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at first naturally suggested itself, was set aside as too hackneyed and wearisome for a composition of any length. Against the measured short line, or octo-syllabic verse, there was the objection of the "fatal facility," to use Scott's own phrase, with which it was written, the temptation it offered to mere verbiage, and its monotonous and namby-pamby effect. Shakespeare had laughed at it as the "butter-woman's rate to market,' " and the " very false gallop of verses,' and Scott felt that his muse demanded a more stirring and varied measure. tabel" was not published till 1816; but a year or two before Scott began the Lay" he had heard Sir John Stoddart recite some parts of it, which made a deep impression on his mind. He saw that Coleridge had remedied all the defects of the octo-syllabic measure, by freeing it from its rigid formality, and dividing it by time instead of syllables; by the beat of four, as Leigh Hunt remarks, into which you might get as many syllables as you could, instead of allotting eight syllables to the poor time, whatever it might have to say, varying it further with alternate rhymes and stanzas, with rests and omissions, precisely analogous to those in music. The old bard himself was an afterthought. He was introduced as a sort of "pitch-pipe" to indicate the tone and character of the composition.

In the poem the reader will find a romantic picture of the Borderers, in the best aspect of their character. Their name, like that of the kindred rovers of the sea, is "linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes." Scott has brought out the solitary virtue-dauntless bravery into the foreground, and has thrown the crimes into the shade. Here we may offer some prosaic observations on their real character. At first national feuds lent a justification to the Border raids. It was in the spirit of patriotism that the men on each side of the Cheviots harried one another's homes, and drove off one another's cattle. The instinct of hostility survived long after the two countries were at peace, and was quickened by the love of plunder. At the period of the following tale, they had degenerated into mere robbers, whom the rulers on both sides of the Border alike denounced. . The best that can be said for them is that they had inherited the traditions of rapine which they sought to perpetuate; that what philosophers now call the doctrine of "continuity was responsible for much of their wild temper; and that the savage habits which had been transmitted through generations were not readily uprooted :—

"There never was a time on the March partes,
Sen the Douglas and the Percy met,

But yt was marvell yt the redde blude roune not

As the rane does in the street."

Nursed with such a lullaby, it seemed to these wild Borderers only a law of nature that Scots and English should prey upon each other, and this ferocious spirit soon expanded into an impartial appetite for plunder, and general antagonism to society. And so it came about that a Scott learned to have as little compunction in "lighting to bed a Kerr as a Græme. They had their own domestic raids and blood-feuds or disputes, as over the Border. It was, in truth, a restless, cruel, wild-beast kind of existence, that called forth all the worst passions, and could have been bearable only through a brutish insensibility and indifference to danger. They carried their life in their hands, and none could tell whether to a week's end he could call his kine his own. "They are like to Job," says Fuller, quaintly, "not in piety and patience, but in sudden plenty and poverty; sometimes having flocks and herds in the morning, none at night, and perchance many again next day. It was with some surprise, in the midst of vexation, that Watt Tinlinn reflected that his little lonely tower had not been

burned for a year and more; and the old song tells the common experience for which every borderer had to be prepared :—

"Last night I saw a sorry sight

Nought left me o' four-and-twenty guide ousen and kye:

My weei-ridden gelding, and a white grey,

But a toom byre and a wide,

And the twelve nogs on ilka side.

Fy, lads! shout a' a' a' a' a'

My gear's a' gane."

