THE TWEED — ABBOTSFORD. 69 



been a fiddler instead of a fisher — is the less pardon- 

 able as, besides being Scott's son-in-law, and an occa- 

 sional angler himself, he was the constant associate of 

 the Wilsons, Hogg, and others of the keenest anglers 

 in all Scotland. Old people in the district yet remem- 

 ber the sports at this period, — the great annual hunt, 

 when all the neighbouring farmers attended, and the 

 proceedings terminated in a grand dinner and drinking- 

 bout, Sir Walter in tlie chair — the gala fishing days 

 at Charlie Purdie's at Boldside, &c. As a companion 

 picture to the foregoing — but in melancholy contrast 

 to it — let us extract Lockhart's account of the last sad 

 home-coming of the great Magician of the Tweed. No 

 borderer will " lay his banes far frae the Tweed," if 

 he can help it, and Sir Walter Scott felt at Naples 

 that he could not die away from Abbotsford. He came 

 back to London, and, although almost bereft of thought 

 and consciousness, still longed for his border-home, and 

 was brought to Edinburgh. Few Scotsmen, we fancy, 

 can read the narrative of his final journey to abbots- 

 ford through familiar scenes, without an uncomfort- 

 able sensation about the eyes : — 



" At a very early hour on the morning of Wednesday the 11th, 

 we again placed him in his carriage, and he lay in the same 

 torpid state during the first two stages on the road to Tweed- 

 side. But as we descended the vale of the Gala he began to 

 gaze about him, and by degrees it was obvious that he was re- 

 cognising the features of that familiar landscape. Presently 

 he murmured a name or two — ' Gala-water, surely — Buckholm 

 — Torwoodlee.' As we rounded the hill at Ladhope, and the 

 outline of the Eildons burst on him, he became greatly excited; 

 and when turning himself on the couch his eye caught at length 

 his own towers at the distance of a mile, he sprang up with a 

 cry of delight. The river being in flood, we had to go round 



