102 COURSE OF THE RIVER. 



world, and attracted people of all ranks to this land of 

 romance. The scenery therefore at that time, unassisted 

 by story, lost its chief interest; yet was it all lovely 

 in its native charms. What stranger just emerging from 

 the angular enclosures of the South, scored and subdued 

 by tillage, would not feel his heart expand at the first 

 sight of the heathery mountains, swelling out into vast 

 proportions, over which man has had no dominion ? At 

 the dawn of day he sees, perhaps, the mist ascending 

 slowly up the dusky river, taking its departure to some 

 distant undefined region ; below the mountain range his 

 sight rests upon a deep and narrow glen, gloomy with 

 woods, shelving down to its centre. What lies hid in 

 that mysterious mass the eye may not visit ; but a sound 

 comes down from afar, as of the rushing and din of 

 waters. It is the voice of the Tweed, as it bursts from 

 the melancholy hills, and comes rejoicing down the 

 sunny vale, taking its free course through the haugh, 

 and glittering amongst sylvan bowers, — swelling out at 

 times fair and ample, and again contracted into gorges 

 and sounding cataracts, — lost for a space in its mazes 

 behind a jutting brae, and reappearing in dashes of 

 light through bolls of trees opposed to it in shadow. 



Thus it holds its fitful course. The stranger might 

 wander in the quiet vale, and, far below the blue sum- 

 mits, he might see the shaggy flock grouped upon 

 some sunny knoll, or straggling among the scattered 

 birch trees ; and, lower down on the haugh, his eye per- 

 chance might rest awhile on some cattle standing on a 

 tongue of land by the margin of the river, with their 

 dark and rich brown forms opposed to the brightness of 