Religion, of course, in any true sense of the term, was hardly to be looked for in such a class. "They come to church," says Fuller, "as seldom as the 29th of February comes into the calendar." Yet they were not without their superstitions; and, however wanting in real piety, could patter an Ave Maria and finger their beads as they rode to a plundering foray. Their sense of honour could hardly have been very strong, and was certainly exceptional. But they had, ¦ at least, a sense of the sacredness of hospitality, and the protection which a host owes to his guest. Even the author of the "Worthies owns that "indeed, if they promise safely to conduct a traveller, they will perform it with the fidelity of a Turkish Janizary; otherwise, woe be to him that falleth into their quarters.' "They are," he adds, "a nest of hornets; strike one, and stir all of them about Yet these Moss-troopers, if possibly they could procure the pardon for a condemned person of their company, would advance great sums out of their common stock, who, in such a case, cast in their lots among themselves; and all have one purse." So that, in spite of their domestic differences, there was a sort of union amongst them. The term Moss-troopers is evidently derived from the mosses among which they lived, and the companies in which they went about harrying. It was owing mainly to the vigorous measures of Belted Will, Earl of Carlisle, that the raiders were put down. The last public mention of Mosstroopers occurs during the civil wars of the 17th century, when many ordinances of Parliament were directed against them.

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The region in which the scene of the poem is laid was as familiar and dear to Scott as the legends with which it is associated. His first consciousness of existence dated, as he himself has told us, from Sandy Knowe. In early manhood a "raid" into Liddesdale was the favourite object of a vacation ramble. Ashestiel he spent the first happy years of wedlock: in Abbotsford he sought to realize one of the great ambitions of his life; and Dryburgh incloses his remains. The Border Union Railway now traverses the district from Carlisle to Hawick, and modern cultivation has somewhat softened and enriched the aspect of the landscape. The old peels and Border strongholds have been gradually crumbling away. Hawick, Selkirk, and Galashiels have risen into populous and flourishing towns, the seats of an important industry. Agriculture, though still chiefly pastoral, has encroached on many a hill-side, bogs have been drained, and i coal-fields opened up. The mockery of the line

"Rich was the soil had purple heath been grain,"

has lost most of its force, and the farmers of Liddesdale can now give a better account of their lands than the gudeman of Charlieshope-" There's mair hares than sheep on my farm; and for the moor-fowl and the grey-fowl, they lie as thick as doos in a dooket." But in Scott's time the country was much the same as in the days of the Moss-troopers. The people had outlived the old Border traditions of raids and robberies, yet in the seclusion of their valleys they preserved many of the rough reckless manners of their ancestors. Scott has painted them, in "Guy Mannering," much as they lived under his own eyes.

The wildness of the region, even at the end of the last century, may be gathered from the incidents of one of the poet's raids. His gig was the first wheeled carriage that had ever been seen in Liddesdale. There was no inn or publichouse of any kind in the whole valley, which was accessible only through a succession of tremendous morasses. In the course of our grand tour, besides the risks of swamping and breaking our necks, we encountered the formidable hardships of sleeping upon peat-stacks, and eating mutton slain by no common butcher, but deprived of life by the judgment of God, as a coroner's inquest would express themselves." Scott used to boast of being sheriff of the "cairn and the scaur," and that he had strolled through the wild glens of Liddesdale "so often and so long, that he might say he had a home in every farmhouse."

The scenery of the Scottish borderland can lay claim to little grandeur. The hills are too bare to be beautiful, and too low to be very impressive. Still the wide tracts of black moss, the grey swells of moor rising into brown, round-backed hills, with here and there a stately cliff of sterner aspect, and the green pastures of the quiet glens, are not without their charm, in spite of the general bare and treeless character of the landscape, which is at first apt to disappoint the visitor from the South. Washington Irving spoke of this disappointment to his host at Abbotsford. "Scott hummed for a moment to himself, and looked grave. 'It may be pertinacity,' he said at length; but to my eye, these grey hills and all this wild Border country have beauties peculiar to themselves. I like the very nakedness of the land; it has something bold, stern, and solitary about it. When I have been for some time in the rich scenery about Edinburgh, which is like ornamented garden land, I begin to wish myself back again among my own honest grey hills; and if I did not see the heather at least once a year, I think I should die!' The last words were said with an honest warmth, accompanied by a thump on the ground with his staff, by way of emphasis, that showed his heart was in his speech." That Scott was quite sensible to the sort of melancholy awe inspired by some of the more savage parts of the country is shown (if other proof were not abundant in his poems and novels) in a passage in one of his letters. Speaking of the view from the top of Minchmoor, he says:-"I assure you I have felt really oppressed with a sort of fearful loneliness when looking around the naked towering ridges of desolate barrenness which is all the eye takes in from the top of such a mountain, the patches of cultivation being hidden in the little glens, or only appearing to make one feel how feeble and ineffectual man has been to contend with the genius of the soil. It is in such a scene that the unknown and gifted author of Albonia' places the superstition which consists in hearing the noise of a chase, the baying of the hounds, the throttling sobs of the deer, the wild halloos of the huntsmen, and the

"Hoof thick beating on the hollow hill.'

