To Mountain Tarn 



go along. While only the solitary pedestrian is 

 on the border road. Glen Artney to the Tros- 

 sachs is classic ground for the multitude. 



The uplands and vale of the Tweed are mystic 

 only to the few. Remove Ashestiel and the 

 more famed house lower down, and few would go 

 for what he wrote say for " The Lay of the 

 Last Minstrel." Few Scotsmen ; all rush north. 

 The quiet strikes one sadly, but not altogether 

 unpleasantly. It is better so : all is more as 

 Scott left, and loved it. It might have been 

 better for the Teith also. Less popular, the 

 Trossachs would have been wilder, Loch Kat- 

 rine more charming ; it might not even have 

 attracted the attention of Glasgow. Men look 

 on what they have defaced. 



Among the uplands I have wandered for days 

 in high summer, when all were abroad, and found 

 no one. Save for a few Germans, with whom I 

 hobnobbed, as those do who are of a like mind 

 and on the same quest. And so we came to 

 Abbotsford and fell among the ordinary cranks, 

 who like to see where everybody who is talked 

 about lived what kind of furniture he had, and 

 whether there was a chance of taking anything 

 away. 



From Peebles to Abbotsford measures, perhaps, 

 the range of border literature, leaving some 

 ballads outside. Within the same limits are in- 

 cluded the changes in border wild life. Fence in 



"5 



