ert von Herkomer and
Edward F. Strange.

SERIES OF BIBLE PICTURES. "THE SAVIOUR IN MODERN ART."

London: Hodder & Stoughton

* * * * *

[Illustration]

FRONTISPIECE

VIEW OF DUNSTANBOROUGH

FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH

PAINTED BY

JAMES ORROCK, R.I.

IN THE BORDER COUNTRY

With Pictures in Colour by

JAMES ORROCK R I

And Historical Notes by

W. S. CROCKETT

Edited by W. Shaw Sparrow

Hodder & Stoughton
London 1906

DEDICATED
TO THE MEMORY
OF
SIR WALTER SCOTT

PREFACE

Most of us prefer to spend our holiday tours
away from our own country. There is a
feeling of mild adventure when the land
we behold is unknown to us, and when the
language we hear filters into our questioning minds
through an interpreter's suavity and chatter. And
if we go to Switzerland we may earn even a
reputation for intrepid pluck among the friends
who listen to us on our return home, while the
unlucky guides, who found for our trembling feet
a pathway around each danger, will amuse their
families during the winter with little tales at our
expense, told with rough satire and with short,
gruff peals of laughter resembling the noise of a
crackling ice-sheet when it begins to slip downhill.

No doubt, heroism on the hillside has a vast
attraction to brave, fearless hearts like our own;
but we should find, here in our own country, quite
as much adventure as is good for us, and quite as
much novelty also, if only we could bring ourselves
to believe that knowledge of native scenes and
traditions does not come to us in baptism or by
virtue of our birth as British folk. If you ask a
friend whether he knows the Border Country, he
will probably answer yes, and then go on to say
that he when a lad at school was a great reader
of Scott, and thank heaven! his memory is a good
one. Push the matter further, ask whether he has
verified the truth of Scott's descriptions by a visit
to the places described, and you will probably
hear that your friend would rather dream of the
North Pole or be bitten fiercely by the swarms of
lively insects treasured throughout Brittany in
every cottage and hotel.

All this being somewhat commonplace, you may
wish to get closer to this subject, and your friend
at last, driven to bay, comes to the real point that
pricks and distresses him. "You see," he will
say, "a holiday tour at home is such a dickens of a