with superstitious discrimination. It grew near the western extremity of the village, in the enjoyment of a green old age, till, at length, a storm threw it prostrate, and broke the spell by which, for centuries, it had remained firmly rooted to the soil, and interwoven with the superstitions of the village. Its station is now occupied by a handsome edifice, lately erected by a gentleman of the legal profession, which has added a feature of no small ornament to the place, and literally abolished superstition by law.

As the birth-place and abode of the Weird Thomas, to whom a great portion of Ercildoune had come by inheritance, the village has enjoyed a celebrity unrivalled in the south of Scotland-a celebrity to which the rich and fertile imagination of SCOTT has given enduring interest. The extraordinary attributes with which posterity has invested this mysterious personage, represent him as half minstrel, half magician-one to be loved for his songs, and feared for his sorceries; and whose eye, penetrating the dark veil of futurity, read the destiny of kingdoms, and saw those momentous epochs in the fate of his country, his friends, and family, which are now the subject of history. So far in advance of his contemporaries on the path of literary refinement, and in an age when poetry was viewed as an art of incantation, it is by no means surprising that he should have been so gratuitously invested with the art of magic. He appears to have lived during the greater part of the thirteenth century. In 1232, when his romance of Sir Tristrem seems to have been well known, and was quoted by Gottfried of Strasburg, he is supposed to have been about thirty years of age, and was still living on the death of Alexander, in 1286. The date of the undermentioned charter, however, is 1289; so that he must have died previously to that period, and hence the part which he is made to act in the adventures of Wallace, in 1296, by Henry the Minstrel, seems apocryphal.

While the kings and nobles of England were entertained by stories of chivalry in the French language-by the lais of Marie, the romances of Chretien de Foyes, or the fableaux of the trouveurs; the legends chaunted in Scotlandwhich could happily boast of having till then maintained a sway unsullied by foreign conquest-were composed in that Anglo-Saxo-Pictish measure, known by the name of Inglis, or English. Although French was no doubt familiarly understood at the Scotch Court, it seems never to have been spoken by the king or his nobles, while the Inglis continued the standard language among all classes of the people. The English did not begin to translate the French poems of their conquerors till 1300, nor to compose original romances in their native language, till the reign of Henry III.-nearly a century after. But

Thomas of Ercildoune*—and, probably, others of his countrymen, whose names and works are lost-was already famous as the author of Sir Tristrem, in 1230-2, and was quoted in terms of high compliment, both by Gottfried of Strasburg, and Thomas de Brunne. From this it appears that the first classical English romance was written in this part of Scotland, and by a native of Ercildoune :"Thomas of Britannia, master of the art of romance," as Rymour was styled by the Rhenish minstrel; and from this epoch the minstrels of the "north countrie" rose into credit and reputation, and in their heroic ballads established a precedence in the art. Chaucer, therefore, though much admired in Scotland, from the fact of the language in which he wrote having become familiar through native channels, was not, as it has been stated in his biography, "as much the father of poetry in Scotland, as in England;"--on the contrary, the successful cultivation of poetry in Scotland is easily proved to have commenced at least a century and a half anterior to the period in which Chaucer flourished.

During the reigns of Mary and James VI., a collection of prophetic rhymes, both in Latin and English, appears to have been familiarly known in Scotland, and ascribed to Thomas of Ercildoune. Among the enlightened orders of society who gave testimony in favour of these prophecies, the learned bishop Spottiswoode is especially mentioned, as having admitted that the said Thomas. “did divine and answer truly of many things to come." In support of this oracular talent, Boece relates, that the day after the death of Alexander III., the Earl of March inquired of a prophet, named Thomas Rymour-What weather it should be on the morrow? "To-morrow, before noon," answered the prophet," there shall blow the greatest wind that ever was heard before in Scotland." On the morrow, accordingly, when it was near noon, and the sky quite calm and settled, the earl sent for the prophet, and reproved him for having prognosticated a tempest of which no symptom had appeared. To this, Thomas made little answer, but said-" Noon is not gone." Immediately thereafter a man came to the gate with news that the king was slain. Then said the prophet, "This is the wind that shall blow to the great trouble and calamity of all Scotland,"-an allegorical turn, which, in the opinion of the times, verified the prediction, and bore the seer triumphant.

Numerous other instances have been recorded in proof of his oracular powers;

The question as to the name of Learmont, usually appended to Thomas, seems fairly settled in a charter granted by the poet's son and heir to the convent of Soultra, in 1289, in which the latter is expressly called Filius et hæres Thoma Rymour de Ercildoune; so that his real name appears to have been neither Lairmont, nor Thomas the Rhymer, but simply THOMAS RYMOUR. For more evidence on this point, see" Lives of Scottish Poets," vol. i.

but the bard of Ercildoune was only wise above his time, and-like others, viewed through a superstitious medium-as little of a prophet as Virgil was of a necromancer.

