London to John C? Groat's. 349 



more of their signatures in the registry of these two 

 haloed homesteads of genius than anywhere else in 

 Europe. 



The valley of the Tweed in this section is all an 

 artist would delight in as a surrounding of such his- 

 tories. The hills are lofty, declining into gorges or 

 dells at different angles with the river, which they wall 

 in precipitously with their wooded sides in many places. 

 They are mostly cultivated to the top, and now in 

 harvest many of them were crowned with stocked 

 sheaves of wheat, each looking in the distance like 

 Nature with her golden curls done up in paper, 

 dressing for the harvest-home of the season. Some 

 of them wore belts and gores of turnip foliage of dif- 

 ferent nuances of green luxuriance, combining with 

 every conceivable shade and alternation of vegetable 

 coloring. Indeed, as already intimated, the view from 

 the eminence almost overhanging the little sequestered 

 peninsula on which Old Melrose stood twelve centuries 

 ago is indescribably beautiful, and well worth a long 

 journey to see, disconnected from its historical associa- 

 tions. The Eildon Hills towering up heather-crowned 

 to the height of over 1,300 feet above the level of the 

 sea, right out of the sheen of barley fields, as from a 

 sea of silver, form one of the salient features of this 

 glorious landscape. This is an interesting peculiarity 



