front (three or four stories high, capped by a heavy roof and "pepper-box" turrets) "faces southward," along a broad avenue. This terminates in a "gateway" flanked by two heavy square posts, each surmounted by a bear in stone, executed in 1747, thought to suggest Tully Veolan in " Waverley," and the multitudinous bears of the Barons of Bradwardine. "The walls of the house are of great thickness and the accommodation is that of a past age. The library contains an interesting collection of books." The place recalls the lines by James Hogg, - "Over the hills to Traquair;" and a neighboring stream also recalls those by Rev. James Nichols, Where Quair rins sweet amang the flouirs," while one of the older of Scottish ballads sings of the forest of birches once here. The forest was, long ago, reduced to a few trees, and is now represented almost wholly by modern growths. Crawford's "Bush aboon Traquair" is another metrical flower of its poetic garland.

So celebrated, indeed, is the place for its charms, and in local poetry, that another bard of this region, Dr. Pennecuik, has written the assertion, that, —

"On fair Tweedside, from Berwick to the Bield,
Traquair, for beauty, fairly wins the field:

So many charms, by nature and by art,

Do there combine to captivate the heart,

And please the eye, with what is fine and rare,
Few other seats can match with sweet Traquair.”

An anecdote, related in the Third Part of the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," respecting an Earl of this House, illustrates curiously the times "of the very last Border freebooter of any note, William Armstrong, called also "Christie's Will." The Earl, when once at Jedburgh, procured release of this worthy from confinement for horse-stealing. "Some time afterward a lawsuit, of importance to Lord Traquair, was to be decided at the Court of Session" (Edinburgh); "and there was every reason to believe that judgment would turn upon the voice of the presiding judge, who has a casting vote, in case of an equal division among his brethren. The opinion of the president was unfavorable to Lord Traquair; and the point was, therefore, to keep him out of the way when the question should be tried. In this dilemma, the Earl had recourse to Christie's Will; who, at once, offered his service to kidnap the president. Upon due scrutiny, he found it was the judge's practice frequently to take the

air, on horseback, on the sands of Leith, without an attendant. In one of these excursions, Christie's Will, who had long watched his opportunity, ventured to accost the president, and engage him in conversation." He thus succeeded in decoying him to a lonely spot, muffling him in a large cloak, and, by unfrequented paths, bearing him to the Tower of Graham, in Annandale, near Moffat, where he imprisoned him until the lawsuit was decided in favor of Lord Traquair. Will was then "directed to set the president at liberty;" and the latter, accordingly, was replaced on the sands of Leith, so cunningly that many years elapsed before he was able to learn the mode of his abduction, — both he and his friends, meanwhile, being persuaded that it was effected by witchcraft. A clever ballad describes this lively affair.

There is another specimen of the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," relating to a fight said to have taken place near Traquair in an adventure of a Lord Lochinvar, "Out frae the English Border," very like that told in "Marmion." The ballad is entitled "Katherine Janfarie," - "a weel-far'd may," "courted by mony men."

Miss Vere was left at home with the "dark" Sir Frederick whom she detested, and with her mysterious father (for he grew stranger on acquaintance). Meanwhile, incidents elsewhere illustrate the social life of the times.

Hobbie Elliot had, somehow, given real or pretended offence to a very wild neighbor, "Willie of Westburnflat ;" an example of the last of the Border Reivers, who demonstrated his sentiments by burning Hobbie's house and barns, and by carrying off— beside lesser plunder of cattle- - Grace Armstrong, an extremely nice girl to whom Hobbie was soon to be married. Hobbie, with friends and allies, was soon seeking his lost treasure, at Willie's stronghold. This was an example of the style of structures inhabited by the "gentlemen" who practised such expressions of feeling, structures of which many remains continue to exist through the Border Country. The one here described is considered Goldieland, a wellknown "peel" standing on a bank overlooking the road southwest from Hawick, and not far from Branxholm Castle of The Lay of the Last Minstrel." "The tower," says the story, "was a small square building of the most gloomy aspect. The walls were of great thickness; and the windows, or slits which served the purpose of windows, seemed rather calculated to afford the defenders the means

of employing missile weapons, than for admitting air or light to the apartments within. A small battlement projected over the walls on every side, and afforded farther advantage of defence by its niched parapet, within which arose a steep roof, flagged with gray stones. A single turret at one angle, defended by a door studded with huge iron nails, rose above the battlement, and gave access to the roof from within, by the spiral staircase which it enclosed." From this turret, Hobbie saw a fair hand wave a handkerchief.

Summons to

the garrison, brief siege, and parley for terms ensued, when Willie agreed to deliver up the young lady, whom he at length confessed he held prisoner. To the astonishment of the besiegers, he produced Miss Vere, and protested that he held no other. Hobbie and his allies retired, to make the best of this unexpected result; one quite as good as could be, it appeared, however, when Grace was discovered at the Heugh-foot, released voluntarily by the predatory Willie. But strange as these affairs seemed, they were less strange than those that occurred at Ellieslaw Castle.

