2d Man. "Just under the bonnet; and it's on the wrong side."
1st Man. "Oh! it does not signify if it be a double-breasted coat; or perhaps Robin buttoned his coat different to other folks, for he was an unco' chiel."
2d Man. "But it's only single-breasted, and it is quite wrong."
The men unbuttoned and then buttoned their coats up again to satisfy themselves, and they decided that it was a great blunder.
I thought there was much sound sense in their criticism. The allegorical figure of the muse seems too much, and the absence of the horses too little. Burns would have looked quite as well standing at the plow, and looking up inspired by the muse without her being visible.
The plow rests on a rugged piece of marble, laid on a polished basement, in the center of which is inscribed, in large letters,
BURNS.
I had to regret missing at Dumfries the three sons of Burns, and the stanch friend of the family, and of the genius of the poet, Mr. M'Diarmid. Mr. Robert Burns, the poet's eldest son, resides at Dumfries, but was then absent at Belfast, in Ireland, where I afterward saw him, and was much struck with his intelligence and great information. Colonel and Major Burns had just visited Dumfries, but were gone into the Highlands with their friend, Mr. M'Diarmid. The feelings with which I quitted Dumfries were those which so often weigh upon you in contemplating the closing scenes of poets' lives. "The life of the poet at Dumfries," says Robert Chambers, "was an unhappy one; his situation was degrading, and his income narrow." Reflecting on this as I proceeded by the mail toward Moffat, the melancholy lines of Wordsworth recurred to me with peculiar effect: