the Glen of Allen, and have taken the trouble to read the account of
the imaginary Glendearg. The stream in the latter case is described
as wandering down a romantic little valley, shifting itself, after the
fashion of such a brook, from one side to the other, as it can most
easily find its passage, and touching nothing in its progress that
gives token of cultivation. It rises near a solitary tower, the abode
of a supposed church vassal, and the scene of several incidents in the
Romance.

The real Allen, on the contrary, after traversing the romantic ravine
called the Nameless Dean, thrown off from side to side alternately,
like a billiard ball repelled by the sides of the table on which it
has been played, and in that part of its course resembling the stream
which pours down Glendearg, may be traced upwards into a more open
country, where the banks retreat farther from each other, and the vale
exhibits a good deal of dry ground, which has not been neglected by
the active cultivators of the district. It arrives, too, at a sort of
termination, striking in itself, but totally irreconcilable with the
narrative of the Romance. Instead of a single peel-house, or border
tower of defence, such as Dame Glendinning is supposed to have
inhabited, the head of the Allen, about five miles above its junction
with the Tweed, shows three ruins of Border houses, belonging to
different proprietors, and each, from the desire of mutual support so
natural to troublesome times, situated at the extremity of the
property of which it is the principal messuage. One of these is the
ruinous mansion-house of Hillslap, formerly the property of the
Cairncrosses, and now of Mr. Innes of Stow; a second the tower of
Colmslie, an ancient inheritance of the Borthwick family, as is
testified by their crest, the Goat's Head, which exists on the ruin;
[Footnote: It appears that Sir Walter Scott's memory was not quite