table with relics, and editions of Burns' writings. Amongst these relics is the Bible given by the poet to his Highland Mary. It is bound in two volumes, which are enclosed in a neat oaken box with a glass lid. In both volumes is written "Robert Burns, Mossgiel," in the bard's own hand-writing. In the same room are the original far-famed figures of "Tam O'Shanter and Souter Johnny," chiselled out of solid blocks of free-stone, by the self-taught sculptor, Thorn. No one can look at these statues without feeling that the poet has not more graphically described than the sculptor has delineated the jolly couple. Immediately on the banks of the river stands the Shell Palace. This most beautiful of little edifices is scarcely less to be admired than the monument itself.
Like its great prototype, the Shell Palace, to be judged of, must be seen. It is not easy to describe even this miniature. Lying in the heart of the Monument scenery, it forms a fitting spot for something dazzlingly beautiful; and it realizes the aspiration. It is a palace of which rare and beautiful shells, gathered in many climes, form the entire surface, internal and external. The erection is twenty feet long, by fourteen and a half feet broad, and fourteen feet high in the roof. It is in form an irregular or oblong octagon—the two sides long, and the three sections at each end, of course, narrow, thus giving, by the cross reflections of no fewer than nineteen mirrors, an infinite multiplicity of its internal treasures. Of these the shells are the leading feature,
