Report of the Meetings for 1892. 37 



pretty thickly studded with trees— Oaks, Beeches, and Limes, 

 solitary and in clusters— while plantings of Fir round the outer 

 bounds give shelter to the verdant pasture land. Clusters of 

 ivy peeped over the wall on the top of which are scattered 

 several common wild plants of no particular note. 



The road here, until we reached Grants Braes, was entirely 

 arched by Beeches, but so persistent had been the rain that they 

 afforded no shelter, but rather augmented our knowledge of its 

 presence by the heavy droppings from the leaves. On our 

 right, but on the opposite side of the river Tyne, occupying 

 an elevated site rising from the haugh through which the 

 river flows, Clerkington House, anciently a possession of the 

 Cockburns, was seen to advantage, but of Lennoxlove no view 

 could be obtained from tliis side of the Park. 



The modern-looking house at Grants Braes was rooflesi*, and 

 the once trim garden desolate — wall creepers torn down, 

 rockeries destroyed, and box -wood borders trampled low — the 

 house having been gutted by fire on Christmas morning 1891. 

 This was not the building occupied by Mr Gilbert Burns, but 

 a modern erection on the same site. Mrs Jane Welsh Carlyle, 

 writing to Colonel Davidson from Chelsea, under date 14th 

 February 1859, thus says of Grants Braes: — 



" That little picture of your visit to Grants Braes ! how pi-etty, how 

 dream-like ! awaking so many recollections of my own young visiting 

 there ! — the dinners of rice and milk with currants — a very few currants 

 —kind, thrifty Mrs Gilbert Burns used to give me, with such a welcome ! 

 of play-fellows, boys and girls — all I fancy dead now — who made my 

 Saturdays at Grants Braes white days for me ! I went to see the dear 

 old house, when I was last at Sunny Bank, and found the new prosaic 

 farm bouse in its stead, and it was as if my heart had knocked up against 

 it ! a sort of (moral) blow in the breast is what I feel always at these 

 sudden revelations of the new strange uncared-for thing usurping the 

 place of the thing one knew as well as oneself, and had all sorts of 

 associations with, and had hung the fondest memories on ! When I first 

 saw Mrs Somerville (of mathematical celebrity) I was much struck with 

 her exact likeness to Mrs G. Burns — minus the geniality— and plus the 

 feathers in her head ! and I remember remarking to my husband, that, 

 after all, Mrs Burns was far the cleverer woman of the two, inasmuch 

 as to bring up twelve children, as these young Burns were brought up, 

 and keep up such a comfortable house as Grants Braes, all on eighty 

 pounds a year, was a much more intricate Problem than the reconcilement 

 of the Physical Sciences! and Mr C. cordially agreed with me." 



("Memories of a Long Life," p. 814.) 



