LETTER LXIV.

TO THE REV. DAVID WILLIAMS.

YESTERDAY was one of the happiest days I have spent since my present travels began; and although I had almost made up my mind to trouble you with no more letters of a merely descriptive character, I think I must venture upon giving you some account of it. Part of it, however, was spent in the company of several individuals whom I had for some weeks felt a considerable curiosity to see a little more of whom, indeed, my friend Whad long ago promised to introduce more fully to my acquaintance, and of whom, moreover, I am sure you will be very glad to hear me say a few words. But I shall be contented with giving you a narrative of the whole day's proceedings just as they passed.

Mr. W and I were invited to dine with a Mr. G to whom I had been introduced by a letter from my old and excellent friend Sir EB, and whose name you have often seen mentioned in Sir E-'s writings. His residence, at the distance of some six or seven miles from Edinburgh had hitherto prevented me from being much in his society; but I was resolved to set apart one day for visiting him at his villa, and W was easily persuaded to accompany me. The villa is situated on the banks of the Eske, in the midst of some of the most classical scenery in all Scotland, so we determined to start early in the day, and spend the morning in viewing the whole of that beautiful glen, arranging matters so as to arrive at Mr. G's in good time for dinner. Knowing that the Ettrick Shepherd is a dear and intimate friend of Mr. G's, I asked him to take the spare seat in the shandrydan, and promised to bring him safe home in the evening in the same vehicle. The Shepherd consented. Mr. W gave us a capital breakfast in the Lawnmarket, and the shandrydan was in full career for Roslyn Castle by ten o'clock. Horse and man, the whole party were in high spirits; but the gayest of the whole wa the worthy Shepherd, who made his appearance on this oc

casion in a most picturesque fishing jacket, of the very lightest mazarine blue, with huge mother of pearl buttons,-nankeen breeches, made tight to his nervous shapes,-and a broad-brimmed white chip hat, with a fine new ribbon to it, and a peacock's feather stuck in front; which last ornament, by the way, seems to be a favourite fashion among all the country people of Scotland.

The weather was very fine, but such, notwithstanding, as to give to the scenery through which our path lay, a grand, rather than a gay appearance. There had been some thunder in the morning, and rain enough to lay the dust on the road, and refresh the verdure of the trees; and although the sun had shone forth in splendour, the sky still retained, all along the verge of the horizon, a certain sombre and lowering aspect, the relics of the convulsions which the whole atmosphere had undergone. I know not if you have remarked it, but Gasper Poussin, Turner, Calcott, and Schetky, and almost all the great landscape painters seem to have done so that this is precisely the situation of the heavens under which both foreground and distance are seen to the greatest effect. The dark inky mantle wrapped all round the circling mountains and plains, afforded a majestic relief to every tree, spire, and cottage which arose before us; and when we turned round, after proceeding a mile or two, and saw the glorious radiant outlines of Edinburgh, rock and tower, painted bright upon the same massy canopy of blue, it was impossible not to feel a solemn exultation in contemplating the harmonious blending together of so many earthly and etherial splendours. The newly shaken air, too, had a certain elasticity and coolness about it, which sent delightful life into our bosoms with every respiration. There was no rioting of spirits, but we enjoyed a rich quiet, contemplative, and reposing kind of happiness.

The country rather ascends than descends, all the way from Edinburgh to the line of the Eske, where a single turn shuts from the traveller the whole of that extensive stretch of scenery of which the capital forms the centre, and brings him at once into the heart of this narrow, secluded and romantic valley. At the edge of the ravine we found Mr.

G, and some of his friends whom he had brought with him from his house to join us. Among others, Mr. W—n, his brother, an uncle of theirs, Mr. S, a fine active elderly gentleman, in whose lineaments and manners I could easily trace all the fire of the line, and an old friend of his, Mr. M, collector of the customs at Leith, a charming fellow. In company with these, we immediately began to walk down the hill toward Roslyn, directing the shandrydan to be carried round to Mr. G's house by the high-way, for the scenes we were about to explore do not admit of being visited except by pedestrians. Before we came to the Castle, we turned off into a field surrounded by a close embowering grove of venerable elms and chestnuts, to see that beautiful little chapel which Mr. Scott has so often introduced in his earlier poems. It stands quite by itself deserted, and lonely; but it is wonderfully entire, and really an exquisite specimen of architecture. Within, the roof and walls are quite covered with endless decorations of sculpture, leaves, and flowers, and heads and groups, not indeed executed in the pure and elegant taste of Melrose, but productive, nevertheless, of a very rich and fanciful kind of effect. The eastern end, toward the site of the altar, is supported by a cluster of pillars quite irregular in their shapes and position; some of them wreathed all over, from base to capital with arabesque ornaments, others quite plain, but the whole suffused with one soft harmonising tinge of green and mossy dampness. Under foot, the stones on which you tread are covered with dim traces of warlike forms-mailed chieftains, with their hands closed in prayer, and dogs and lions couchant at their feet, in the true old sepulchral style of heraldry. It is said that below each of these stones the warrior whom it represents lies interred in panoply,

