He seemed a very kindly and social man, and was quite ready to speak
about his father, nor was he at all reluctant to let it be seen how much
he valued the glory of being descended from the poet. By and by, at Mr.
Aiken's instance, he sang one of Burns's songs,--the one about "Annie"
and the "rigs of barley." He sings in a perfectly simple style, so that
it is little more than a recitative, and yet the effect is very good as
to humor, sense, and pathos. After rejoining the ladies, he sang
another, "A posie for my ain dear May," and likewise "A man's a man for
a' that." My admiration of his father, and partly, perhaps, my being an
American, gained me some favor with him, and he promised to give me what
he considered the best engraving of Burns, and some other remembrance of
him. The Major is that son of Burns who spent an evening at Abbotsford
with Sir Walter Scott, when, as Lockhart writes, "the children sang the
ballads of their sires." He spoke with vast indignation of a recent
edition of his father's works by Robert Chambers, in which the latter
appears to have wronged the poet by some misstatements.--I liked them
both and they liked me, and asked me to go and see there at Cheltenham,
where they reside. We broke up at about midnight.

The members of this dinner-party were of the more liberal tone of
thinking here in Liverpool. The Colonel and Major seemed to be of
similar principles; and the eyes of the latter glowed, when he sang his
father's noble verse, "The rank is but the guinea's stamp," etc. It
would have been too pitiable if Burns had left a son who could not feel
the spirit of that verse.


October 8th.--Coning to my office, two or three mornings ago, I found
Mrs. ------, the mother of Mr. ------, the insane young man of whom I had
taken charge. She is a lady of fifty or thereabouts, and not very