BORTHWICK CASTLE.

THIS gigantic square tower, a marked object in the surrounding landscape, stands close to the small stream of the Gore, about thirteen miles from Edinburgh, near the Melrose and Jedburgh road. It is on the top of an eminence, only high enough to make it conspicuous to the surrounding country, and not of itself sufficiently large to divert attention from the huge proportions of the mason work. In the neighbourhood stand some venerable trees, from which a few cheerful cottages peep forth; but these, like the remains of the Church and some outworks of the Castle, are only noticed on a near approach, and from a distance, the stately bulk of the tower absorbs the eye. Eastward from Borthwick, and in the direction of the neighbouring castle of Crichton, runs a narrow valley, with grassy banks interspersed with coppice wood. It has heretofore been remarkable for its pastoral loneliness, but it is doomed to possess that character no longer. A railway is now in progress, a short way eastward of the Castle, and from the inequalities of the ground, the cuttings, embankments, and viaducts are to be on a scale peculiarly large. Thus will the less dreaded but more powerful wonders of modern science be brought in close rivalry with this memorable monument of the power and resources of the age of turbulence and violence. The Castle, though its walls are in pretty good preservation, has not been occupied for upwards of a century, and of its present inhabitants the Rev. Thomas Wright, in his Statistical Account of the parish, gives the following sketch.

"The Castle is the seat of a colony of jackdaws, whose flights and chatterings take something from its loneliness during the day-time. Like all other colonies of the same bird, they contrive to keep up their number, but never are observed to have increased it. No person remembers them to have been more or less than at present. The white owl regularly issues towards evening, with a triumphant scream, from the upper windows of the Castle, and hunts for mice and other food of a similar kind, over the glebe and the adjoining fields. It flies, when on this search, so low, that I was once almost struck by it, when circling the base of a green knoll, from the other side of which it was coming, without having observed me. I had full time to observe the brilliant and ruby-like lustre of its large eyes, as it keenly surveyed the ground for its prey."*

The effect of its great bulk, which every one feels in contemplating Borthwick, is owing to the simplicity of its plan. It is little more in outline than the old border keep or square tower, but, though on this simple design, it was raised at a period when the owners of these keeps were, in general, like the neighbouring Lord of Crichton, clustering new masses of building round the old tower. The object of the Lord of Borthwick seems to have been, to have all the space and accommodation of these clusters of edifices within the four walls of his simple square block; and thus the building is believed to be the largest specimen of that class of architecture in Scotland. As so wide a surface of flat wall might be liable to be deficient in strength, the tower is internally built in two, or properly, three divisions. There is in front a square recess, represented in the accompanying plate, running from the foundation to the top. The main building, in which stand the hall and the larger apartments, occupies the space between the other or eastern side of the square tower, and the inner bounding wall of this recess. The portions of the tower projecting on either side are internally separate buildings, containing the smaller apartments. Two staircases are contained in wells, passing from the foundation to the roof, at the corners of the square recess. They had separate conical roofs, or turrets, one of which still remains, and is visible in the * New Statistical Account, Edinburgh, 159.

BORTHWICK CASTLE, 1-2.