Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-08-10
BURNS IN DUMFRIES.
How the Name of the Bard is Assocl-
ated with Every Old Land Mark.
How He Had His Every Day Being In the
Environment OF Place and Peoplr-hs
Tomb Necessary Show place.
rCopyrighted, lsoo.1

ancient burgh, in the constant. and, 10
the stranger, unexpected Identification
of place with personality. Indeed, %
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-
manent coloring from the brief presence
of one man. We place beloved, sanity
Whittier at DanTers town. But his
work and personality are inteusest in our
minds along IN the dirk 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
beaten path upon which he has cheerilY
truudled for more than quarter OF
century between Cambridge and Beacon
streets, and on 10 the Atlantic Monthly
office. Where shall we find O locale for
| Lowell, sweet and stately bard and man!
Those who in secret have wept anu
smiled over the tender pages of "Dream
Life'' and nReveries of Il Bachelor,
| only know in q dim way that somewhere
| between the rugged Connecticut hills
there is still 81 doughty old farmer, Tx
Marvel, - pothering among bis stumps,
| stoue walls and early vegetables. mo
can tell of one nesting place where Wits
was, save III the brief hours by 1.-The
Bridge in the little barkwoods cabin;
and his noble sister, Fannie Fern, -
| died, Parton tells US, without being aDlo
| to find the house in Portland i'll which she
was born, and which she so bitterly
| loneed to know? Where is most left the
seal of the personal presence of Haw-
thorne-at Dingley's. at Concord, or at
| Salem? There is but one spot where we
an put our loving hands Oh Poe; at the
! Fordham cottage, where the poet, his
diving wife, Virginia, and her devoted
mother starved III gloom and obscurity.
Irving's personal presences remains
fixed at Just three places-Sunnyside, at
the old Dutch church, Tarrytown, and
among the mlst-crOwned Catskiils. The
two Alcotts, great-souled father and
drudging, tender-h 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 Lexinsto
road, and beneath the great Scotch gran
lie boulder upon the grave in Sleepy Hol-
low cemetery. The spirit OF Thoreau,
intangible and heeting of communion
and companionship as his own wander
iurs. seems but now and then TO hover
about aud haunt the reeds of sedgy
Maiden Pond, as if finding vanishing
embodiment: in the lonely bittern 8
mournful cry. Even the master-snEer,
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 and work our
miud-picture of the man is with his calm
! face bent over his library desk in Cralgie
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 1ennysonic shrine
at dear old Somersby, in Lincolnshire,
at Aldworth, or at FarringfoTd House
Isle of Wight? Edwin Arnold fits be-
tween a London editorial sanctum and
an oriental pagoda. Ruskin, dimmed
aud voiceless behind the veil OF mental
steep from which the wakeless sleep
must be entered, looks, ghost like, from
the windows of Couiston hall, upon fail
| SOuiblOu III Ola '-S h@S NSHN
and written, how many have discovered
his Lancashire environment? Even the
shrine of Shakespeare is meageI
church, beside pinched theater, in al
insignificant town that knows not only
his ashes aud the gratuities they bring
Burns and Scott of all the luminou:
host of the great and good in prose anG
verse, living and dead had their actual
everyday being in, and gave the palpa-
BILE aud imperishable life throb of theil
personalities to an environment of place
and people, which thus became mauso'
leum infinitely greater and greater thai
the loftiest column or ceuotaph that eve
| pierced the clouds.
But come with me In and out of oil
Dumfries, and up and down the songfu
NTH, or If your legs are not "braw aut
and weel eneuch, - climb with me to tn
ancient observatory over here in Max
welton, the Maxwelton whose 'brae
ara bouuie, where early ia g the dew,
and we can from this one place see ant
feel the tenderness of the Identification
From this point the eye may range. t.
the east, over and beyond fair Amman
dale, across Kidcutbrightshire; to tn
west, to the noble hills skirting Ayr; t
the north, up the dreamland Nithsdal
to the far grim turrets of DrumlanriI
- castle; aud to the south to the vast ex
panse of Solway Firth, where to tn
right of Nithsmouth looms up gray
browed Criffel, and to the left is caugh
CLEAN of the sands by Brow Well, a
whose waters Burns too late
STRUGGLED TO SAVE HIS LIFE.
Thus at glance not only does the be
witching cyclorama give the beholde
the entire field of the everyday scenes o
the poets life during his last eight mem
s orable years, but at the same instant
e comprehension of the three most i'm
pressive epochs in his career of which "
O. n have memorable home-heaven G
Ellislaud farm life, the wretched fgh
against poverty in the gray old borde
town beneath US, and that last unavail
ing struggle at Brow Well, by Solwsy
shifting sands: all made inexpressi5l
more impressive by the lofty dome of III
silent mausoleum, over there in the
shadowy kirkyard, looming before l
wherever we may look for the recognl
ton of his old-time presence within th
fair region roundabout.
In Dumfries itself one cannot loo
,e upon q single olden structure, or folio
with the eve any close, wynd, veunell {