When thee, Jerusalem, I forget,
  Skill part from my right hand!

‘My heart is not of that rock, nor my soul careless as that sea.’  I do not make my progress among mankind as a bowl does among its fellows—­rolling through the crowd without bearing away any mark or impression, except where they hit in hostile collision.

I am here, driven in with my harvest-folks by bad weather; and as you and your sister once did me the honour of interesting yourselves much a l’egard de moi, I sit down to beg the continuation of your goodness.—­I can truly say that, all the exterior of life apart, I never saw two, whose esteem flattered the nobler feelings of my soul—­I will not say, more, but so much as Lady M’Kenzie and Miss Chalmers.  When I think of you—­hearts the best, minds the noblest, of human kind—­unfortunate, even in the shades of life—­when I think I have met with you, and have lived more of real life with you in eight days, than I can do with almost any body I meet with in eight years—­when I think on the improbability of meeting you in this world again—­I could sit down and cry like a child!—­If ever you honoured me with a place in your esteem, I trust I can now plead more desert.—­I am secure against that crushing grip of iron poverty, which, alas! is less or more fatal to the native worth and purity of, I fear, the noblest souls; and a late, important step in my life has kindly taken me out of the way of those ungrateful iniquities, which, however overlooked in fashionable license, or varnished in fashionable phrase, are indeed but lighter and deeper shades of VILLAINY.

Shortly after my last return to Ayrshire, I married ‘my Jean’.  This was not in consequence of the attachment of romance perhaps; but I had a long and much-loved fellow creature’s happiness or misery in my determination, and I durst not trifle with so important a deposit.  Nor have I any cause to repent it.  If I have not got polite tattle, modish manners, and fashionable dress, I am not sickened and disgusted with the multiform curse of boarding-school affectation; and I have got the handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, and the kindest heart in the county.  Mrs. Burns believes, as firmly as her creed, that I am le plus bel esprit, et le plus honnete homme in the universe; although she scarcely ever in her life, except the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and the Psalms of David in metre, spent five minutes together on either prose or verse.

I must except also from this last, a certain late publication of Scots poems, which she has perused very devoutly; and all the ballads in the country, as she has (O the partial lover! you will cry) the finest ‘wood-note wild’ I ever heard.—­I am the more particular in this lady’s character, as I know she will henceforth have the honour of a share in your best wishes.  She is still at Mauchline, as I am building my house; for this hovel that I shelter in, while occasionally here, is pervious to every blast that blows, and every shower that falls; and I am only preserved from being chilled to death, by being suffocated with smoke.  I do not find my farm that pennyworth I was taught to expect, but I believe, in time, it may be a saving bargain.  You will be pleased to hear that I have laid aside idle eclat, and bind every day after my reapers.