348 Field Meetings. 



the subject of some of his very infrequent verse, of which 

 the following are four of the stanzas : — 



King George has palaces of pride, 



And armed grooms must ward their halls ; 



With one stout bolt I safe abide 

 Within my own four walls. 



Not all his men may sever this, 



It yields to friends', not monarchs" calls: 



My whinstone house my castle is, 

 I have my own four walls. 



When fools or knaves make any rout, 



With gigmen, dinners, balls, cabals, 

 I turn my back and shut them out : 



These are my own four walls. 



A moorland house, though rude it be. 



May stand the brunt when prouder falls ; 



'Twill screen my wife, my books, and me, 

 All in my own four walls. 



It was at Craig-enputtock, it will be remembered, that 

 Carlyle wrote some of his most characteristic essays, among 

 them the famous essay on Burns, which has been aptly 

 described as " the very voice of Scotland, expressive of all 

 her passionate love and tragic sorrow for her darling son." 

 But, most noteworthy of all, it was there that he penned 

 Sartor Resartus, a circumstance which would have in- 

 vested any place with lasting interest. Among the events 

 which lent distinction to the Craigenputtock period was the 

 visit paid to the Carlyles in 1883 by Emerson, who had come 

 over from America to England for the first time. Emerson 

 was then thirty years of age, with the essays which were 

 to make him famous still unwritten ; and though Carlyle was 

 only eight years his senior, with the greater part of his best 

 work still to be done, the pilgrimage was undoubtedly under- 

 taken in order to do homage. There can be nothing in 

 Emerson's writings more interesting to Dumfriesians than 

 the account which he gives in his English Traits of this 

 visit to Carlyle. His description of the sage and his sur- 

 roundings is magnificent: — " I found the house amid deso- 