"There are twenty of Roslin's barons bold,
Lie buried within that proud chapelle,"—

while, all around, the lower parts of the wall are covered with more modern monuments of the descendants of the same high lineage the cross ingrailed of St. Clair, and the galleys of Orkney, being every where discernible among their rich

and varied quarterings. From behind the altar, you step upon the firm stone roof of the sacristy, which projects from below, and it was from thence that I enjoyed the first full view of the whole glen of Roslyn.

The river winds far below over a bed of rock; and such is the nature of its course and its banks, that you never see more than a few broken and far-off glimpses of its clear waters at the same time. On the side on which we stood, the banks consist of green and woody knolls, whose inextricable richness and pomp of verdure is carried down, deepening as it descends, quite to the channel of the stream. Opposite, there shoots up a majestic screen of hoary rocks, ledge rising square and massy upon ledge, from the river to the horizon-but all and every where diversified with fantastic knots of copsewood, projecting and clinging from the minutest crannies of the cliffs. Far as the eye can reach down the course of the stream, this magnificent contrast of groves and rocks is continued-mingling, however, as they recede from the eye, into one dim magnificent amphitheatre, over which the same presiding spirit of soothing loneliness seems to hover like a garment. The Castle itself is entirely ruined, but its yellow mouldering walls form a fine relief to the eye, in the midst of the dark foliage of pines and oaks which every where surround it. We passed over its airy bridge, and through its desolate portal, and descending on the other side, soon found ourselves treading upon the mossy turf around the roots of the cliff on which it stands, and within a few yards of the river. From thence we pursued our walk in pairs-sometimes springing from stone to stone, along the bed of the stream-sometimes forcing ourselves through the thickets, which drop into its margin-but ever and anon reposing ourselves on some open slope, and gazing with new delight from every new point of view, on the eternal, ever varying grandeur of the rocks, woods, and sky.

My close companion all along was the excellent Shepherd; and I could not have had a better guide in all the mazes of this Tempe, for often, very often had he followed his fancies over every part of it

which well he knew; for it had been his lot To be a wandering strippling-and there raves No torrent in these glens, whose icy flood

Hath not been sprinkled round his boyish blood.

"And in that region shelter is there none
Of overhanging rock or hermit tree,
Wherein he hath not oft essayed to shun

The fierce and fervid day-star's tyranny."

The whole party, however, were congregated where the river washes the base of the caverned rocks of Hawthornden-the most beautiful in itself, and, in regard to recollections, the most classical point of the whole scenery of the Eske. The glen is very narrow here—even more so than at Roslyn, and the rocks on the right rise to a still more magnificent elevation. Such, indeed, is the abruptness of their sheer ascent, that it is with some difficulty the eye can detect, from the brink of the stream, the picturesque outlines of the house of Hawthornden, situated on the summit of the highest crag. The old castle in which Drummond received Ben Jonson, has long since given way; but the more modern mansion is built within the dilapidated circuit of the ancient fortress-and the land is still possessed, and the hall occupied by the lineal descendants of the poet. I know not that there is any spot in Britain made classical by the footsteps of such a person as Drummond, one's notions respecting which are thus cherished and freshened by finding it in the hands of his own posterity, bearing his own name. We clombe the steep banks by some narrow paths cut in the rock, and entered at various points that labyrinth of winding caves, by which the interior of the rock is throughout perforated, and from which part of the name of the place has, no doubt, been derived. Nothing can be more picturesque than the echoing loneliness of these retreatsretreats which often afforded shelter to the suffering patriots of Scotland, long after they had been sanctified by the footsteps of the poet and his friend. Mr. G carried me into the house, chiefly to show me the original portrait of

* Staniburst.