I have often repeated his verses with some sensations of awe in this place." As far as his own estate was concerned, he did much by his plantations to cover the nakedness of the land, and his precept and example also helped to make planting fashionable among his neighbours.

Of Scott's power of word-painting there is, no doubt, more abundant and striking evidence in his later poems; but the descriptions of natural scenery in the Lay" are not only very effective, but illustrate that peculiar perception of colour rather than form which has been pointed out in the very suggestive criticism of Mr. Ruskin in the "Modern Painters." Analysing the description of Edinburgh, in "Marmion." he shows there is hardly any form, only smoke and colour in the picture. "Observe," he says, "the only hints at form given throughout are in

the somewhat vague words, ridgy, massy, close, and high,' the whole being still more obscured by modern mystery in its most tangible form of smoke. But the colours are all definite: note the rainbow band of them-gloomy or dusky red, sable (pure black), amethyst (pure purple), green and gold-in a noble chord throughout." Elsewhere Mr. Ruskin says, "In consequence of his unselfishness and humility, Scott's enjoyment of Nature is incomparably greater than any other poet I know. All the rest carry their cares to her, and begin maundering in her ears about their own affairs. But with Scott the love is entirely humble and unselfish. I, Scott, am nothing, and less than nothing: but these crags, and heaths, and clouds, how great are, they, how lovely, how for ever to be beloved, only for their own silent thoughtless sake!""

Without attempting any detailed topographical illustration of the poem, it may be worth while to notice some of the spots of chief interest which are referred to. Newark Castle, where the old minstrel is supposed to chant his tale before the duchess, stands in ruins in its "birchen bower" on the right bank of the Yarrow-a large square tower, dismantled and unroofed, with crumbling outer wall and turrets. It was built by James II. for a hunting seat, afterwards belonged to the outlaw Murray, and has long been a possession, as it still is, of the house of Buccleuch. Newark Castle, where the imaginary minstrel poured forth his song, is included within the grounds of Bowhill, the favourite seat of another fair duchess, at whose request, when Countess of Dalkeith, Scott commenced the poem which developed into the Lay. He accordingly, says Lockhart, "shadows out his own beautiful friend in the person of her lord's ancestor, the last of the original stock of that great house; himself, the favoured inmate of Bowhill, introduced certainly to the familiarity of that circle by his devotion to the poetry of a by-past age, in that of an aged minstrel seeking shelter at the gate of Newark." This is the point of many arch allusions in the poem. There is also a personal interest in the closing lines, which refer, it is believed, to the day-dream of Ashestiel -the purchase of a modest mountain farm in that neighbourhood: "a hundred acres, two spare bed-rooms, with dressing-rooms, each of which will on a pinch have a couch-bed " a dream which afterwards grew into the ambitious scheme of Abbotsford. Lockhart deems it, in one point of view, the greatest misfortune of Scott's life that the original vision was not realized; but "the success of the poem itself changed the spirit of his dream.'" Ashestiel, where the Lay was partly written, lies at the foot of Minchmoor, on the right bank of the Tweed.

