moment to himself, and looked grave; he had no idea of having his muse
complimented at the expense of his native hills. "It may be
partiality," said he, at length; "but to my eye, these gray bills and
all this wild border country have beauties peculiar to themselves. I
like the very nakedness of the land; it has something bold, and stern,
and solitary about it. When I have been for some time in the rich
scenery about Edinburgh, which is like ornamented garden land, I begin
to wish myself back again among my own honest gray hills; and if I did
not see the heather at least once a year, _I think I should die!_"

The last words were said with an honest warmth, accompanied with a
thump on the ground with his staff, by way of emphasis, that showed his
heart was in his speech. He vindicated the Tweed, too, as a beautiful
stream in itself, and observed that he did not dislike it for being
bare of trees, probably from having been much of an angler in his time,
and an angler does not like to have a stream overhung by trees, which
embarrass him in the exercise of his rod and line.

I took occasion to plead, in like manner, the associations of early
life, for my disappointment in respect to the surrounding scenery. I
had been so accustomed to hills crowned with forests, and streams
breaking their way through a wilderness of trees, that all my ideas of
romantic landscape were apt to be well wooded.

"Aye, and that's the great charm of your country," cried Scott. "You
love the forest as I do the heather--but I would not have you think I
do not feel the glory of a great woodland prospect. There is nothing I
should like more than to be in the midst of one of your grand, wild,
original forests with the idea of hundreds of miles of untrodden forest
around me. I once saw, at Leith, an immense stick of timber, just