276 Ashestiel and Sir Walter Scott. 



required for ordinary ailments, so that she had been a 

 Lady Bountiful of the most useful kind ; and the sorrow 

 of the peasantry of the village was universal, though 

 to the younger portion of it, this was relieved by the 

 amusement caused by " the procession of the furniture 

 from the old to the new dwelling. Old swords, bows, 

 targets, and lances, made a very conspicuous show. 

 A family of turkeys was accommodated within the 

 helmet of some preux chevalier of ancient Border fame ; 

 and the caravan, attended by a dozen rosy peasant 

 children, carrying fishing-rods and spears, and leading 

 ponies, greyhounds, and spaniels, would, as it crossed 

 the Tweed, have formed no bad subject for the pencil, 

 and really reminded one of the gipsy groups of Callot 

 on their march." 



Lockhart says that he retained to the end of his life 

 a certain tenderness of feeling towards Ashestiel, which 

 could not perhaps be better shadowed forth than in 

 Joanna Baillie's similitude : " Yourself and Mrs. Scott 

 and the children will feel sorry at leaving Ashestiel, 

 which will long have a consequence, and be the object 

 of kind feelings with many, from having once been the 

 place of your residence. If I should ever be happy 

 enough to be at Abbotsford, you must take me to see 

 Ashestiel too. I have a kind of tenderness for it, as 

 one has for a man's first wife when you hear that he 

 has married a second." 



