us to the top of the staircase, over the kitchen, where we found the
wretchedest little sleeping-chamber in the world, with a sloping roof
under the thatch, and two beds spread upon the bare floor. This, most
probably, was Burns's chamber; or, perhaps, it may have been that of
his mother's servant-maid; and, in either case, this rude floor, at
one time or another, must have creaked beneath the poet's midnight
tread. On the opposite side of the passage was the door of another
attic-chamber, opening which, I saw a considerable number of cheeses
on the floor.

The whole house was pervaded with a frowzy smell, and also a
dunghill-odor, and it is not easy to understand how the atmosphere of
such a dwelling can be any more agreeable or salubrious morally than
it appeared to be physically. No virgin, surely, could keep a holy awe
about her while stowed higgledy-piggledy with coarse-natured rustics
into this narrowness and filth. Such a habitation is calculated to
make beasts of men and women; and it indicates a degree of barbarism
which I did not imagine to exist in Scotland, that a tiller of broad
fields, like the farmer of Mauchline, should have his abode in a
pig-sty. It is sad to think of anybody--not to say a poet, but any
human being--sleeping, eating, thinking, praying, and spending all his
home-life in this miserable hovel; but, methinks, I never in the least
knew how to estimate the miracle of Burns's genius, nor his heroic
merit for being no worse man, until I thus learned the squalid
hindrances amid which he developed himself. Space, a free atmosphere,
and cleanliness have a vast deal to do with the possibilities of human
virtue.

The biographers talk of the farm of Moss Giel as being damp and
unwholesome; but I do not see why, outside of the cottage-walls, it