hful Mary Gray, left Aberdeen for Newstead.
Previously to their departure, the furniture of the humble lodgings
which they had occupied was, with the exception of the plate and
linen, which Mrs. Byron took with her, sold, and the whole sum that
the effects of the mother of the Lord of Newstead yielded was 74_l._
17_s_. 7_d_.

From the early age at which Byron was taken to Scotland, as well as
from the circumstance of his mother being a native of that country, he
had every reason to consider himself--as, indeed, he boasts in Don
Juan--"half a Scot by birth, and bred a whole one." We have already
seen how warmly he preserved through life his recollection of the
mountain scenery in which he was brought up; and in the passage of Don
Juan, to which I have just referred, his allusion to the romantic
bridge of Don, and to other localities of Aberdeen, shows an equal
fidelity and fondness of retrospect:--

As Auld Lang Syne brings Scotland, one and all,
Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills and clear streams,
The Dee, the Don, Balgounie's brig's black wall,
All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams
Of what I _then dreamt_, clothed in their own pall,
Like Banquo's offspring;--floating past me seems
My childhood in this childishness of mine;
I care not--'tis a glimpse of "Auld Lang Syne."

He adds in a note, "The Brig of Don, near the 'auld town' of Aberdeen,
with its one arch and its black deep salmon stream, is in my memory as
yesterday. I still remember, though perhaps I may misquote the awful
proverb which made me pause to cross it, and yet lean over it with a
childish delight, being an only son, at least by the mother's side.
The saying, as recollected by me, was this, but I have never heard or
seen it since I was nine years of age:--

"'Brig of Balgounie, _black_'s your wa',
Wi' a wife's _ae son_, and a mear's ae foal,
Down ye shall fa'.'"[21]

To meet with an Aberdonian was, at all times, a delight to him; and
when the late Mr. Scott, who was a native of Aberdeen, paid him a
visit at Venice in the year 1819, in talking of the haunts of his
childhood, one of the places he particularly mentioned was
Wallace-nook, a spot where there is a rude statue of the Scottish
chief still standing. From first to last, indeed, these recollections
of the country of his youth never forsook him. In his early voyage
into Greece, not only the shapes of the mountains, but the kil