are mostly from England. It is said that at the present time more than one hundred marriages yearly are contracted at this place. The female officials ask the parties if they are willing to enter into the matrimonial state, and if an affirmative answer is given, they require them all to sign their names in a book kept for the purpose. In many instances the parties who are married here get "married over" in the usual form. Mr. Pennant, in his journey to Scotland, many years since, speaks in the following terms of Gretna, or, as he calls it, Gretna Green: At a short distance from the bridge, stop at the little village of Gretna-the resort of all amorous couples, whose union the prudence of parents or guardians prohibits. Here the young pair may be instantly united by a fisherman, a joiner, or a blacksmith, who marry from two guineas a job to a dram of whiskey. But the price is generally adjusted by the information of the postillions from Carlisle, who are in pay of one or other of the above worthies; but even the drivers, in case of necessity, have been known to undertake the sacredotal office. This place is distinguished from afar by a small plantation of firs, the Cyprian grove of the place-a sort of land-mark for fugitive lovers. As I had a great desire to see the high priest, by stratagem I succeeded. He appeared in the form of a fisherman, a stout fellow in a blue coat, rolling round his solemn chops a quid of tobacco of no common size. One of our party was supposed to come to explore the coast; we questioned him about the price, which, after eyeing us attentively, he left to our honor. The Church of Scotland does what it can to prevent these clandestine marriages, but in vain; for these infamous couplers despise the fulmination of the kirk, and excommunication is the only penalty it can inflict. ROBERT BURNS. ROBERT BURNS was, on January 25, 1759, born near Ayr, under a humble, but, since that era, celebrated roof. He was, at the age of six, sent to a village school at the Mill of Alloway, and soon after that put under the tuition of John Murdoch, a young man hired by the father of the future poet and a few of his humble neighbors to educate their children. The father of Robert Burns was a gardener, but six years after the birth of the poet, became tenant of the farm of Mount Oliphant, near Ayr, and afterwards of that of Lochlea, near Tarbolton; yet his circumstances were such that, as his sons Robert and Gilbert grew up, they were made to aid him in the labor of earning their bread; hence they enjoyed such scant means of education, as being sent "week about" during one summer quarter to the school at Dalrymple would afford. Murdoch, the early instructor of Robert Burns, having been appointed to a school in Ayr, had his old pupil again under his tuition "for one week before" and "two weeks after harvest ;" and there, although the embryo poet was but in the fourteenth year of his age, and with such brief and interrupted liberty of study, yet did he succeed in mastering the rudiments of the French language, and even gained some very slight knowledge of Latin. He was a hard student, and devoured earnestly the few books he gained the privilege of perusing. Robert Burns and a few of his equals in age and circumstances formed a debating-club at the village of Tarbolton, reading essays in rotation, and stinting their outlay for "the good of the house" to three pence each night they met. In the twenty-third year of his age, Robert Burns spent six months in Irvine with the object of acquiring a knowledge of the heckling of flax, but the venture was soon closed, by the workshop being burnt when merrily bringing in the new-year of 1783. The period spent by the poet in Irvine did much to sap the principles of virtue and religion his excellent parents had striven to instil into his mind; and too soon after "the saint, the father, and the friend"-the father he so immortalized in his "Cottar's Saturday Night"-sunk, on February 13th, 1784, under the weight of ills he had striven manfully against. The family of Lochlea, were driven from its shelter, and moved to the farm of Mossgiel, near Mauchline, where they supported their narrowed circle with difficulty, increased not a little by the results of an over intimacy of the poet with the softer sex, which drove him to seek a berth among the sugar fields of Jamaica; and to raise the means for conveyance to that island was the direct cause of his poems and songs being put to the press in Kilmarnock. The extraordinary merit of these remarkable productions were so cordially done homage to by the readers of the country and the literati of the city, that the