all. All over the Forest he waters are dirty and poisoned: I think
they are filthiest below Hawick; but this may be mere local prejudice in
a Selkirk man. To keep them clean costs money; and, though improvements
are often promised, I cannot see much change for the better. Abbotsford,
luckily, is above Galashiels, and only receives the dirt and dyes of
Selkirk, Peebles, Walkerburn, and Innerlethen. On the other hand,
your ill-omened later dwelling, 'the unhappy palace of your race,'
is overlooked by villas that prick a cockney ear among their larches,
hotels of the future. Ah, Sir, Scotland is a strange place. Whisky is
exiled from some of our caravanserais, and they have banished Sir John
Barleycorn. It seems as if the views of the excellent critic (who wrote
your life lately, and said you had left no descendants, _le pauvre
homme_) were beginning to prevail. This pious biographer was greatly
shocked by that capital story about the keg of whisky that arrived at
the Liddesdale farmer's during family prayers. Your Toryism also was an
offence to him.

Among these vicissitudes of things and the overthrow of customs, let
us be thankful that, beyond the reach of the manufacturers, the Border
country remains as kind and homely as ever. I looked at Ashiestiel some
days ago: the house seemed just as it may have been when you left it for
Abbotsford, only there was a lawn-tennis net on the lawn, the hill on
the opposite bank of the Tweed was covered to the crest with turnips,
and the burn did not sing below the little bridge, for in this arid
summer the burn was dry. But there was still a grilse that rose to a big
March brown in the shrunken stream below Elibank. This may not interest
you, who styled yourself

No fisher,
But a well-wisher
To the game!

Still, as when you were thinking over Marmion, a man might have 'grand
gallops among the hills'--those grave wastes of heather and bent that
sever all the watercourses and roll their sheep-covered pastures from
Dollar Law to White Combe, and from White Combe to the Three Brethren
Cairn and the Windburg and Skelf-hill Pen. Yes, Teviotdale is pleasant
still, and there is not a drop of dye in the water, _purior electro_, of
Yarrow. St. Mary's Loch lies beneath me, smitten with wind and rain--the
St. Mary's of North and of the Shepherd. Only the trout, that see a
myriad of artificial flies, are shyer than of yore. The Shepherd could
no longer fill a cart up Meggat wi