bed of the author, a man of many accomplishments and of a most lovable
nature. He would lie and dictate or write in pencil these happy and
wistful memories of days passed by the banks of Tweed and Tyne. He did
not care to speak of the northern waters: of Tay, which the Roman
invaders compared to Tiber; of Laxford, the river of salmon; or of the
"thundering Spey." Nor has he anything to say of the west, and of
Galloway, the country out of which young Lochinvar came, with its soft
and broken hills, like the lower spurs of the Pyrenees, and its streams,
now rushing down defiles of rock, now stealing with slow foot through the
plains. He confines himself to the limits of the Scottish Arcadia; to
the hills near Edinburgh, where Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd loved and sang
in a rather affected way; and to the main stream and the tributaries of
the Tweed. He tells, with a humour like that of Charles Lamb in his
account of his youthful search for the mysterious fountain-head of the
New River, how he sought among the Pentland Hills for the source of the
brook that flowed past his own garden. The wandering stream led him
through many a scene renowned in Border history, up to the heights whence
Marmion surveyed the Scottish forces encamped on Borough Moor before the
fatal day of Flodden. These scenes are described with spirit and loving
interest; but it is by Tweedside that the tourist will find his most
pleasant guide in Lauder's book. Just as Cicero said of Athens, that in
every stone you tread on a history, so on Tweedside by every nook and
valley you find the place of a ballad, a story, or a legend. From
Tweed's source, near the grave of the Wizard Merlin, down to Berwick and
the sea, the Border "keeps" and towers are as frequent as castles on the
Rhine. Each has its tradition, its memory of lawless times, which have
become beautiful in the magic of poetry and the mist of the past. First
comes Neidpath Castle, with its vaulted "hanging chamber" in the roof,
and the rafter, with the iron ring to which prisoners were hanged, still
remaining to testify to the lawless power of Border lords. Neidpath has