INTO BALLAD-LAND. 95 



A boy, riding a grey pony, u Donal," as he affectionately 

 calls him, "doesna ken" much about things in general, but 

 guides us to Sandyknowe, the locus classicus of Scott's child- 

 hood, where, in all probability, his taste for the eerie and the 

 picturesque first developed itself. The old house is now pulled 

 down and stables are built on its site; but close at hand is 

 Smailholm Tower, where the lad would often roam to indulge 

 in the day-dreams which he afterwards clothed in such splen- 

 dour for the world. Turner's picture somewhat idealises it, as 

 Is his wont, and thereby mars its loneliness. A lakelet in 

 front is ruffled with the wind from the adjoining moor, but the 

 stern crags are cheerful with wild pink and heartsease blossoms, 

 and are mantled with ivy and polypody. A c ' cuddy " grazes hard 

 by, but all else is desolation ; naked, swelling moorlands leading 

 up to the marked triple outlines of the Eildons. Smailholm itself 

 bears all the characters of the numerous peels of the Jumna? 

 set up against the Sikhs and Mahrattas, and shows how curi- 

 ously, in far distant quarters of the world, the instinct of self- 

 preservation has prompted the same means of defence the 

 massive tower and doorway planted high in the side against 

 robber-chieftains and midnight marauders. Further on, the 

 mist-veil lifts in the manner so exquisitely described in the 

 " Bridal of Triermain," and the Tweed winds out like a stream 

 of flashing silver from the golden woods and blue hills beyond. 

 The Mertoun groves are below us, and far away in the dim 

 grey distance of the Cheviots gleams the Waterloo pillar. 

 Then we approach Wallace's statue, and dip down to Dry- 

 burgh. Its ruins are small, and deeply embowered in woods. 

 Perhaps they are almost disappointing, save for the sentiments 

 which must fill each poetical pilgrim as he stands before the 

 Haliburton transept. There are the plain granite slabs which 

 mark where Sir Walter Scott, his wife, and son, and Lockhart, 

 his son-in-law and biographer, lie among numerous older 

 memorials of the dead, in the burying-place of his ancestors. 



