think the portioners were all sold out before he could enter the field, and the fate of these Melrose people has thoroughly emphasized for me the importance of having our South Australian workmen’s blocks, the glory of Mr. Cotton’s life, maintained always on the same footing of perpetual lease dependent on residence.  If the small owner has the freehold, he is tempted to mortgage it, and then in most instances the land is lost to him, and added to the possessions of the man who has money.  With a perpetual lease, there is the same security of tenure as in the freehold—­indeed, there is more security, because he cannot mortgage.  I did not see the land question as clearly on this 1865 visit, as I did later; but the extinction of the old portioners and the wealth acquired by the moneyed man of Melrose gave me cause for thinking.

CHAPTER VIII.

I VISIT EDINBURGH AND LONDON.

A visit to Glasgow and to the relatives of my sister-in-law opened out a different vista to me.  This was a great manufacturing and commercial city, which had far outgrown Edinburgh in population and wealth; but the Edinburgh people still boasted of being the Athens of the north, the ancient capital with the grandest historic associations.  In Glasgow I fell in with David Murray and his wife (of D. & W. Murray Adelaide)—­not quite so important a personage as be became later.  Not a relative of mine; but a family connection, for his brother William married Helen Cumming, Mrs. J. B. Spence’s sister.  David Murray was always a great collector of paintings, and especially of prints, which last he left to the Adelaide Art Gallery.  He was a close friend of my brother John’s until the death of the latter.  One always enjoys meeting with Adelaide people in other lands, and comparing the most recent items of news.  I went to Dumfries according to promise, and spent many days with my old friend Mrs. Graham, but stayed the night always with her sister, Mrs. Maxwell, wife of a printer and bookseller in the town.  Dumfries was full of Burns’s relies and memorials.  Mr. Gilfillan had taken the likeness of Mrs. Burns and her granddaughter when he was a young man, and Mrs. Maxwell corresponded with the grandaughter.  It was also full of associations with Carlyle.  His youngest sister, Jean the Craw, as she was called on account of her dark hair and complexion was Mrs. Aitkin, a neighbour and close friend of Mrs. Maxwell.  I was taken to see her, and I suppose introduced as a sort of author, and she regretted much that this summer Tom was not coming to visit her at Dumfries.  She was a brisk, cheery person, with some clever daughters, who were friends of the Maxwell girls.  When the Froude memorials came out no one was more indignant than Jean the Craw—­“Tom and his wife always understood each other.  They were not unhappy, though after her death he reproached himself for some things.”