The inclosure around the monument is beautifully laid out as an ornamental garden, and abundantly provided with rare flowers and shrubbery, all tended with loving care.  The monument stands on an elevated site, and consists of a massive basement-story, three-sided, above which rises a light and elegant Grecian temple,—­a mere dome, supported on Corinthian pillars, and open to all the winds.  The edifice is beautiful in itself; though I know not what peculiar appropriateness it may have, as the memorial of a Scottish rural poet.

The door of the basement-story stood open; and, entering, we saw a bust of Burns in a niche, looking keener, more refined, but not so warm and whole-souled as his pictures usually do.  I think the likeness cannot be good.  In the centre of the room stood a glass case, in which were reposited the two volumes of the little Pocket-Bible that Burns gave to Highland Mary, when they pledged their troth to one another.  It is poorly printed, on coarse paper.  A verse of Scripture, referring to the solemnity and awfulness of vows, is written within the cover of each volume, in the poet’s own hand; and fastened to one of the covers is a lock of Highland Mary’s golden hair.  This Bible had been carried to America by one of her relatives, but was sent back to be fitly treasured here.

There is a staircase within the monument, by which we ascended to the top, and had a view of both Briggs of Doon; the scene of Tam O’Shanter’s misadventure being close at hand.  Descending, we wandered through the inclosed garden, and came to a little building in a corner, on entering which, we found the two statues of Tam and Sutor Wat,—­ponderous stone-work enough, yet permeated in a remarkable degree with living warmth and jovial hilarity.  From this part of the garden, too, we again beheld the old Brigg of Doon, over which Tam galloped in such imminent and awful peril.  It is a beautiful object in the landscape, with one high, graceful arch, ivy-grown, and shadowed all over and around with foliage.

When we had waited a good while, the old gardener came, telling us that he had heard an excellent prayer at laying the corner-stone of the new kirk.  He now gave us some roses and sweetbrier, and let us out from his pleasant garden.  We immediately hastened to Kirk Alloway, which is within two or three minutes’ walk of the monument.  A few steps ascend from the road-side, through a gate, into the old graveyard, in the midst of which stands the kirk.  The edifice is wholly roofless, but the side-walls and gable-ends are quite entire, though portions of them are evidently modern restorations.  Never was there a plainer little church, or one with smaller architectural pretension; no New England meeting-house has more simplicity in its very self, though poetry and fun have clambered and clustered so wildly over Kirk Alloway that it is difficult to see it as it actually exists.  By-the-by, I do not understand why Satan and an assembly