graved sketch, likewise by Lawrence, give the idea of a person far advanced in years, and of a broken and enfeebled constitution. We have therefore selected for this work, a portrait of Dr Moore painted about 1770, by William Cochrane, (known as Cochrane of Rome). This artist was born at Strathaven, in Lanarkshire, but went to Italy about 1761, where he acquired great celebrity, by several pieces which he executed, the most admired of which were his Daedalus and Icarus, and his Diana and Endymion. He returned to Scotland, where he died in 1785. The portrait, the subject of our engraving, is in the possession of Dr Moore's nephew, Charles Mackintosh, Esq. of Campsie.

GLEN AFTON.

ONE of the first persons of rank who became acquainted with Burns, was the late Mrs Stewart of Afton and Stair. According to the recollection of a surviving friend of the lady, the medium through which they became acquainted was a certain Peggy Orr, who had the charge of Mrs Stewart's children. It is said that, seeing some letters and poems of Burns in that girl's possession, and being struck by their superior style, Mrs Stewart expressed a desire to see the poet, and he consequently waited upon her. Of the treatment he experienced on this occasion from Mrs Stewart, he thus speaks in a letter addressed to her, about the time he intended to go abroad:-"One feature of your character," he says, "I shall ever with grateful pleasure remember the reception I met with when I had the honour of waiting on you. I am little acquainted with politeness; but I know a good deal of benevolence of temper and goodness of heart. Surely, did those in exalted stations know how happy they could make some classes of their inferiors by condescension and affability, they would never stand so high, measuring out with every look the height of their elevation, but condescend as sweetly as did Mrs Stewart of Stair."

It was in the old castle of Stair-the cradle of one of the most illustrious of our Scottish families, though, since their possession of it, it has gone through many hands-that this interview took place. Mrs Stewart, who was connected with that ancient mansion by her marriage, was, by descent, proprietress of another estate, situated in Glen Afton, in the parish of New Cumnock. With this vale Burns probably became acquainted in the course of his frequent rides between Ayrshire and Nithsdale, when about to settle at Ellisland. It is a remarkably fine specimen of the pastoral vale of southern Scotland. The Afton, which gives it a name, rises in the high grounds where the counties of Ayr and Dumfries and the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, meet; and, after a course of ten miles,

Peggy is pronounced by the same authority to have been the sweetheart of David Sillar, alluded to in the poet's epistle to that individual"Ye have your Meg, your dearest part,

And I my darling Jean."

in a northerly direction, it joins the Nith at New Cumnock kirk. In the lower part of the vale, near New Cumnock, there are a few houses, but the general character of the vale is an almost primitive solitude. The writer of the statistical account of the parish, published by Sir John Sinclair, mentions that, at the commencement of his incumbency, in 1757, Glen Afton contained but one house. On entering it from the south, the eye is delighted with the fine mixture of wood and glade, which lies along the slopes, like the light and shade of an April day. At no remote period, the whole vale was probably overspread with wood, as Yarrow, and other vales now pastoral are known to have been. There is a tradition that the trees formerly grew so thick, that a certain laird of Craigdarroch, on one occasion, found his way from branch to branch, for five miles, without coming to the ground: such wonderful tales, even when not admitted as true in fact, show the strength of the impression which the real fact originally made on the popular mind. The vale now seems half-way between the one condition and the other. Birches, in great number-the ash-the mountain ash-the pine-together with numerous hawthorns, of great age and considerable size-constitute the materials of the woods of Glen Afton, the outskirts of which betray manifest tokens that they are rapidly sinking beneath the assaults of the sheep. Here and there, a hawthorn may be seen standing by itself on a green slope, the sole survivor of a goodly community of trees, all of which have long since perished. The whole scene is most characteristically Scottish, and, in spring, when the hawthorns are in bloom, it is extremely beautiful. As we advance along the vale, the woods lessen, and finally cease, and we then see only long reaching green uplands, swelling afar into the lofty bounding hills which separate three counties. Connecting the pastoral loveliness of this vale with his kind-hearted patroness, Mrs Stewart, Burns composed his exquisitely melodious song entitled, "Afton Water;" in which he imagined the proprietress of no small part of its soil, as a simple cottage maiden, and himself as her lover-a mode of compliment to gentlewomen which he seems to have preferred to all others, but which, we suspect, must have been in general much more pleasant to himself than to them:

"Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise;
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

"Thou stock-dove whose echo resounds thro' the glen,
Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den,
Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear,
I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair.

"How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighbouring hills,
Far mark'd wi' the courses of clear, winding rills;
There daily I wander as noon rises high,
My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye.

"How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below,
Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow:
There, oft, as mild evening weeps over the lea,
The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me.

"Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides,
And winds by the cot where my Mary resides;
How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave,
As gathering sweet flowerets she stems thy clear wave.

"Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays;
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream."

There is a riding track along Glen Afton, which crosses the hills into Galloway, being marked by cairns at regular intervals to direct the traveller. Queen Mary, on her retreat from Langside, is said by tradition to have passed by this track on her way to Dundrennan. On Dalhenna Holm, represented about the centre of the accompanying print, a cairn still bears her name, in consequence of her having paused for a short time on the spot to take some refreshment. Dalhenna is the property of a race of Campbells, who are the oldest lairds of that part of the country. Tradition relates a romantic story respecting one of them, which we shall give in the words of a correspondent:

"On the Black Craig, a hill two thousand feet high, which looks over Glen Afton, there is a large opening called the Giant's Cave. It was occupied long ago by an outlaw of gigantic bulk, who lived by laying the neighbouring flocks under contribution, and who had a wife as remarkable for her gigantic stature as himself. On one occasion, for want of a more ready supply of victual, he laid hands upon a fat bull belonging to the laird of Dalhenna, and carried it off upon his shoulders to his cave.* Enraged at the loss of so valuable an animal, and being a man of great resolution, the laird mounted his grey mare and set out for the giant's habitation. He calculated that, immediately after the return of the outlaw to his cave, he would take some repose, while his wife would as certainly disembowel the animal, and take the intestines to be washed in the passing stream; nor was it less likely that she would have a pot of water boiling on the fire, to prepare a portion of either the meat or the tripe. Concealing himself therefore in the wood hard by, he watched till he saw the giantess leave the cave, and go down to the stream, as he had expected, carrying with her the offals of the bull. He then made an insidious approach, and, drawing his good broad-sword, entered the cave. All was as he had calculated. The giant lay snoring with open mouth beside the fire, and a large pot was just coming to the boil. He immediately poured the contents of the vessel into the mouth of the sleeping robber, and thus dispatched him. Leaving the cave, he had scarcely mounted his horse, when the giantess returned and perceived what had taken place. She immediately gave chase, and after a long run came up with him; but when, like Cuttysark, she had caught his mare by the tail, he cleared himself by a sweep of his sword, which severed her hand from her body. She returned, and soon after died of grief, and the bodies of both giant and giantess repose in Lochbroughan Holm."

* There is nothing positively miraculous here, as, we believe, there is an authentic anecdote of Big Sam of the Sutherland Fencibles carrying a bullock's balk from a butcher's shop to Richmond barracks, on condition of getting it for himself.