street-corners, merely to stare at our unpretending selves. Except in
some remote little town of Italy, (where, besides, the inhabitants had
the intelligible stimulus of beggary,) I have never been honored with
nearly such an amount of public notice.

The next forenoon my companion put me to shame by attending church,
after vainly exhorting me to do the like; and, it being Sacrament
Sunday, and my poor friend being wedged into the farther end of a
closely filled pew, he was forced to stay through the preaching of
four several sermons, and came back perfectly exhausted and desperate.
He was somewhat consoled, however, on finding that he had witnessed a
spectacle of Scotch manners identical with that of Burns's "Holy
Fair," on the very spot where the poet located that immortal
description. By way of further conformance to the customs of the
country, we ordered a sheep's head and the broth, and did penance
accordingly; and at five o'clock we took a fly, and set out for
Burns's farm of Moss Giel.

Moss Giel is not more than a mile from Mauchline, and the road extends
over a high ridge of land, with a view of far hills and green slopes
on either side. Just before we reached the farm, the driver stopped to
point out a hawthorn, growing by the way-side, which he said was
Burns's "Lousie Thorn"; and I devoutly plucked a branch, although I
have really forgotten where or how this illustrious shrub has been
celebrated. We then turned into a rude gateway, and almost immediately
came to the farm-house of Moss Giel, standing some fifty yards removed
from the high-road, behind a tall hedge of hawthorn, and considerably
overshadowed by trees. The house is a whitewashed stone cottage, like
thousands of others in England and Scotland, with a thatched roof, on
which grass and weeds have intruded a picturesque, though alien