have been over a wild country, for a few years earlier, in his " In-

structions" for his friend Temple on his tour to Auchinleck, he writes : " Set out [from Glasgow] for Kingswell, to which you have a good road ; arrived there, get a guide to put you through the muir to Loudoun." ' He and Johnson did not go the whole dis- tance in one day, though they had but thirty-four miles to travel. They broke their journey at the house of Mr. Campbell, of Trees- bank, who had married Mrs. Boswell's sister. Here they rested till Tuesday. At a few miles distance Robert Burns, a lad of thirteen, " a dexterous ploughman for his age," was spending his boyhood "in unceasing moil" and hardship, not having as yet " committed the sin of rhyme." Boswell, I believe, much as he admired Allan Ramsay's poem in the Scottish dialect, The Gentle

���DUNDONA1.D CASTLE.

��Shepherd, never makes mention of Burns, and Burns only once mentions him. In the Author s Earnest Cry and Prayer, written before the year 1786, he says :

" Alas ! I'm but a nameless wight, Trode i' the mire an' out o' sight ! But could I like Montgomeries fight,

Or gab 2 like Boswell, There's some sark-necks 3 I wad draw tight,

An' tie some hose well."

Dundonald Castle, in which Robert II. lived and died, our travellers visited on Monday morning. " It has long been unroofed," writes Boswell, "and though of considerable size we could not by any power of imagination, figure it as having been a suitable habitation for majesty. Dr. Johnson, to irritate my old Scottish enthusiasm,

1 Boswell's Letters to Temple, p. 98. 3 To prate. 3 Shirt-collars.

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