On the day before this raid, Mr. Vere had caused his daughter to accompany him during a walk to a lonely portion of his estate, she fancying that he thus intended opportunity for a quiet and effective argument towards the suit of Sir Frederick. But while thus away from the castle, they were suddenly beset by four armed men, two of whom engaged Mr. Vere and a single servant attending him, while the others seized Miss Vere, and hurried away on horseback. Meanwhile, Mr. Vere fell. Both the fighting robbers then retreated precipitately. The servant found that his master had simply stumbled, and was unwounded; but no little time was lost before pursuit of the abductors was organized from the castle, and then it was directed towards Earnscliff Tower, seat of a family between whom and Mr. Vere a feud existed. The young laird of this family, obnoxiously to Mr. Vere, presumed to cherish attachment to his daughter; and she, quite as obnoxiously, in private reciprocated it. Of course Mr. Vere's party found nothing, having gone quite in an opposite direction from that taken by the robbers. The original of Earnscliff is said to be Garvald Tower, a few miles rather south of Linton station in Haddingtonshire, and a rather entire and romantic Baronial relic, picturesquely situated and illustrated in Scott's "Border Antiquities."

After explorations had been ingeniously made in every direction except the right, Mr. Vere at length assented to a proposition by

friends, to go that way, and then young Earnscliff was encountered attending Miss Vere. The affectionate father's first impulse was to display this obvious proof of his own expressed hypothesis, that Earnscliff had abducted her. But the hypothesis was not much confirmed by immediately subsequent revelations. Out of this not publicly explicable affair Miss Vere got safely back to Ellieslaw and additional attentions from Sir Frederick Langley. Many guests, almost entirely masculine, arrived; and among them, oddly enough, the bold proprietor of Westburnflat Tower. There was a great deal of eating and drinking, and of very private conversation, leading into evidence of a conspiracy of the Jacobite party for a rising in favor of the "Pretender," Prince James Francis Edward. The plots of this party were favorites with Scott, since they gave him many romantic and historical subjects for his pictures, as one readily remembers. "Redgauntlet" relates to the last of the attempts of the Stuarts to regain their forfeited crown; "Waverley" to that of 1745; "Rob Roy" to that of 1715; while this relates to efforts that were made previous to the great "affair" in the last-named year.

The action of the remainder of the story was almost entirely at Ellieslaw Castle; and as it is described in only five not very long chapters, it may readily be traced; and with quite enough interest, for these chapters contain the continued history of that strange old house; of the results of plotting and treasons hatched in it; of the career of Mr. Vere and Sir Frederick Langley; and more especially of what came to young Earnscliff, and to Miss Vere, when, in the chapel of her father's castle, she was forced to meet Sir Frederick, her detested, at the marriage service, and when the hitherto almost entirely mysterious person giving name to the novel effectively appeared in his own name and right, and, after important attention to the proposed bride, and exposure of snares and secrets around her, as effectively disappeared. All these fortunes, and a ramble among the pleasant places where they are supposed to have been developed, certainly can but satisfy one with spending the short time required for gaining acquaintance with the times, the story, and the scenes of "The Black Dwarf."

XXXIII.

THE MIDLAND BORDER.

RAVELLERS from Innerleithen to the "Land of Scott," can

TRA

easily make an excursion through the district sometimes named the Midland Border, and visit scenes described in several passages of Scott's works, and almost everywhere invested with the charms of ballad and memorial poetry. Private conveyance of some sort is necessary. The route is up the vale of Quair Water, and across the hills to the "Gordon Arms" Inn, and thence up the Yarrow to the Loch of the Lowes, at the head of St. Mary's Loch, about sixteen miles distant from Innerleithen (described on page 192). Thence travellers may turn back and go down the vale of Yarrow to Selkirk and Melrose, or, across the hills and vales to Hawick, and thence by rail to Melrose. Both these excursions lead through the very heart of the romantic, legendary, and storied pastoral districts of the Border.

No words describe better one's thoughts about the celebrated Yarrow than Wordsworth's three well-known poems. After one passes the rather lonely country of the Quair, and at the "Gordon Arms" first looks upon the vale that there opens on either side, one may exclaim with him in his lines written when this scene had been "Unvisited,"

"What's Yarrow but a river bare,

That glides the dark hills under?
There are a thousand such elsewhere
As worthy of your wonder."

And perhaps even the traveller may recall others of those lines, and feel that it might have been well to have kept unrealized a vision of fancy like that apt to be associated with this vale as with other spots unseen by the eyes, but in imagination pictured scenes of earth's most eloquent beauty, —

"Enough if in our hearts we know

There's such a place as Yarrow."
"We have a vision of our own;

Ah! why should we undo it?"
"Should life be dull, and spirits low,
"Twill soothe us in our sorrow,
That earth has something yet to show,
The bonny holms of Yarrow!"