NIM ROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 25 



quite level ground ; but as it is said to swarm with lawyers, it 

 may be no misnomer after all. Its size may be guessed at from 

 the number of its inhabitants, which are somewhere about three 

 thousand ; and it has been the birth-place of several eminent 

 men. The new Town-house is certainly a handsome building, 

 and there is a health-giving Spa in the neighbourhood, of whose 

 virtues, however, I am unable to speak, as, during the month I 

 spent at this " Melton Mowbray of the North," I never drank 

 aqua pura, much less aqua medicata. 



In less than an hour after my arrival at Dunse I went to seek 

 for Lord Elcho. And where did I find him ? In splendid apart- 

 ments, fitting and becoming the heir apparent to the Earl of 

 Wemyss, one of the wealthiest noblemen in all Scotland, and 

 himself residing when at home at Amisfield, in East Lothian, 

 one of the finest and largest mansions in that aristocratic and 

 richly-peopled county ? h no and here is one of the distin- 

 guishing features in fox-hunting, highly complimentary to it I 

 found him in a small brick house, with one window to a room, 

 much such a one as a master mechanic might be expected to be 

 found in ; but which now appeared to afford all the comforts of 

 a palace. His lordship received me with the greatest kindness, 

 and invited me to dinner on the same day at the Black Bull, 

 where he told me the few gentlemen who were then arrived in 

 the town were to assemble, previously to the opening of the cam- 

 paign in the Dunse country on the morrow. 



People may say what they will to the contrary, but I am quite 

 satisfied there is no passion so universal as the vanity of being 

 known to the rest of mankind, howsoever diversified or disguised 

 under different forms and appearances. An humble individual 

 as I am, I was at this time better known to Lord Elcho than 

 Lord Elcho was known to me. In fact my knowledge of his lord- 

 ship only extended to my having met him in the field in Leices- 

 tershire, in which county all the sporting world knew he resided 

 for several seasons, distinguishing himself as a horseman 

 amongst the best of the best. His character there was " who 

 can beat Elcho, if he gets a start ?" In private life also he is 

 equally hard to beat ; and as a friend and a companion, his uni- 

 versal popularity in his own country and in others renders it un- 

 necessary for me to speak of him. But what said they of him in 

 Leicestershire as a sportsman ? Why, what the late Mr. Meynell 

 said of John Lockley " riding was his forte ;" and I doubt not, 

 from all I have heard of his lordship in that country, that, cum 

 multis aliis, he voted hounds a bore unless they went fast enough 

 for him. But this seeming indifference to hunting this appar- 

 ent preference of the horse to the hound, of the horseman to the 



