hillside overlooking the waters of the
Loch. Nothing is left now save the site, and a half-deserted
burying-ground where "Covenanter and Catholic, Scotts, and Kers and
Pringles--all sorts and conditions of men--sleep their long sleep at
peace together." Among the shrines of Yarrowdale, this is not the least
notable. Like the grave of Keats outside the walls of Rome, as some one
has said, "it would almost make one in love with death to be buried in
so sweet a spot among the heather and brackens, and the sighing of the
solitary mountain ash." St. Mary's Loch lies shimmering at our feet.
Scott's "Marmion" picture is still wonderfully correct:

"Oft in my mind such thoughts awake,
By lone Saint Mary's silent lake;
Thou know'st it well--nor fen, nor sedge
Pollute the pure lake's crystal edge;
Abrupt and sheer, the mountains sink
At once upon the level brink;
And just a trace of silver sand
Marks where the water meets the land.

Far in the mirror, bright and blue,
Each hill's huge outline you may view;
Shaggy with heath, but lonely bare,
Nor tree, nor bush, nor brake is there,
Save where, of land, yon slender line
Bears thwart the lake the scatter'd pine,
Yet even this nakedness has power,
And aids the feeling of the hour."

All this delightsome countryside is Hogg-land too, let us remember, as
well as Scott-land. For here, in ballad-haunted Yarrow, the immortal
James spent the best years of his life, failing so tantalizingly as
farmer, but as poet, "King of the Mountain and Fairy school," dreaming
so well of that most bewitching of all his conceptions--"Bonnie
Kilmeny." Yonder, overlooking Tibbie Shiel's "cosy beild"--a howff of
the Noctes coterie--stands the solitary white figure of the beloved
Shepherd as Christopher North's prophetic soul felt that it must be some
day. Hogg was born in the neighbouring Ettrick valley--in 1770
presumably. His birth-cottage is extinct now, but a handsome memorial
marks the spot. Most of his life, as has been said, was passed in the
sister vale, first at Blackhouse, then at Mount Benger, and at Altrive
(now Eldinhope), where he died three years after his truest of
friends--Sir Walter. The Ettrick homeland guards his dust. Close by is
the resting-place of Thomas Boston, that earlier "Ettrick Shepherd"
whose "Fourfold State" and "Crook in the Lot" are not yet forgotten. In
the sequestered Yarrow churchyard sleeps Scott's