Border country remains as kind and homely as ever. I looked at
Ashiestiel some days ago: the house seemed just as it may have been
when you left it for Abbotsford, only there was a lawn-tennis net on
the lawn, the hill on the opposite bank of the Tweed was covered to
the crest with turnips, and the burn did not sing below the little
bridge, for in this arid summer the burn was dry. But there was
still a grilse that rose to a big March brown in the shrunken stream
below Elibank. This may not interest you, who styled yourself


No fisher,
But a well-wisher
To the game!


Still, as when you were thinking over Marmion, a man might have
"grand gallops among the hills"--those grave wastes of heather and
bent that sever all the watercourses and roll their sheep-covered
pastures from Dollar Law to White Combe, and from White Combe to the
Three Brethren Cairn and the Windburg and Skelf-hill Pen. Yes,
Teviotdale is pleasant still, and there is not a drop of dye in the
water, purior electro, of Yarrow. St. Mary's Loch lies beneath me,
smitten with wind and rain--the St. Mary's of North and of the
Shepherd. Only the trout, that see a myriad of artificial flies,
are shyer than of yore. The Shepherd could no longer fill a cart up
Meggat with trout so much of a size that the country people took
them for herrings.

The grave of Piers Cockburn is still not desecrated: hard by it
lies, within a little wood; and beneath that slab of old sandstone,