As we advanced into the town, the decorations became more frequent.  The streets were crowded with people carrying banners and wreaths, many of the houses were adorned with green boughs and the vessels in the harbor hung out all their flags.  We saw the Wallace Tower, a high Gothic building, having in front a statue of Wallace leaning on his sword, by Thom, a native of Ayr, and on our way to the green, where the procession was to assemble, passed under the triumphal arch thrown across the street opposite the inn where Tarn O’Shanter caroused so long with Souter Johnny.  Leaving the companies to form on the long meadow bordering the shore, we set out for the Doon, three miles distant.  Beggars were seated at regular distances along the road, uttering the most dolorous whinings.  Both bridges were decorated in the same manner, with miserable looking objects, keeping up, during the whole day, a continual lamentation.  Persons are prohibited from begging in England and Scotland, but I suppose, this being an extraordinary day, license was given them as a favor, to beg free.  I noticed that the women, with their usual kindness of heart, bestowed nearly all the alms which these unfortunate objects received.  The night before, as I was walking through the streets of Glasgow, a young man of the poorer class, very scantily dressed, stepped up to me and begged me to listen to him for a moment.  He spoke hurriedly, and agitatedly, begging me, in God’s name, to give him something, however little.  I gave him what few pence I had with me, when he grasped my hand with a quick motion, saying:  “Sir, you little think how much you have done for me.”  I was about to inquire more particularly into his situation, but he had disappeared among the crowd.

We passed the “cairn where hunters found the murdered bairn,” along a pleasant road to the Burns cottage, where it was spanned by a magnificent triumphal arch of evergreens and flowers.  To the disgrace of Scotland, this neat little thatched cot, where Burns passed the first seven years of his life, is now occupied by somebody, who has stuck up a sign over the door, “licensed to retail spirits, to be drunk on the premises;” and accordingly the rooms were crowded full of people, all drinking.  There was a fine original portrait of Burns in one room, and in the old fashioned kitchen we saw the recess where he was born.  The hostess looked towards us as if to inquire what we would drink, and I hastened away—­there was profanity in the thought.  But by this time, the bell of Old Alloway, which still hangs in its accustomed place, though the walls only are left, began tolling, and we obeyed the call.  The attachment of the people for this bell, is so great, that a short time ago, when it was ordered to be removed, the inhabitants rose en masse, and prevented it.  The ruin, which is close by the road, stands in the middle of the church-yard, and the first thing I saw, on going in the gate, was the tomb of the father of Burns.  I looked in the old window, but the interior was filled with rank weeds, and overshadowed by a young tree, which had grown nearly to the eaves.