often surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls below it; Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight." In speaking of the "Rape of the Lock," the same great critic remarks that it "stands forward in the classes of literature, as the most exquisite example of ludicrous poetry." Another poet and critic of no mean authority calls him "The sweetest and most elegant of English poets, the severest chastiser of vice, and the most persuasive teacher of wisdom." Lord Byron terms him "the most perfect and harmonious of poets." How many have quoted the following lines. without knowing that they were Pope's! "To look through Nature up to Nature's God." Look on her face, and you'll forget them all." His can't be wrong whose life is in the right." Pope was certainly the most independent writer of his time; a poet who never sold himself, and never lent his pen to the upholding of wrong. And although a severe critic, the following verse will show that he did not wish to bestow his chastisement in a wrong direction: "Curst be the verse, how well soe'er it flow, No poet's pen was ever more thoroughly used to suppress vice than Pope's; and what he did was done conscientiously, as the following lines will show : "Ask you what provocation I have had? The strong antipathy of good to bad. When Truth or Virtue an affront endures, The affront is mine, my friend, and should be yours." Pope is not only a poet of a high order, but as yet he is the unsurpassed translator of Homer. My visit to Pope's villa was a short one, but it was attended with many pleasing incidents. I have derived much pleasure from reading his Iliad and other translations. The verse from the pen of Lord Denham, that heads this chapter, conveys but a faint idea of my estimate of Pope's genius and talents. CHAPTER XXIV. "This modest stone, what few vain marbles can, May truly say, here lies an honest man : A poet, blest beyond the poet's fate, Whom heaven kept sacred from the proud and great." POPE. WHILE on a recent visit to Dumfries, I lodged in the same house with Robert Burns, the eldest son of the Scottish bard, who is now about sixty-five years old. I also visited the grave of the poet, which is in the church-yard at the lower end of the town. A few days afterwards I arrived at Ayr, and being within three miles of the birthplace of Burns, and having so lately stood over his grave, I felt no little interest in seeing the cottage in which he was born, and the monument erected to his memory; and therefore, after inquiring the road, I started on my pilgrimage. In going up the High Street, we passed the Wallace Tower, a Gothic building, with a statue of the renowned chief, cut by Thom, the famed sculptor of "Tam O'Shanter and Souter Johnny," occupying the highest niche. The Scottish hero is represented not in warlike attitude, but in a thoughtful mood, as if musing over the wrongs of his country. We were soon out of the town, and on the high road to the "Land of Burns." On the west side of the road, and about two miles from Ayr, stands the cottage in which the poet was born; it is now used as an ale-house or inn. This cottage was no doubt the fancied scene of that splendid poem, "The Cottar's Saturday Night." A little further on, and we were near the old kirk, in the yard of which is the grave of Burns' father, marked by a plain tombstone, on which is engraved the following epitaph, from the pen of the poet : "O ye whose cheek the tear of pity stains, Draw near with pious reverence and attend; The pitying heart that felt for human woe, The dauntless heart that feared no human pride, 'For e'en his failings leant to Virtue's side.'' A short distance beyond the church, we caught a sight of the "Auld Brig" crossing the Doon's classic stream, along which Tam O'Shanter was pursued by the witches, his "Gray Mare Meg" losing her tail in the struggle on the keystone. On the banks of the Doon stands the beautiful monument, surrounded by a little plat of ground very tastefully laid out. The edifice is of the composite order, blending the finest models of Grecian and Roman architecture. It is about sixty feet high; on the ground floor there is a circular room lighted by a cupola of stained glass, in the centre of which stands a . table with relics, and editions of Burns' writings. Amongst these relics is the Bible given by the poet to his Highland Mary. It is bound in two volumes, which are enclosed in a neat oaken box with a glass lid. In both volumes is written "Robert Burns, Mossgiel," in the bard's own hand-writing. In the same room are the original far-famed figures of "Tam O'Shanter and Souter Johnny," chiselled out of solid blocks of freestone, by the self-taught sculptor, Thom. No one can look at these statues without feeling that the poet has not more graphically described than the sculptor has delineated the jolly couple. Immediately on the banks of the river stands the Shell Palace. This most beautiful of little edifices is scarcely less to be admired than the monument itself. The Like its great prototype, the Shell Palace, to be judged of, must be seen. It is not easy to describe even this miniature. Lying in the heart of the Monument scenery, it forms a fitting spot for something dazzlingly beautiful; and it realizes the aspiration. It is a palace of which rare and beautiful shells, gathered in many climes, form the entire surface, internal and external. erection is twenty feet long, by fourteen and a half feet broad, and fourteen feet high in the roof. It is in form an irregular or oblong octagon the two sides long, and the three sections at each end, of course, narrow, thus giving, by the cross reflections of no fewer than nineteen mirrors, an infinite multiplicity of its internal treasures. Of these the shells are the leading feature, |