the opinion that Mr. Barker, in modern times, was our greatest financial reformer, and that his successors in office have profited largely by his example and exertions."

Two infant children of Provost Barker, and two others who reached manhood, are named in the inscription, James who died at 33, and John who died at 48; also an infant son of the latter; while sidestones commemorate "Mrs. Barker, widow of T. B. Barker," died 4th October 1868, and Agnes, infant daughter of David Barker of Woodland.

Adjoining lie the relics of another chief magistrate, David Armstrong, a man of rare attainments as a solicitor, and who made a very good provost-his burghal rule extending over 1837-8-9-40. He belonged to a leading legal firm, whose other head, Robert Murray, also occupied the civic chair, and whose dust slumbers in the same section. Provost Armstrong died on the 17th of August 1846, aged 48. A son, Charles Armstrong, who followed his father's profession at Dumfries, and afterwards at Annan, and a daughter, Jane Elizabeth Armstrong, both exceedingly amiable, are also, with other children, named in the inscription—the former dying in 1856, at the age of 28, and the latter in the following year, at the age of 27. The record also commemorates their mother, “Dinah Elizabeth Anne, relict of the above David Armstrong, and widow of the late Benjamin Burnley, of Methley, Yorkshire, who died at Eastbourne, Sussex, 20th August 1872, aged 73 years." Rather more than half a century since, the lady whose name has just been mentioned was the heroine of a romantic episode, with which the Burgh rang for many months; the chief incidents in it being her unwilling betrothal to a Leith merchant, her marriage to Mr. David Armstrong, a deadly quarrel between the rivals, involving a challenge and a law-suit. Mrs. Armstrong, whose wedded life was begun under such sensational circumstances, proved a good wife to the future Provost, and as the monument states, bore to him several children: she survived him, and late in life was married again to a wealthy gentleman of Yorkshire. Her father was James Grieve, a prosperous wine-merchant, who occupied the old premises called "The

Pillars," which stood at the corner between High Street and Bank Street.

The Southern Walk presents no finer monument than the neighbouring one, on which several notable names appear. It is consecrated to the memory of Grace, daughter of Dr. William Babington (a respected minister of the Episcopalian Church, Dumfries); of her husband, Alexander Melville of Hallfields, Fifeshire, M.D.; their issue: William, who died at Austin, in Texas, aged 25; Janet, aged 20; and Alexander Charles, who died in childhood. Mrs. Melville died on the 13th of January 1823, aged 42. Dr. Melville, who bore high repute as a physician, married secondly Agnes Maxwell, daughter of Wellwood Maxwell of Barncleuch, regarding whom we had much to say in a preceding chapter. His death occurred on the 9th of August 1842, when he was aged 56, and the inscription shews that his widow outlived him till 19th August 1858, when she died at the age of 76.

In this section rest two worthy gentlemen, who at various periods occupied Castledykes, the finest mansion of the suburbs-namely, Ebenezer Stott, died 5th May 1828, aged 70, and John M‘Adam, died 9th July 1836, aged 62. To the first of these gentlemen the credit is due of making the grounds about the house a "thing of beauty." He found them a rugged quarry (whence many of the tombstones of St. Michael's cemetery were hewn) with desolate surroundings of water-pools, moss, and rock, and he left them blossoming as the rose. Mr. M'Diarmid, in describing, more than forty years ago, what had been done for the place by Mr. Stott, at a cost of not less than £20,000, says: "The soil in the centre is wholly forced, and the proprietor, who spared no expense in adorning a spot which he preferred to all others, even after making the tour of Britain, and which he enjoyed for too short a period, paid a hundred guineas to the town of Dumfries for the privilege of baring to the depth of a few inches a small section of the Kingholm Merse. Even in churchyards mother earth scarcely brings a higher price. Castledykes is the admiration of all strangers. A mount within the policy

takes the name of Paradise; and were Castledykes ours, we would apply the epithet to the whole domain." While contrasting this picture with the gloom of the sepulchres we see around, it is consolatory to reflect that the most charming spots on earth are but as the tents of Kedar to the Promised Land, though the heavenly Paradise can only be reached through the portal of the grave.

A very stately monument, the same in design as that of Mr. Stott of Castledykes, rises up beside it to commemorate his brother Watson Stott of Kelton, Kirkcudbrightshire, died 22d October 1822, aged 67, and the wife of the latter, Sarah Taylor. Each structure is emblazoned with an escutcheon and the motto, "Alta Petit."

