No More Learning

Jed, pure be thy streams, and hallowed thy sylvan
banks: sweet Isabella Lindsay, may peace dwell in thy bosom
uninterrupted, except by the tumultuous throbbings of rapturous love! "
With the freedom of Jedburgh, handsomely bestowed by the magistrates,
in his pocket, Burns made his way to Wauchope, the residence of Mrs.
Scott, who had welcomed him into the world as a poet in verses lively
and graceful: he found her, he said, "a lady of sense and taste, and
of a decision peculiar to female authors. " After dining with Sir
Alexander Don, who, he said, was a clever man, but far from a match
for his divine lady, a sister of his patron Glencairn, he spent an
hour among the beautiful ruins of Dryburgh Abbey; glanced on the
splendid remains of Melrose; passed, unconscious of the future, over
that ground on which have arisen the romantic towers of Abbotsford;
dined with certain of the Souters of Selkirk; and visited the old keep
of Thomas the Rhymer, and a dozen of the hills and streams celebrated
in song. Nor did he fail to pay his respects, after returning through
Dunse, to Sir James Hall, of Dunglass, and his lady, and was much
pleased with the scenery of their romantic place. He was now joined by
a gentleman of the name of Kerr, and crossing the Tweed a second time,
penetrated into England, as far as the ancient town of Newcastle,
where he smiled at a facetious Northumbrian, who at dinner caused the
beef to be eaten before the broth was served, in obedience to an
ancient injunction, lest the hungry Scotch should come and snatch it.
On his way back he saw, what proved to be prophetic of his own
fortune--the roup of an unfortunate farmer's stock: he took out his
journal, and wrote with a troubled brow, "Rigid economy, and decent
industry, do you preserve me from being the principal _dramatis
personae_, in such a scene of horror. " He extended his tour to
Carlisle, and from thence to the banks of the Nith, where he looked at
the farm of Ellisland, with the intention of trying once more his
fortune at the plough, should poetry and patronage fail him.

On his way through the West, Burns spent a few days with his mother at
Mossgiel: he had left her an unknown and an almost banished man: he
returned in fame and in sunshine, admired by all who aspired to be
thought tasteful or refined. He felt offended alike with the patrician
stateliness of Edinburgh and the plebeian servility of the husbandmen
of Ayrshire; and dreading the influence of the unlucky star which had
hitherto ruled his lot, he bought a pocket Milton, he said, for the
purpose of studying the intrepid independence and daring magnanimity,
and noble defiance of hardships, exhibited by Satan! In this mood he
reached Edinburgh--only to leave it again on three hurried excursions
into the Highlands. The route which he took and the sentiments which
the scenes awakened, are but faintly intimated in the memoranda which
he made. His first journey seems to have been performed in ill-humour;
at Stirling, his Jacobitism, provoked at seeing the ruined palace of
the Stuarts, broke out in some unloyal lines which he had the
indiscretion to write with a diamond on the window of a public inn. At
Carron, where he was refused a sight of the magnificent foundry, he
avenged himself in epigram. At Inverary he resented some real or
imaginary neglect on the part of his Grace of Argyll, by a stinging
lampoon; nor can he be said to have fairly regained his serenity of
temper, till he danced his wrath away with some Highland ladies at
Dumbarton.
His second excursion was made in the company of Dr. Adair, of
Harrowgate: the reluctant doors of Carron foundry were opened to him,
and he expressed his wonder at the blazing furnaces and broiling
labours of the place; he removed the disloyal lines from the window of
the inn at Stirling, and he paid a two days' visit to Ramsay of
Ochtertyre, a distinguished scholar, and discussed with him future
topics for the muse. "I have been in the company of many men of
genius," said Ramsay afterwards to Currie, "some of them poets, but
never witnessed such flashes of intellectual brightness as from
him--the impulse of the moment, sparks of celestial fire. " From the
Forth he went to the Devon, in the county of Clackmannan, where, for
the first time, he saw the beautiful Charlotte Hamilton, the sister of
his friend Gavin Hamilton, of Mauchline. "She is not only beautiful,"
he thus writes to her brother, "but lovely: her form is elegant, her
features not regular, but they have the smile of sweetness, and the
settled complacency of good nature in the highest degree. Her eyes are
fascinating; at once expressive of good sense, tenderness and a noble
mind. After the exercise of our riding to the Falls, Charlotte was
exactly Dr. Donne's mistress:--

"Her pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,
That one would almost say her body thought. "

Accompanied by this charming dame, he visited an old lady, Mrs. Bruce,
of Clackmannan, who, in the belief that she had the blood of the royal
Bruce in her veins, received the poet with something of princely
state, and, half in jest, conferred the honour of knighthood upon him,
with her ancestor's sword, saying, in true Jacobitical mood, that she
had a better right to do that than some folk had! In the same pleasing
company he visited the famous cataract on the Devon, called the
Cauldron Lian, and the Rumbling bridge, a single arch thrown, it is
said by the devil, over the Devon, at the height of a hundred feet in
the air. It was the complaint of his companions that Burns exhibited
no raptures, and poured out no unpremeditated verses at such
magnificent scenes. But he did not like to be tutored or prompted:
"Look, look! " exclaimed some one, as Carron foundry belched forth
flames--"look, Burns, look! good heavens, what a grand sight! --look!