, 

 and I won't leave it till this contribution to The Life of Burns is 

 finished. Then I intend going for a week to Kelso, and from the 

 20th October to ditto April, if spared, be in this room, misnamed a 



* Mary Burnside was the friend and confidante of the " Orphan Maid," whose image was so 

 hard to tear from his young heart. 