Since Mr. M'Diarmid's description of Castledykes was written, the place has been rendered increasingly attractive by subsequent proprietors, Mr. M'Adam, Mr. John Buchan Hepburn, Mr. Robert Scott, and Dr. Bruce. Mr. M'Adam had a humble origin. Bearing pastoral crook as a boy on the hills of Carsphairn, he at an early age left his fleecy charge and home for a land where more wool grows on bushes than on sheep's backs; and as a cotton merchant in New York and afterwards at Liverpool he amassed a fortune, settling down to enjoy it in this palatial retreat on the banks of Nith, where he died after occupying it only eight brief years. We have heard that he possessed a nicety of touch which enabled him to discriminate between different classes of cotton wool as if by magic, and that to this gift much of his business success was due; but he was of the stuff from which "self-made men" are fashioned, shrewd, clever, careful, enterprising, and industrious.

Since so much has been said about Castledykes and its owners it may be as well to explain that its name is derived from the circumstance that it occupies the site of an old fortress which belonged to the Red Comyn; hence the reference made by Burns:

"The Thames flows proudly to the sea,

Where royal cities stately stand;
But sweeter far the Nith to me,

Where Comyns aince had high command."

Singular to say the present worthy proprietor of Comyn's old inheritance is a Bruce, his next door neighbour north is a Wallace (Mrs. Wallace, daughter of Provost Gabriel Richardson), and the tenant of the next house south bears the family patronymic of Devorgilla, whose son John Baliol competed with Bruce and Comyn for the Crown of Scotland: such an incidental conjunction of historical names would not be easily paralleled.

One of the last of the Trade Conveners, Allan Anderson, receives commemoration from an adjoining monument. Achieving merited success as a house painter, he was placed over the Incorporated Craftsmen in 1825, and it was partly out of compliment to him personally, that a splendid gold chain was presented by the Dumfries public to the Trades, Iwith which to decorate their chief. The chain remains, though the system with which the glittering badge was associated has long since been broken up, and of all those by whom it was worn it must be said in the beautifully figurative language of Scripture, "The silver cord has been loosed, and the golden bowl been broken at the fountain." Mr. Anderson was also a County magistrate and proprietor of Whiteside. He died at Allanbank, 29th April 1856, aged 73.

On the stone appear also the names of his wife, Mary Berwick, and of eight of their children, three cut off when infants, Jessie who died at 11, Allan at 12, John who died at 32, James, who carried on his father's business, died 15th February 1840, aged 36; and David, an accomplished and devoted army surgeon, who fell a victim to his professional exertions during the Crimean war when attending the sick and wounded at Scutari 4th November 1854, aged 33. Allan Anderson's son-in-law, James Berwick, died 28th April 1860, aged 34, and two children of the latter, Jessie who died in babyhood, and Margaret when 14 years old, are also mentioned on the

monument.

We have already spoken of several deceased persons who possess much more imposing and durable memorials than any placed over them in this Churchyard. Of none of these can this be said so emphatically as of the wedded pair whose

burial-place is next arrived at. For one who muses intelligently beside it, thousands admiringly survey the Crichton Royal Institution, the proud monument which will bear the names of its founders to a remote posterity-long after, perhaps, their tombstone, stable though it seems, has crumbled into dust. Dr. James Crichton, to whom the district and the cause of humanity owe the erection of this asylum for minds diseased, served long under the East India Company, and returning home in 1808, he purchased Friars' Carse, which had been rendered famous over the world by the muse of Burns. There he dwelt till he died fifteen years afterwards, leaving the immense sum of £100,000 to be laid out for a beneficent purpose, “in any way that his dear wife thought proper," with the approval of other trustees specified in his 'settlement. The erection and endowment of a model house for the treatment of insane patients were resolved upon; hence the magnificent and "beneficent" Crichton Institution, which is seen crowning the crest of Mountainhall in the southern environs of the Burgh.

One of the two marble tablets on the monument is "Sacred to the memory of James Crichton, Esq. of Friars' Carse, who died on the third day of May 1823." The other bears the following inscription :

"Sacred to the memory of Elizabeth Crichton, eldest daughter of the late Sir Robert Grierson of Lag, Bart., widow of the late James Crichton, Esq. of Friars' Carse, and one of the trustees and executors of her husband, in which capacity she founded and endowed the Crichton Royal Institution for lunatics at Dumfries and the Crichton Grammar School at Sanquhar. Obiit. 11th Oct. 1862, aged 83 years." There were but two removes between this lady and her ancestor, the Lag of persecuting memory; but they stood in other respects wide apart, she, all unlike him, having been virtuous and benevolent in life and at death deeply regretted.

A very respectable pair-William Burnside, upholsterer, and Maria Halcot-who lived together long after the date of their "golden wedding," receive commemoration from a neat monument adjoining. He died at 80, on 8th April 1873; his relict surviving him till 8th January 1876, when she was in her 83d year. Their son James, who died in childhood;