Siding with Burns, as we needs must, in his plea against the world,
let us try to do the world a little justice too. It is far easier to
know and honor a poet when his fame has taken shape in the
spotlessness of marble than when the actual man comes staggering
before you, besmeared with the sordid stains of his daily life. For my
part, I chiefly wonder that his recognition dawned so brightly while
he was still living. There must have been something very grand in his
immediate presence, some strangely impressive characteristic in his
natural behavior, to have caused him to seem like a demigod so soon.
As we went back through the churchyard, we saw a spot where nearly
four hundred inhabitants of Dumfries were buried during the cholera
year; and also some curious old monuments, with raised letters, the
inscriptions on which were not sufficiently legible to induce us to
puzzle them out; but, I believe, they mark the resting-places of old
Covenanters, some of whom were killed by Claverhouse and his
fellow-ruffians.
St. Michael's Church is of red freestone, and was built about a
hundred years ago, on an old Catholic foundation. Our guide admitted
us into it, and showed us, in the porch, a very pretty little marble
figure of a child asleep, with a drapery over the lower part, from
beneath which appeared its two baby feet. It was truly a sweet little
statue; and the woman told us that it represented a child of the
sculptor, and that the baby (here still in its marble infancy) had
died more than twenty-six years ago.
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