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And at three o'clock Sir George, his wife, and myself set out for that fine old historic castle that stands high on the Bognie, overlooking the Cairn waters beyond Dunscore, one of the strongholds of the Black Douglas in those turbulent days of long ago, and now a splendid old residence with a big shoot which was sometimes let for the season at a very high rent by its aristocratic if somewhat impecunious owner.
At this time he established a library in Dunscore, and himself undertook the whole management, drawing out rules, purchasing books, acting for a time as secretary, treasurer, and committee all in one. Among the volumes he ordered were several of his old favourites, The Spectator, The Man of Feeling, and The Lounger; and we know that there was on the shelves even a folio Hebrew Concordance.
Soon after passing Dunscore, we entered the valley of the Cairn, which, with its chalet-like farmhouses far up the slopes on both sides, reminded us much of Switzerland. Here, a few miles onward, we saw Maxwellton House, surrounded by those slopes so warmly spoken of in Scottish song Maxwellton braes are bonnie, Where early fa's the dew; Where I and Annie Laurie, Made up the promise true, &c.
Carlyle had the natural disinclination of every nimble spirit to bruise itself against walls, and did not like to place himself where no step can be taken; but he was honest and true, and cognizant of the subtile links that bind ages together, and saw how every event affects all the future. "Christ died on the tree; that built Dunscore Kirk yonder; that brought you and me together.
He has many, many tokens of Goethe's regard, miniatures, medals, and many letters. If you should go to Scotland one day, you would gratify him, yourself, and me, by your visit to Craigenputtock, in the parish of Dunscore, near Dumfries. He told me he had a book which he thought to publish, but was in the purpose of dividing into a series of articles for "Fraser's Magazine."
Mr M , of A , who now lives near Ellisland, remembers, while living in his father's house, Laggan of Dunscore the place erroneously assumed by Cunningham that Burns and Nicol came there rather late one evening, and induced his father to accompany them to the town of Minniehive, whence he did not return home till next day at three o'clock.
By and by we came to Dunscore kirk, which Burns used to attend with his family while resident at Ellisland a gloomy-looking man, the people thought him, all the time that he, with his generous, benevolent nature, was in reality groaning over the stern Calvinistic theology of the preacher.
His talk playfully exalting the familiar objects, put the companion at once into an acquaintance with his Lars and Lemurs, and it was very pleasant to learn what was predestined to be a pretty mythology. Few were the objects and lonely the man, "not a person to speak to within sixteen miles except the minister of Dunscore"; so that books inevitably made his topics.
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