Fort Worth weekly gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-08-14
BURNS IN DUMFRIES.
How the Name of the Bard Is Associ-
ated with Every Old Land Mark.
How He Had Eis Every. Bay Being in the
Environment OF Place ana Psopls-His
Tomb Necessary Show Plaos.
TCopyrighted, 1880. I

]
| endless pleasures within and near the
! ancient burgh, In the constant, and, to
| the stranger, unexpected Identification
! of place with personality. Indeed, l d n
| not know of another spot in the whole
| world where the place itself and the
! whole country roundabout seem to have
taken on such an individuality and per-
mnnent coloring from the brief presence
of one man. We place beloved, sanity
Whittier ut Danvers town. But his
work and personality are intensest In our
minds along ID the dark days be-
fore the great conflict, and in
thought we see the man, Whittier
plainest, when and where his burning
words had their most aggressive power.
Good old DR.. Holmes shines along in a
beaten path upon which he has cheerily
trundled for more than q quarter of
century between Cambridge and Beacon
streets, and on TO the Atlantic Monthly
Office. Where shall we find locale for
Lowell, sweet and stately bard and mau?
Those who in secret have wept and
smiled over the tender pages of "Dream
Life'' and "Reyeries of q Bachelor, -
only know in q dim way that somewhere
between the rugged Connecticut hills
there is still doughty old farmer, ''Ik
Marvel, - potheriug among bis stumps,
stone walls aud early vegetables. Who
can tell of one nesting place where Willis
was, save In the brief hours by 1.-The
BRIDGE in the little backwoods cabin;
and his noble sister, Fannie Fern, -
died, Parton tells us, without beng able
to find the house In Portland in which she
was born. and which she so bitterly
longed to know? Where is most left the
seal of the personal presence of Haw-
thorne-at Dingley's. ut Concord, or at
Salem? There is but enc spot where we
all put our loving hands on Poe; ct the
Fordham cottage, where the poet, his
dying wife, Virginia, and her devoted
mother starved in gloom and obscurity.
Irviug's personal preSeuces remains
fixed ut just three places-Sunnyside, at
the old Dutch church, Tarrytowu, and
among the mIst-crowned Catskills. The
two Alcotts, great-souled father and
drudging, tender-hearted daughter,
MADE CONCORD MORE FAMOUS
than did Emerson, whom We feel we can
only find behind the prim white walls of
the prim, white house on the Lexington
road, and beneath the great Scotch gran
lite boulder upon the grave in Sleepy Hol-
lew cemetery. The spirit of Thoreau,
intangible and fleeing of communion
and companionship as his own wander
inge, seems but now ana then to hover
about and haunt the reeds of sedgy
Maiden Pond, US If finding vanishing
embodiment: In the lonely bitteru's
mournful cry. Even the master singer,
Longfellow, left but four songs by which
We may trace his Identification with the
first twenty years of bis own life ut old
Portland town; and for nearly all the
remainder of his time and work our
mind-picture of the man is with his calm
face bent over his library desk in Craigis
House, Cambridge. Shall we look for
Carlyle at Ecclefechan, Craigenputtock
or at Chelsea? Where is the one shrine
at which we shall find Byron? The
whole of old England and the tiny
brass plate sunk In the pave of West
minister Abbey confuse the mind and
heart CONCENTRATION upon Dickens. When
are we to finally find Tennysonic shrine |
at dear old Somersby, in Lincolnshire,
at Aldworth, or at Farringford House,
Isle of Wight? Edwin Arnold fits be- |
tween a London editorial sanctum and |
an oriental pagoda. Ruskin, dimmed |
and yoiceless behind the veil of q mental |
sleep from which the wakeless sleep |
must be entered. looks, ghost like, from |
the windows of Coniston hall, upon fair |
Conston water, and in all he has done |
and written, how many have discovered |
his Lancashire environment? Even the |
shrine of Shakespeare is q meeger
church, beside pinched theater, In an
insignificant town that knows not only |
his ashes and the grRtuities they bring.
Burns and Scott of all the luminous
host of the great sud good In prose and
verse, living aud dead had their actual
everyday being in, and gave the palpa-
BILE and impsrishable life throb of their
TO an environment of place
and people, which thus became mauso-
leum infinitely greater and greater than
the loftiest column or cenotaph that ever
pierced the clouds.
But come with me in and out of old
Dumfries, and up and down the songful
NTH, or II your legs are not "braw aud
and wesl eneuch, climb with me to the |
ancient observatory over here In Max
the Maxwelton whose "brass
ars bounie, where early ia IS tbs dew"
and we can from this one place see and
feel the tenderness of the Identification.
From this point the eye may range, to
the east, over and beyond fair AMMAN
dale, across Kidcutbrightshire; TO the
west, to the noble hills skirting Ayr; to
the north, up the dreamlGnd Nithsdale
to the far grim turrets of Drumlaurig
castle; aud TO the south to the vast ex-
ranse of Solway FIRTH. where to the
right of Nithsmouth looms up gray
browed Crifrel, and to the left is caught
, CLEAN OF the sands by Brow Well, at
whose waters Burns too late
STRUGGLED TO SAVE HIS LIFE.
Thus at glance not only does the be-
cyclorama give the beholder
he entire field of the everyday scenes of
he poets life during his last eight MEM
,r1ble years, but at the same instant
of the three most i'm
,ressive epochs in his career OF which we
ian have memory-the home-heaven OF
Sllisland farm life. the wretched fight
against poverty in the gray old border |
own beneath us, and that last unavail-
ng struggle at Brow Well. by Solway's
sands; all made inexpressi5ly
more impressive by the lofty dome OF the
ileut mausoleum, over there In that
hadowy kirkyard, looming before US
wherever we may look for the recogui-
ion OF bis old-time presence within the
air region roundabout.
In Dumfries itself one cannot soof |