, 1890-08-14
FOOTPRINTS OF BURNS
In Bonnie Braes Where Ear
ly Fa's the Dew.
OUTLINE THE DEEDS OF KINGS.
Tho Poets Memory Is the Breath
Of Life in Old Dumfries
Town.
ICopyrieht, 1901

DUMFRIEs, Scotland, July l5.-
To the visitor at old Dumfries town,
II he be lover Of Burns, there
await almost endless pleasures with
In and near the ancient burgh, In
the constant, aud, to the stranger,
nexpected, Identification of place
with personality. Indeed, 1 do not
know of another spot In the whole
world where the place itself and
the whole country roundabout seem
20 have taken on such an individu-
ality and permanent coloring from
the brief presence of one man. We
place beloved, sanity Whittier at
Danvers town. But his work and
personality are intensest In our
minds along In the dark days be-
fore the great conflict, and In
thought we see the man, Whittier
plainest, when and where his burn
ing words had their most ag-
gressive power. Good old DIR.
Holmes shines along in a
beaten path upon which
he has cheerily trundled
for more than q quarter of a GEN.
tury between Cambridge and Bea-
con street, and on to the Atlantic
Monthly office. Where shall we
find locale for Lowell, sweet and
stately bard and man? Those who
IN secret have wept and smiled over
the tender pages Of "Dream Life"
and "Reveries of n Bachelor" only
know in q dim way that somewhere
between the rugged Connecticut
hills there is still n doughty old
farmer, "Ik Marvel" potherlng
among his stumps, stone walls and
early vegetables. Who can tell
of one nesting-place where Willis
was, save In the brief hours by ''The
Bridge, in. the little backwoods
cabin; and his noble sister, Fanny
Fern,h died, Parton tells us, with
out being able to find the house
in Portland I'm which she was
born, and which she so bitterly
longed to know? Where Is most left
the seal OF the personal presence Of
Hawthorne--at Dingley's, at Con-
cord, or at Salem? There Is but one
spot where we can put our loving
hands on Poe; at the Fordham cot
tage where the poet, his dying wife,
Virginia, and her devoted mother
starved In gloom and obscurity.
Irving's personal presence remains
fixed at just three places-Sunny-
side, ut the old Dutch church, Tar
rytown, and among the mist
crowned Catskills. The two Alcotts,
great-souled father and drudging,
tender-hearted daughter, made Con-
cord more famous than did Emerson,
whom we feel we can only find
behind the prim, white walls; of the
prim, white house on the Lex
ington road, and beneath the
great Scotch granite boulder
upon the grave in Sleepy Hol-
low cemetery. The spirit of Thoreau,
intangible and fleetIng of COM
ihunion and companionship as his
own wanderings, seems but now
and then to hover about and haunt
the reeds OF sedgy Maiden pond, as
If finding vanishing embodiment in
the lonely bittern'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 his own
life at old Portland town; and for
nearly all the remainder of his
time aud work our mind picture of
the man is with his calm lace bent
over his library desk In Craigie
house, Cambridge. Shall we look
for Carlyle at Ecclefechan, Craigen-
puttock or at Chelsea? Where is the
one shrine at which we shall
find Byron? The whole of old Eng
land and the tiny brass plate sunk
In the pave of Westminster abbey
confuse the mind and heart conceu-
tration upon Dickens. Where 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 between a Lon
don editorial sanctum and an
and voiceless behind the veil of u
mental sleep from which the wake
less sleep must be entered,
dows of Coniston hall, upon fair
Coniston water, and, in all he has
done and written, how many have
discovered his Lancashire environ
men? Even the shrine of Shak-
epcuIc 10 III u HltugtE ClluTCl, DeSluGS
q pinched theater, in an insignif-
cant towa that knows only his
ashes and the gratitudes they bring.
Burns and Scott, of all the luminous
host of the great and good In prose
and verse, living and dead, had their
actual every day being in, and gave
the palpable and imperishable life
throb of their personalities to, an
environment of place and people,
which thus became mausoleum inf
nitely greater and grander than the
loftiest column or cenotaph that
ever pierced the clouds.
But come with me i'm and out of
old Dumfries, and up and down the
songful NTH, or If your legs are not
"braw and weel eneuch," climb
with me to the ancient observatory,
over mere In Maxweltown, the Max
weltown whose "braes are bonnie,
where early fa's the 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
Annandale; across Kirkcudbright-
shire, TO the west, to the noble hills
skirting Ayr; to the north, up the
dreamland Nithsdale TO the fair
grim turrets Of Drumlanrig castle;
and, to the south, to the vast ex.
panse of Solway Firth, where, to the
right Of Nithsmouth, looms gray