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 288 erect a monument to his "reverend friend." "Sir," he answered, little flattered by the prospect of "a lapidary inscription," "I hope to see your grand-children." Who would not gladly stroll along Lord Auchinleck's via sacra, "that road which he made to the church, for above three miles, on his own estate, through a range of well-inclosed farms, with a row of trees on each side of it?" The avenue is composed mainly of oaks and beeches, planted alternately; but the finest of the trees were brought down a few years ago in a great storm which swept over the country. Only one or two small farms remain, but there are the ruins of another. From the road a most pleasant view is seen, grassy slopes running down to the Lugar, with hedge-rows and trees growing in them after the English fashion. Across the river the ground rises rapidly in tilled fields and meadows and groves to a high range of hills. To the south-west lies the village of Ochiltree, whence Scott perhaps derived old Edie's name in the Antiquary.

The manse still stands where Johnson dined with the Rev. John Dun, who had been Boswell's dominie, and had been rewarded for his services by the presentation to the living of Auchinleck. He rashly attacked before his guest the Church of England, and "talked of fat bishops and drowsy deans. Dr. Johnson was so highly offended, that he said to him, 'Sir, you know no more of our church than a Hottentot.'" Dun must have complained to Boswell of being thus publicly likened to the proverbial Hottentot, for in the second edition of the Tour to the Hebrides his name is suppressed. The manse has been enlarged since those days, and surrounded with a delightful garden which might excite the envy, if not of a drowsy dean, at all events of a south country vicar. In the venerable minister, Dr. James Chrystal, who has lived there for more than fifty years, Johnson would have found a man "whom, if he should have quarrelled with him, he would have found the most difficulty how to abuse."

The parish church where Johnson refused to attend Boswell and his father at public worship has been rebuilt. In the churchyard stands a fine old beech which might have been called venerable even a hundred years ago. There, too, is the vault of the Boswells with their coat-of-arms engraved on it, and their motto, Vraye Foy. In a niche cut in the solid rock lies Boswell's body. He died in London, at his house in Great Portland Street, but in accordance with the direction in his will he was buried "in the family burial