In the west extremity of the village, Rhymer's tower, part of the poet's residence, is still pointed out to the inquisitive stranger; and in the parish church, built into the wall, a stone is inscribed, with

"Auld Rymer's race

Lies in this place."

Earlston has also, in later times, been the residence of men whose distinguished merits have been justly appreciated, and who have had more to do with the stern realities than the romance of life. As the chief of these, we may quote George Baillie, of Jerviswood, the son of the venerable patriot who fell a sacrifice to that tyrannical violence which disgraced the reign of the second Charles. Driven into exile, but latterly filling offices of high distinction in his native land, his life and principles, under every circumstance, were marked by an elevation of mind, a fervency of religious feeling, and a strictly conscientious discharge of social and public duties. The wife of this distinguished patriot was the celebrated Lady Grizzle Baillie, whose filial tenderness and vigilant precautions, while yet a child, preserved the life of her father, the earl of Marchmont, when compelled, as we have already stated, to screen himself from the living, by taking shelter among the dead. Every night, when darkness and silence had lulled suspicions and left a free path to the churchyard, she carried the necessary supply of food to the dreary vault where her father lay concealed, without the secret of his lurking-place having ever transpired.* In her conjugal and maternal duties, this lady manifested the same greatness of mind; and through the numerous trials of her fortitude and christian principles, which afterwards assailed her, maintained a course marked by every estimable quality, and at its close, left one of the brightest examples on record of the noble union of piety and heroism. The memoirs of this lady, now published, are full of deep and varied interest.†

In addition to the usual terrors of the place, a watch-dog, belonging to the manse, is said to have rendered these visits doubly precarious, by continuing to bark with violence while she was engaged in the pious crrand, and thereby making her tremble for a discovery. This sentinel, however, who was evidently in favour of the arbitrary party, was at length silenced; a report was ingeniously circulated that he had been bit by a mad dog, and was therefore a dangerous retainer. The suggestion was improved by the master, and the dog having disappeared, the amiable little messenger between the living and the dead continued her midnight walks without farther molestation.

+ The same admirable principles were exemplified by another member of this family, the late Mrs. Baillie, of Jerviswood. Although confined to her bed during the last thirty years of her life, her active benevolence suffered no diminution; every day was charged with the performance of some good work, and no

L

*

From Bemersyde hill, we obtain a various and most imposing view of all the striking features for which the banks of the Tweed, at this point, are so remarkable. Hills, valleys, fertile fields, wood, and water-all combine in the landscape, and form a rich and variegated picture. The suspension-bridge over the Tweed, two hundred and sixty-one feet in length, was the munificent gift of the late earl of Buchan, and has the twofold merit of great elegance and utility. A small eminence at the end of the bridge is crowned with a circular temple, dedicated to the muses, which evinces the classic taste of the same patriotic nobleman. The workmanship is of a superior order, the position well chosen, and the effect of the building, as viewed in association with the surrounding scenery, extremely agreeable. At a short distance, on the face of the adjoining hill, a colossal statue of WALLACE, erected by the same liberal patron, is remarkable as the work of a native chisel, which had never received a lesson in the art of sculpture. From the Jedburgh road, this statue forms a most striking and appropriate feature in the landscape.

But the chief and lasting object of attraction here, is Dryburgh Abbey,† a name familiar to every reader of Border antiquities. So deep, however, is the interest with which it has been recently invested, that the tombs of Arquà, Ferrara, Ravenna, and even the immortal groves of Posilippo, have scarcely, within so brief a space, witnessed so many distinguished votaries as here crowd around that spot which the dust of our poet has consecrated. What in another place, and among another people, has been said of Posilippo, and the tomb of Virgil, may be applied with no little force and fidelity to the hallowed precincts of Dryburgh-once a favourite scene, and now the sepulchre, of SCOTT.

duty omitted, on the plea of illness, which in the pride of health she had been accustomed to discharge. Her delight, says the worthy minister of the parish, was to employ a messenger of kindness, whose office was to search out cases of distress, that to the indigent and helpless, the ignorant and thoughtless, to the sick and dying, to widows and orphans, she might communicate timely and effectual relief. 1834.

Concerning this estate, Thomas of Ercildoun, as the reader will remember, pronounced the well-known prophecy,

"Tyde what may betide, Haig shall be laird of Bemerside."

This abbey is of great antiquity, and quotes in the history of its abbots the name of St. Modun, who flourished in the middle of the sixth century, and was among the earliest christian missionaries in Britain, The new abbey was founded in the middle of the twelfth century, by Hugh de Morville, lord of Lauderdale, and his wife Beatrice de Beauchamp, and confirmed by royal charter in the reign of king David I., who may be distinguished as the monastic monarch of Scotland, from the number and importance of the religious edifices which he founded and endowed. Dryburgh was burnt during the wars of Robert Bruce with the English, but subsequently restored; and after many vicissitudes, prosperous and adverse, shared at last in the destruction with which, in common with the other temples of a falling hierarchy, it was visited during the great moral cataclysm of the Reformation.