quite ruinous, stands on a steep point at the end of a wild ravine, and closely over a bend of the dashing Esk. Its most remarkable characteristics are tiers of massive internal vaults, but nearly all its parts are capitally disposed for sketches. Both Castle and Chapel are scenes of Scott's ballad "Rosabelle" in "The Lay.” Local guide-books and time-tables will tell the traveller how to reach these several places; and to publications in those classes the traveller is referred, not only for similar direction during this excursion, but also during most of those that will be hereafter mentioned. Several years ago the writer found Lasswade village made up mostly of irregular, red-tiled cottages along steep, small streets. The house of Scott, secluded among trees and shrubbery, appeared built of cut stone and covered by a deeply thached roof. Its ground plan appeared shaped like an inverted letter, and its height but a single story. The entrance was beneath a veranda at the inner angle. On the outer side was a large ivy-mantled chimney-shaft. The windows, also ivy-mantled, opened upon pleasant grounds. Although the house was a private residence, and the writer was a stranger, he was kindly shown the interior. The parlor-the chief room, perhaps twenty feet square-was as comfortable, social, home-like an apartment as one may find; and the whole place was as quietly and rurally beautiful as a young poet would seek or find or enjoy. Here, as already stated, Scott began to live during the summer of 1798; here was the home of most of his earlier married life, and while here he really began his experience in authorship. The next year, 1799, was an important year in his development. On the 16th of December he was appointed Sheriff of Selkirk, and this office he held thirty-three years, until his death. Early in this year he published a translation of Goethe's tragedy "Goetz von Berlichingen." He also visited London with his wife, and examined the antiquities of Westminster, and of the Tower and the British Museum. At about this time he was beginning to compose original ballads. The first of his metrical work was partially that in his drama “The House of Aspen," a sort of Teutonic composition (one of the results of his German readings), written this year. More important, however, were his contributions to Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border;" "Thomas the Rhymer" (a balladtale of the Rhymer's Glen near Abbotsford); and "Glenfinlas" (the scene of which is that tract of wild heath and mountain bearing the same name, near the Trosachs in the Perthshire Highlands); and "The Eve of Saint John," a ballad telling a story of Smaylho'me Tower, an old baronial keep near by his boyhood home, at Sandy Knowe. The scenery of these poems will be more fully described when the "tour" reaches them. In 1802-3 he published the collection of ballads, songs, and legendary poems that became so celebrated under the title already mentioned, "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border." In 1804 he published the metrical romance, "Sir Tristrem." At various times, at about this period, he composed a few short works like the "Fire King." But it was in 1805 that his first great and really characterized composition appeared, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel." Then his power also began to appear; power that may now be first realized (where it was first associated with Old-World places) during an excursion to the scenery of this Lay, in that region so distinctively rendered by him his own, the Midland Border of Scotland. V. EXCURSION TO SCENERY OF "THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL." THIS scenery in the Midland Border of Scotland—a region peculiarly romantic, in which many enjoyable excursions may be made can be pleasantly reached now by a railway ride occupying less than two hours, from Edinburgh to Selkirk, and from that town by an easy and agreeable walk or drive of four or five miles up Yarrowdale to Newark Castle, to which, some time during the last decade of the seventeenth century, the "Latest Minstrel" is described wandering; where he sang this "Lay" to Anne, Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth, who represented its ancient lords. A visit to this castle may also be made during the long tour that will be arranged hereafter, as shown in chapter xxxiii. Scott had already shown his ability to write captivatingly of the olden time, it is evident, from the manner in which this poem came to be written. The Countess of Dalkeith, a lady beautiful and lovely as she was noble, in her earnest desire to learn the traditions, the manners, and the history of this large and interesting Border region, — much of which is held by the great family of Buccleuch, of which she was so fair a member, — enjoined upon Scott the composition of a ballad upon one of these traditions, named that of "Gilpin Horner," and the Lay was the result. Newark Castle, though dismantled, is a capital example of a Scottish baronial residence in a country where both Scotch and English forays were frequent. It is said to have been erected about the middle of the fifteenth century by James II. The writer found it a large, square, lofty, simple tower, built of small broken gray stones, its lower part having flush quoins of similar stone, and its upper part flush quoins of red sandstone. Two of the walls are flat topped and two terminate in gables. At the upper angles are turrets. The once