The following is extracted from the journal of my fellow-
      traveller, to which, as persons acquainted with my poems will 
      know, I have been obliged on other occasions:--
<BR><BR>
<dd>"Dumfries, August 1803.
<BR><BR>"On our way to the churchyard where Burns is buried, we were 
      accompanied by a bookseller, who showed us the outside of Burns's 
      house, where he had lived the last three years of his life, and 
      where he died. It has a mean appearance, and is in a bye 
      situation; the front whitewashed; dirty about the doors, as most 
      Scotch houses are; flowering plants in the window. Went to visit 
      his grave; he lies in a corner of the churchyard, and his second 
      son, Francis Wallace, beside him. There is no stone to mark the 
      spot; but a hundred guineas have been collected to be expended 
      upon some sort of monument. 'There,' said the bookseller, pointing 
      to a pompous monument, 'lies Mr.'--(I have forgotten the name)--'a 
      remarkably clever man; he was an attorney, and scarcely ever lost 
      a cause he undertook. Burns made many a lampoon upon him, and 
      there they rest as you see.' We looked at Burns's grave with 
      melancholy and painful reflections, repeating to each other his 
      own poet's epitaph:--
<pre>
            'Is there a man,' etc.
</pre>
        "The churchyard is full of grave-stones and expensive monuments, 
      in all sorts of fantastic shapes, obelisk-wise, pillar-wise, etc. 
      When our guide had left us we turned again to Burns's grave, and 
      afterwards went to his house, wishing to inquire after Mrs. Burns, 
      who was gone to spend some time by the seashore with her children. 
      We spoke to the maid-servant at the door, who invited us forward, 
      and we sate down in the parlour. The walls were coloured with a 
      blue wash; on one side of the fire was a mahogany desk; opposite 
      the window a clock, which Burns mentions, in one of his letters, 
      having received as a present. The house was cleanly and neat in 
      the inside, the stairs of stone scoured white, the kitchen on the 
      right side of the passage, the parlour on the left. In the room 
      above the parlour the poet died, and his son, very lately, in the 
      same room. The servant told us she had lived four years with Mrs. 
      Burns, who was now in great sorrow for the death of Wallace. She 
      said that Mrs. B.'s youngest son was now at Christ's Hospital. We 
      were glad to leave Dumfries, where we could think of little but 
      poor Burns, and his moving about on that unpoetic ground. In our 
      road to Brownhill, the next stage, we passed Ellisland, at a 
      little distance on our right--his farm-house. Our pleasure in 
      looking round would have been still greater, if the road had led 
      us nearer the spot.
<pre>
               *          *         *          *          *
</pre>
        "I cannot take leave of this country which we passed through to-
      day, without mentioning that we saw the Cumberland mountains 
      within half-a-mile of Ellisland, Burns's house, the last view we 
      had of them. Drayton has prettily described the connection which 
      this neighbourhood has with ours, when he makes Skiddaw say,--
<pre>
                      'Scruffel, from the sky
             That Annandale doth crown, with a most amorous eye
             Salutes me every day, or at my pride looks grim,
             Oft threatening me with clouds, as I oft threaten him.'
</pre>
        "These lines came to my brother's memory, as well as the 
      Cumberland saying,--
<pre>
           'If Skiddaw hath a cap
            Scruffel wots well of that.'
</pre>
        "We talked of Burns, and of the prospect he must have had, 
      perhaps from his own door, of Skiddaw and his companions; 
      indulging ourselves in the fancy that we might have been 
      personally known to each other, and he have looked upon those 
      objects with more pleasure for our sakes."