12 WILLIAM SCEOPE 



The bird that flies through Eedpath trees 



And Gladwood banks each morrow 

 May chant and sing sweet Leader Haugh 



And bonny howms o' Yarrow.' 



In scenes like these a fisherman like Scrope, with an 

 eye for landscape and an ear for legend, might well seek 

 his pleasure, but not till he had companied with Scott 

 could their spirit thoroughly enter into him. He 

 confesses as much in sentences more homely, but not 

 less tender, less passionate but not less faithful than 

 the verse in which Moschus wailed for his lost 

 Bion : 



' My first visit to the Tweed was before the Minstrel of 

 the North had sung. . . . The scenery, therefore, at that 

 time, unassisted by story, lost its chief interest ; yet was it 

 all lovely in its native charm. Since that time I have seen 

 the cottage of Abbotsford, with its rustic porch, lying peace- 

 fully on the haugh between the lone hills. ... I have seen 

 that cottage converted into a picturesque mansion, with 

 every luxury and comfort attached to it, and have partaken 

 of its hospitality; the unproductive hills I have viewed 

 covered with thriving plantations, and the whole aspect of 

 the country civilised. But amidst all these revolutions, I 

 have never perceived any change in the mind of him who 

 made them. . . . There he dwelt in the hearts of the people, 

 diffusing life and happiness around him; he made a home 

 beside the border river, in a country and a nation that have 

 derived benefit from his presence and consequence from his 

 genius. From his chambers he looked out upon the grey 

 ruins of the abbey, and the sun which set in splendour 

 behind the Eildon Hills. Like that sun, his course has been 

 run; and though disastrous clouds came across him in his 

 career, he went down in unfading glory . . . Abbotsford, 



