Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey

buried, and talked of the poet, whom he had known personally. He said his songs were familiar to the poorest and most illiterate of the country folk, “ and it seemed to him as if the country had grown more beautiful, since Burns had written his bonnie little songs about it. ”
    I found Scott was quite an enthusiast on the subject of the popular songs of his country, and he seemed gratified to find me so alive to them. Their effect in calling up in my mind the recollections of early times and scenes in which I had first heard them, reminded him, he said, of the lines of his poor Mend, Leyden, to the Scottish muse:
    “In youth’s first morn, alert and gay,
Ere rolling years had passed away,
Remembered like a morning dream,
I heard the dulcet measures float,
In many a liquid winding note,
Along the bank of Teviot’s stream.
    “Sweet sounds! that oft have soothed to rest
The sorrows of my guileless breast,
And charmed away mine infant tears;
Fond memory shall your strains repeat,
Like distant echoes, doubly sweet,
That on the wild the traveller hears.”
    Scott went on to expatiate on the popular songs of Scotland. “They are a part of our national inheritance,” said he, “and something that we may truly call our own. They have no foreign taint; they have the pure breath of the heather and the mountain breeze. All genuine legitimate races that have descended from the ancient Britons; such as the Scotch, the Welsh, and the Irish, have national airs. The English have none, because they are not natives of the soil, or, at least, are mongrels. Their music is all made up of foreign scraps, like a harlequin jacket, or a piece of mosaic. Even in Scotland, we have comparatively few national songs in the eastern part, where we have had most influx of strangers. A real old Scottish song is a cairngorm—a gem of our own mountains; or rather, it is a precious relic of old times, that bears the national character stamped upon it—like a cameo, that shows what the national visage was in former days, before the breed was crossed.”
    While Scott was thus discoursing, we were passing up a narrow glen, with the dogs beating about, to right and left, when suddenly a blackcock burst upon the wing.
    “Aha!” cried Scott, “there will be a good shot for Master Walter; we must send him this way with his gun, when we go home. Walter’s the family sportsman now, and keeps us in game. I have pretty nigh resigned my gun to him; for I find I cannot trudge about as briskly as formerly.”
    Our ramble took us on the hills commanding an extensive prospect.
“Now,” said Scott, “I have brought you, like the pilgrim in the
Pilgrim’s Progress, to the top of the Delectable Mountains, that I may
show you all the goodly regions hereabouts. Yonder is Lammermuir, and
Smalholme; and there you have Gallashiels, and Torwoodlie, and
Gallawater; and in that direction you see Teviotdale, and the Braes of
Yarrow; and Ettrick stream, winding along, like a silver thread, to
throw itself into the Tweed.”
    He went on thus to call over names celebrated in Scottish song, and most of which had recently received a romantic interest from his own pen. In fact, I saw a great part of the border country spread out before me, and could trace the scenes of those poems and romances which had, in a manner, bewitched the world. I gazed about me for a time with mute surprise, I may almost say with disappointment. I beheld a mere succession of gray waving hills, line beyond line, as far as my eye could reach; monotonous in their aspect, and so destitute of trees, that one could almost see a stout fly walking along their profile; and the far-famed Tweed appeared a naked stream, flowing between bare hills, without a tree or thicket on its banks; and yet, such had been the magic web of poetry and romance thrown over the whole, that it had a greater charm for me than the richest scenery I beheld in England.
    I could not help giving utterance to my thoughts. Scott hummed for a 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