ays, "who is familiar with the Vale of Yarrow
have had much difficulty in understanding how it is suited to pathetic
verse. The rough and broken, yet clear, beautiful, and wide-spreading
stream has no grand cliffs to show; and it is not surrounded by high and
overshadowing hills. Here and there it flows placidly, reflectively, in
large liquid lapses, through an open valley of the deepest summer green;
still, let us be thankful, in its upper reaches at least, mantled by
nature and untouched by plough and harrow. There is a placid monotone
about its bare treeless scenery--an unbroken pastoral stillness on the
sloping braes and hillsides, as they rise, fall, and bend in a uniformly
deep colouring. The silence of the place is forced upon the attention,
deepened even by the occasional break in the flow of the stream, or by
the bleating of the sheep that, white and motionless amid the pasture,
dot the knowes. We are attracted by the silence, and we are also
depressed. There is the pleasure of hushed enjoyment. The spirit of the
scene is in those immortal lines:--

"Meek loveliness is round thee spread
A softness still and holy;
The grace of Forest charms decayed
And pastoral melancholy."

Those deep green grassy knowes of the valley are peculiarly susceptible
of change. In the morning with a blue sky, or with breaks of sunlight
through the fleeting clouds, the green hillsides and the stream smile
and gleam in sympathy with the cheerfulness of heaven. But under a grey
sky, or at the gloaming, the Yarrow wears a peculiarly wan aspect--a
look of sadness. And no valley I know is more susceptible of sudden
change. The spirit of the air can speedily weave out of the mists that
gather upon the massive hills at the heads of the Megget and the Talla,
a wide-spreading web of greyish cloud--the 'skaum' of the sky--that
casts a gloom over the under green of the hills; and dims the face of
loch and stream in a pensive shadow. The saddened heart would readily
find there fit analogue and nourishment for its sorrow. Which is all
very true. But, as has been said, Tweed and Teviot show exactly these
conditions, and what of their minstrelsy remains is not touched with
this strangely morose sense. May not the solution lie in the very legend
of the "Dowie Dens" itself, and in the remarkable cup-like configuration
of the valley as seen from the point already indicated and under the wan
aspects which are admittedly a distincti