Scotland/Scots > Life of Robert Burns

ROBERT BURNS. 183
happiness or misery. The most placid goodnature
and sweetness of disposition; a warm heart, grate¬
fully devoted with all its powers to love me; vi¬
gorous health and sprightly cheerfulness, set off to
the best advantage by a more than commonly hand¬
some figure; these, I think, in a woman, may make
a good wife, though she should never have read a
page but the Scriptures of the Old and New Tes¬
tament, nor danced in a brighter assembly than a
penny-pay wedding To jealousy or infi¬
delity I am an equal stranger; my preservative from
the first, is the most thorough consciousness of her
sentiments of honour, and her attachment to me ;
my antidote against the last, is my long and deep-
rooted affection for her. In housewife matters, of
aptness to learn, and activity to execute, she is
eminently mistress, and during my absence in
Nithsdale, she is regularly and constantly an ap¬
prentice to my mother and sisters in their dairy,
and other rural business You are right,
that a bachelor state would have ensured me more
friends; but from a cause you will easily guess,
conscious peace in the enjoyment of my own mind,
and unmistrusting confidence in approaching my
God, would seldom have been of the number.”*
Some months later he tells Miss Chalmers that
his marriage “ was not, perhaps, in consequence
of the attachment of romance, ”—he is addressing
a young lady,—“ but, ” he continues, “ I have no
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
0f boarding-school affectation ; and I have got the
^andsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the sound-
* See General Correspondence, No. -33; ami Hclinues,
p. GO.