Branksome Tower still overlooks the Langholm Road, on the left bank of the Teviot, between two and three miles above Hawick. Various alterations have gradually reduced the dimensions of the building, and one square tower of massive thickness the only part of the original structure which now remains. In the rest of the edifice the castellated style has been abandoned, and the old stronghold presents, with the exception of the towers referred to, the appearance of a handsome modern mansion. The extent of the old castle can still, however, be traced by some vestiges of its foundation. Its situation on a steep bank, surrounded by the Teviot, and flanked by a deep ravine, naturally added to its strength. The present hunting seat of the Duke of Buccleuch in this quarter is at Langholm Lodge. Branksome is celebrated in a song of Alan Ramsay's

"As I cam' in by Teviot side,"

as well as in the Lay. About half a mile nearer Hawick, on the other bank of the river from Branksome, is the peel of Goldielands, in tolerably good preservation. Harden Castle, another relic of the same period, and the cradle of the poet's ancestry, stands not far off on the bank of Borthwick Water, which here joins

the Teviot. It takes its name from the number of hares which used to frequent the place (Harden-the ravine of hares), and is a deep, dark, narrow glen, threaded by a little mountain streamlet. The castle is perched on the top of the steep bank, and Leyden (Scott's friend), in one of his poems, thus describes the situation:"Where Bortha hoarse, that loads the meads with sand,

Rolls her red tide to Teviot's western strand,

Through slaty hills, whose sides are shogged with thorn,
Where springs in scattered tufts the dark-green corn,
Towers wood-girt Harden far above the vale,

And clouds of ravens o'er the turrets sail."

The family of Harden is a cadet branch of the house of Buccleuch, and the heraldic allusion in the poem is to the fact that the Scotts of Harden bear their arms upon the field, while the Scotts of Buccleuch exhibit them on the bend dexter, which they adopted when the estate of Murdiestone came by marriage. One of the most famous of the Scotts of Harden was one Walter, who flourished during the reign of Queen Mary. He was a great freebooter, and used to bring his spoil to the castle on the cliff. His wife was Mary Scott, the Flower of Yarrow (one of the Scotts of Dryhope), and it is of her the well-known story is told of the production of a pair of clean spurs at dinner-time, in a covered dish, as a hint of the want of provisions, and of the way to get them. Notwithstanding his marauding life Walter seems to have prospered. He had a large estate, which was divided among his five sons. A number of the most popular of the Border songs are attributed by tradition to an infant whom he carried off in a raid, and whom his kind-hearted wife cherished as one of her own children. As illustrative of the temper of this rough old chief, Sir Walter tells a characteristic anecdote in one of the notes of the Minstrelsy. Upon one occasion, when the village herd was driving out the cattle to pasture, the old laird heard him call loudly to drive out Harden's cow. 'Harden's cow!' echoed the affronted chief; is it come to that pass? By my faith, they shall soon say Harden's kye' (cows). Accordingly he sounded his bugle, set out with his followers, and next day returned with a bow of kye and a lassen'd (brindled) bull. On his return with this gallant prey he passed a very large haystack. It occurred to the provident laird that this would be extremely convenient to fodder his new stock of cattle; but, as no means of transporting it were obvious, he was fain to take leave of it with the apostrophe, now become proverbial, By my saul, had ye but four feet, ye should not stand lang there!' In short, as Froissart says of a similar class of feudal robbers, nothing came amiss to them that was not too heavy or too hot." It was Auld Wat's eldest son, Sir William Scott, who was saved from being hanged for participation in a foray on the lands of Sir Gibson Murray, of Elibank, by the captor's prudent wife suggesting that it was a pity to sacrifice a young man of good estate when they might marry him to one of their three daughters, a proposal to which it did not, under the circumstances, require much argument to reconcile young Harden. Beardie (so called from the long beard he wore in mourning for the execution of Charles I.), the poet's great-grandfather, was the grandson of Sir William Scott.

Hawick spreads itself on both sides of the Slitterick, a tributary of the Teviot, into which it falls just below the town. Having survived repeated burnings during the heat of Border warfare, part of the Tower-inn represents, it is said, the only building which was not consumed in the great blaze of 1570. Hawick is now at the head of the "tweed" manufactories of Scotland. It has a rapidly growing population, already over 8,000, and is continually being enriched with new mills. Minto Castle, the seat of the Earl of Minto-open daily, except Sunday-perched on a height, between Hawick and Selkirk, commands a fine