poet was soon drawn to Edinburgh, where he was the "lion" of the season of 1786, and where an extended and rapidly disposed of edition of his works were printed by W. Creech, with the proceeds of which he was enabled to clear off the incumbrances at Mossgiel, to redeem his matrimonial engagement with "his bonny Jean," and to stock for himself the farm of Ellisland, near Dumfries. Robert Burns was soon after appointed an exciseman, and sought thereby to eke out the scanty income he strove to draw from a farm, which, soon proving unproductive of profit, was thrown up by him. The hard duties of a gauger, although most distasteful to the bard, were honorably and with scrupulous fidelity discharged by him; but the life SCOTLAND. Burns' Monument, Auld and New Brigs o' Doon, Alloway Kirk. it led him was one of vexation and temptation; as the incessant warfare, maintained between his high instincts and his low circumstances, at times made him yield to excesses, for which his unseared conscience did most bitterly upbraid him. The poetic fame he had earned, and dearly valued, with the extraordinary conversational powers he was gifted with, made his society courted by all the "fast" livers of the ancient burgh of Dumfries, and of the "ten muirland parishes," which were within his official "ride" as an exciseman. The frame of Robert Burns was strong in appearance, but, perhaps, not so constitutionally, as from his early youth he had been a martyr to severe headaches, and latterly suffered seriously from palpitation of the heart; he was, moreover, despondent in temperament, rarely content with his lot, and although the most benevolent and generous-hearted of men, allowed the iron of his hard circumstances to cut deep into his soul. In the winter of 1795, Robert Burns suffered acutely and long from a rheumatic attack, from the effects of which he never wholly recovered. In July following, he resorted to the sea-bathing hamlet of Brow, on the Solway, but returned home unrelieved, and died of a fever of four days' duration. Robert Burns died at Dumfries, on July 21st, 1796, and his remains are there covered by a mausoleum, erected in 1815. The above is a representation of Burns' monument, the old and new rid ges over the river Doon, with Alloway Kirk, and Burns' cottage, in the extreme distance.* The monument is nearly three miles south from Ayr, and forty-three from Glasgow, by the Railway. It was erected in 1820, and is sixty feet high. The "auld brig o' Doon" to the key stone of which, Tam O'Shanter is said to have been chased by the witches, is seen in the foreground on the right, the new bridge is seen on the extreme left. Between this bridge and the monument is a public-house, or tavern, beyond which is seen, in the extreme distance, Alloway Kirk, at the head of the street. Burns' College is seen in the extreme distance on the right. In the room within the monument may be seen Thou shalt not for face, the pocket bible, in two Myself, but shall perfom unto the Lord thine Oath. volumes, as given by "the Ayrshire ploughman" to "his Highland Mary""the Mary in Heaven," whose "dear departed shade" he so beautifully apostrophised in lines of Malth 5th 33 /r touching pathos and unsur- Fac-simile in Mary's Bible. † passed On the fly-leaf of the first of the two volumes is written by the lover, "and ye shall not swear by my name falsely; I am the Lord." -Lev. xix, 13; and on the second volume is inscribed, "thou shalt not foreswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths."—Mat. *This place was visited October 20th, 1853. When we arrived in the morning at Glasgow, on our way to Ayr, we found all the places of business shut, on account (as we were informed) of the Annual Fast. We found a large crowd about the Railway station, about starting to visit the monument. The keeper of the room in the monument, estimated that two thousand persons had visited it on this day. We visited the monument about the close of the day, and met many persons returning from the excursion. I saw more persons intoxicated than I had seen any where else in the kingdom. Some respectable-looking young men, I observed, had to be held up by their companions to prevent their falling in the street. When within a few rods of Burns' Cottage, I saw a soldier in his red coat, (her Majesty's uniform,) so drunk that he lay like a dead man in the gutter, by the side of the street. That "noblest of all his ballads," as the Address to "Mary in Heaven" has justly been designated, was composed at Ellisland, in 1789, on the anniversary of the day on which he heard of the death of his early love. According to the account given by Mrs. Burns