ite
servant, stood at the head, with his handkerchief almost constantly over
his eyes, scarcely able to hide his tears. The chamber was dimly
lighted, and filled with all the emblems of woe--in this case no
mimicry. All walked round, slowly and solemnly--the ancients of the
hamlet, the stalwart peasantry, and the women leading the children by
the hand--all gazing intently on the spot where the dead lay, as if even
yet to catch a glimpse of that piercing eye and benignant smile. The
silence was profound, awful, but for a throbbing under-hum as of stifled
breath, broken ever and anon by a sharp sob--the "hysterica passio," the
"climbing sorrow," which even reverence and self-restraint could no
longer keep down. The day of the funeral arrived. His remains were to
be borne about twelve miles off, to Bowden, under the shadow of the
three-peaked Eildons, for there the ancient vault is where lie "the race
of the house of Roxburghe." The long, long line of mourning carriages I
well remember; but these only spoke the general respect and commonplace
regret of the neighbourhood, which are incident to such an occasion. His
_people_ in their hundreds--these were his mourners! The younger and
stronger of them, in one way or other, accompanied the death procession
to the last resting-place. The women of the place, leading the children,
went down, all weeping as they went, to a bend in the Tweed, where there
would be a last view of the funeral train. There it was!--darkly
marching on the opposite bank, winding round the mouldering hillock
which was once Roxburgh Castle, and finally disappearing--disappearing
for ever!--behind that pine-covered height! As the last of the train
floated and melted away from the horizon, we all sunk to the ground at
once, as if struck by some instantaneous current; and such a wail rose
that day as Tweed never heard; whilst an echoing voice seemed to cry
along his banks, and into the depth of his forests--"The last of the
Patriarch-Dukes has departed!"

One instance is worth a thousand dissertations. And the above thin
water-colour sketch of a _real popular life_, though presenting only one
or two out of an endless variety of its phases, will give a more
distinct conception than a volume of fanciful generalities could, of
what I mean by the lyric joyousness of the Scottish people; and is,
besides, a sincere, though mean and unworthy tribute to the virtues of a
true patriarchal nobleman, about the last of th