high roof and the parapets are gone, leaving the walls capped with grass sward and small shrubs. The windows are high up and not large. The prevalent color is dark iron-gray, flecked with much dull-russet lichen. The door of the tower, on its north side, is a small square-headed door, the key to which the writer found with a custodian near by; and he offers the charitable hope that others, who obtain it as he did, may be enabled, as he was, also to enjoy undisturbed exploration of this grand old keep, and reading from the "Lay" within it. Its first, or basement, story, that which is first entered, is occupied by a hall dimly lighted through five little, grated, jail-like windows. The floor is of earth now, and rough. The ceiling is a semicircular arch, of flat, smallish, rudely shaped stones, rising in the centre perhaps twenty feet above the floor. In the north-west angle is the chief, and now only, stair, a neat and entire turnpike built of well-cut red sandstone. This must have been the "lady's stair,” there being remains of an ordinary one in the opposite angle. From the main floor, that of the great hall and now grassy turf, the tower is open to the sky. Two or three floors and the roof once above this were apparently of wood. In the western wall is a high chimney and fireplace, and on either side are windows within deeply set arches. One can easily reach the top of the structure, whence is a pleasant view in which one sees the tower, surrounded by broken quadrilateral outworks, standing on a green hill, around nearly three sides of which the pure, brown, shallow Yarrow comes rippling, rustling, or dashing -- over a pebbly or stony bed between prettily, not densely, wooded banks. All around are walnut-trees and large red-berried hawthorns. On the opposite side of the river is a park landscape backed by great hills, that were covered with dusky or yellowishgreen grass or brown heather when the writer saw them. On other sides are the beautiful and carefully kept grounds of "Sweet Bowhill," -a seat of the owner of all this region, the Duke of Buccleuch. Philiphaugh, seat of the Murrays, and Foulshiels, home of Mungo Park, the traveller in Africa, are also to be seen. The lands down the river eastward are more cultivated than those westward, where one may yet see stern heights, forested and heathery almost as in feudal times. One may see similar characteristics also along the southern horizon, that is defined by prominent flattened or more acute pyramidal elevations, bearing dark pines, or presenting beautiful colorings of grass and heather tints, grand examples of the Border Hill. So it was in this characteristic Border stronghold, when its hall was a scene of hospitality, that the Aged Minstrel sang his "Lay" to the celebrated duchess of that also celebrated Duke of Monmouth, whose history need not be told here. One can recall the lady's form from among the Beauties of that style so favorite with Sir Peter Lely, -a handsome rounded form, a fair face, and abundance of luxuriant curls. "The Lay" at once transports us in imagination back to stirring and picturesque days of the middle of the sixteenth century, when, as Scott tells us, most of the personages introduced in the poem actually flourished. It at once brings to mind a lively representation of Border life in feudal and knightly times, singing "the custom of Branksome Hall," long the chief seat of the Buccleuch family. This seat, a castle poetically Branksome, prosaically Branxholm, is about three miles from Hawick, or a dozen or more southward from Selkirk, in the green pastoral dale of Teviot, where it stands on a little eminence not far from the river. All about it now are well-kept fields, and lawns of turf, and privet and hawthorn hedgerows, and many shade-trees, and an aspect of peacefulness as if the place belonged to Arcadia. The writer found the edifice mainly modern, plain, two-storied, irregularly arranged, and built of rough chip stones (mostly covered with "rough-cast" plaster of a dingy buff color). Nearly the only ancient portion is at one corner, and that is a moderate-sized four-gabled tower, in castellated style, with simple walls built of small stones, plain quoins, a blocking course, and, beneath the eaves, a corbel table. But Branksome is not such an Old-World place as Newark, and one can almost as readily imagine the action of "The Lay" at the latter,—action introducing one to much of the topography as well as feudal life of this Midland Border. "The feast was over," the Minstrel sang, "And the Ladye had gone to her secret bower; Her bower that was guarded by word and by spell;" meditating vengeance for her late husband, Lord Walter Scott of Buccleuch, then lying dead in the castle, slain by certain Kerrs in a street of Edinburgh. Their young son and their daughter Margaret, and many retainers, were mourning over him, while of "Nine-and-twenty knights of fame," To "watch against Southern force and guile, Threaten Branksome's lordly towers, From Warkworth, or Naworth, or merry Carlisle." And the Ladye, skilled in "magic mystery," was sitting in her "secret bower," "In old Lord David's western tower, And listens to a heavy sound, That moans the mossy turrets round." In a "coming storm" "It was the Spirit of the Flood that spoke, And he called on the Spirit of the Fell." She heard the two tell the story of Margaret, who was sorrow laden" with hopeless love for Lord Cranstoun, whose family was at feud with her own; and Margaret |