to Mr. Lockhart, "Burns spent that day, though laboring under a cold, in the usual work of his harvest, and apparently in excellent spirits. But as the twilight deepened, he appeared to grow very sad about something,' and at length wandered out into the barn-yard, to which his wife, in the anxiety for his health, foilowed him, entreating him in vain to observe that frost had set in, and to return to the fireside. On being again and again requested to do so, he always promised compliance-but still remained where he was, striding up and down slowly, and contemplating the sky, which was singularly clear and starry. At last Mrs. Burns found him stretched on a mass of straw, with his eyes fixed on a beautiful planet, 'that shone like another moon,' and prevailed on him to come in. Immediately, on entering the house, he called for his desk, and wrote exactly as they now stand, with all the ease of one copying from memory, the sublime and pathetic verses Thou lingering star, with lessening ray, That lovest to greet the early morn, Again thou usherest in the day My Mary from my soul was torn. 'O, Mary! dear departed shade, Where is thy place of blissful rest? See'st thou thy lover lowly laid, Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast,""&c. v, 33; and both are signed Robert Burns, Mossgiel; while in one is preserved a lock of the hair of Mary Campbell, whose simple name has become thus linked with that of the peasant bard. The story of the bestowal and recovery of these relics of early love is brief. Mary Campbell died of fever at Greenock, when returning from her native highland home to redeem her troth with her Ayrshire wooer. These precious volumes were given by the mother of Mary Campbell, as an heir-loom, to another of her daughters who had married a mason, named Anderson, living at Renton, in Dumbartonshire, but whose family, emigrating to America, were induced to dispose of them for £25 to a party of Scotchmen in Montreal, but only parted with on condition that they were deposited where, and preserved as they now are, in the monument by the banks of the "bonny Doon." This interesting negotiation was accomplished in 1840, and mainly through the exertions of a son, settled in Montreal, of the active and energetic citizen of Glasgow, whose address may be fully seen on the envelope which lies so near to these sacred volumes. The monument also contains a marble bust of the peasant bard; a copy of his portrait, as originally drawn by Naysmith; and sundry illustrations of his poems. The grounds around the monument extends a little more than one acre, but they are kept with exquisite taste, and the walks and shrubbery which adorn them are so laid out that the visitor may believe them to be more extensive far. They stretch between the "auld brig" and new bridge of Doon, and close to the margin of that classic stream. It is usual for visitors to climb the "key-stane o' the brig," "where Maggie left behind her ain grey tail;" and a path by the opposite bank of the Doon leads to the new bridge, from which a fine view of the monument and the grounds around it may be had. At the entrance to the enclosure around the monument, a comfortable and respectable house has been erected for the entertainment of the traveller; for that, and much else that tends to guard and to beautify this lovely spot, the admirer of the genius of Robert Burns, has to thank the enthusiastic devotion of Mr. Auld, a gentleman who has given lavishly of his means and also liberally of time for that object. It is not the denizens of the ancieut burgh of Ayr, the inhabitants of the numerous villages around, nor the throng of tourists from afar, that during the season crowd these localities, now so dear to the Scotchman, but each Saturday, in the summer, the Ayrshire Railway so arrange that thousands of toil-worn artisans from Kilwarnock, Paislay, Glasgow, and the manufacturing districts around these busy towns, may have the privilege of visiting "the monument to Burns," and wandering by the banks of "the bonny Doon," for fares almost nominal in amount. The original figures of "Tam o' Shanter," and of "Souter Johnnie," with that of their landlady, as cut in stone by the self-taught sculptor, James Thom, which after being exhibted throughout the three kingdoms, and most profitably to the proprietor, were secured for these grounds, by Mr. Auld. "Tam o' Shanter," and his perilous adventure, has been already so largely dilated on, that his portrait, as drawn by the poet, may here be given, and the tourist can thence judge of the sculptor's merits: His wife Kate, ca'ed her Tam a skellum- | But to our tale: Ae market-nicht, |