The figure of the bard is tall and in the highest degree reverend,
nor the less so that it is much bent by the burden of time. His
white hair floats like a snowdrift around his face, in which are
seen the furrows of intellect and passion, like the channels of
headlong torrents that have foamed themselves away. The old
gentleman is in excellent preservation, considering his time of
life. He has that crickety sort of liveliness,--I mean the
cricket's humor of chirping for any cause or none,--which is perhaps
the most favorable mood that can befall extreme old age. Our pride
forbids us to desire it for ourselves, although we perceive it to be
a beneficence of nature in the case of others. I was surprised to
find it in Burns. It seems as if his ardent heart and brilliant
imagination had both burned down to the last embers, leaving only a
little flickering flame in one corner, which keeps dancing upward
and laughing all by itself. He is no longer capable of pathos. At
the request of Allan Cunningham, he attempted to sing his own song
to Mary in Heaven; but it was evident that the feeling of those
verses, so profoundly true and so simply expressed, was entirely
beyond the scope of his present sensibilities; and, when a touch of
it did partially awaken him, the tears immediately gushed into his
eyes and his voice broke into a tremulous cackle. And yet he but
indistinctly knew wherefore he was weeping. Ah, he must not think
again of Mary in Heaven until he shake off the dull impediment of
time and ascend to meet her there.

Burns then began to repeat Tan O'Shanter; but was so tickled with
its wit and humor--of which, however, I suspect he had but a
traditionary sense--that he soon burst into a fit of chirruping
laughter, succeeded by a cough, which brought this not very