of the Waverley novels received the impressions that afterwards bodied forth to such distinguished maturity, and stored his fecund imagination with those splendid images of chivalry which have been so powerfully warped into his imperishable song.

6

Then rise those crags, that mountain tower,
Which charmed my fancy's waking hour.'

*

*

*

'It was a barren scene and wild,
Where naked cliffs were rudely piled;
But ever and anon between

Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green;
And well the lonely infant knew
Recesses where the wall-flower grew,
And honey-suckle loved to crawl
Up the low crag and ruined wall.
I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade,
The sun in all his round surveyed;
And still I thought that shattered tower
The mightiest work of human power;

And marvelled as the aged hind

With some strange tale bewitched my mind,

Of forayers, who with headlong force,

Down from that strength had spurred their horse,

Their southern rapine to renew,

Far in the distant Cheviot's blue,

And home returning filled the hall

With revel, wassel-route and brawl.'

Smailholm Tower is about seven miles distant from Melrose to the east, and eight from Kelso to the west; and is the most perfect relic of the feudal keep in the south of Scotland. It stands upon a rock of considerable height, in the centre of an amphitheatre of craggy hills, which rise many hundred feet above the level of the fertile plains of the Merse. Between the hills there appear ravines of some depth, which, being covered with straggling clumps of mountain shrub afford an agreeable relief to the rocks which are continually starting upon the eye. Nature indeed seems to have

destined this isolated spot for a bulwark against the border marauder; but its strength and security was not confined to the encircling eminences. It chiefly lay in a deep and dangerous loch, which completely environed the castle, and extended on every side to the hills. Of this loch only a small portion remains, it having been drained many years ago for the convenience of the farmer, on whose estate it was thought a nuisance. But the fact is evident, not only from the swampiness of the ground, which only a few years since created a dangerous morass, but from the appearance of the remaining pool which has hithetto defied the efforts of the numerous drain-beds which surround it in every direction. Some people in the neighborhood do recollect and can mark out the extent of the large sheet of water which gave so romantic an air to this shred of antiquity.

The external appearance of Smailholm Tower may be briefly described as follows:

The walls are of a quadrangular shape, and about nine feet in thickness. They have none of the decorations of buttress or turret, and if there were any ornamental carving, time has swept it away. A ruined bartizan, which runs across three angles of the building near the top, is the only outward addition to the naked square cachot. The tower has been entered on the west side, as all the other quarters rise perpendicularly from the lake. Accordingly there we discern the fragments of a causeway, and the ruins of a broad portal, whence a draw-bridge seems to have communicated with an eminence about a hundred yards distant. On this quarter also there may be traced the site of several small booths which curtained the retainers or men-at-arms of the feudal lord.

On the west side,* at a little distance from the castle,

*The entrance of Avenel was also from the west.'

is the west crag, a massive rock, on the top of which a fire was lighted to announce the approach of the English forayers to the neighborhood. It is thus described in the ballad of the Eve of St. John:

The interior of the castle bespeaks the mansion of the lesser Scottish baron. The sunk floor or keep seems, from its structure, to have contained the cattle of the baron during seasons of alarm and invasion. It is vaulted in the roof, and the light admitted by a small outshot. It has been conjectured that the apartment was occupied as a dungeon or MASSY MORE where the captives taken in war were confined; but this idea is not at all probable, not only from the comfortable appearance it exhibits, but from the circumstance of every border fortress having a place of the description alluded to.

Ascending a narrow winding staircase, we arrive at a spacious hall, with the customary distinction of a huge chimney-piece. The roof is gone, but the stone props of it, which were of course the support of another floor, remain. This latter would seem to have been the grand banquetting-room, where the prodigality and hospitality of our ancestors were displayed in their usual style of magnificence. There also remain the marks of a higher floor, thus making three stories in all. The highest opens by a few steps to the bartizon we have already mentioned, whence we ascend to a grass grown battlement, which commands

a magnificent prospect. To the east the spires of Berwick are observed, terniinating an extensive plain, beautified by the windings of the Tweed; to the south the conical summits of the Eildon hills; to the north the Lammermoors rear their barren heads above the verdant hills of the Merse; and on the south the blue Cheviots are seen stretching, through a lengthened vista of smaller hills. Besides this grand outline, the eye can take in a smaller range, beyond the rocky barrier of the castle, a most uncultivated dale, varied with peaceful hamlets, crystal streams and towering forests.

The history of the ancient possessors of Smailholm tower is involved in obscurity. All we know is that there were barons of Smailholm, but no memorable qualities are recorded of them. They were, as already observed, in the rank of the lesser barons, those who had not the patent of peerage; but who were dignified only by the extent of their possessions. But we know that the present proprietor, Mr. Scott, of Harden, is not a descendant of that ancient family; as we believe he acquired the estate by purchase. This gentleman cares so little for the antique pile within his domains, that it is not long since he intimated his intention to raze it to the ground and from its materials to erect a steading to the farm of Sandy Knowe. This would certainly have occurred had not his poetic kinsman, the author of Waverley, interfered and averted the sacrilegious intent. And to prevent the recurrence of the resolution, he composed the admired ballad of the Eve of St. John, which ranks among the best in the border minstrelsy. Tradition states that Smailholm tower was inhabited by an aged lady at the beginning of the last century. And several old people still alive remember the joists and window frames being entire. A more interesting legend exists, of which the purport is, that there was once a human skull within

this tower, possessed of the astounding faculty of locomotion to the degree, that if taken to any distance, it was always sure to have found its way back the following morning.* This may perhaps remind the reader of the strange journies performed by the Black Volume,' in the Monastery, whose rambling disposition was such a source of terror and amazement to the monks of St. Mary's.†

RAVENSWOOD CASTLE.

Chrichton Castle has been 'supposed' by the same authority to be the original of Ravenswood; but excepting a collusion in locality, there is little ground for the presumption. It has been already amply described by a pen whose power of delineation has alone of all modern attempts, been able to cope with the in

* Vide Border Antiquities. The ridiculous and most unromantic incident which gave rise to this story, is, that the skull was removed from its place in the castle by a rat which had converted it into a tenement; and having contrived, with that ingenuity and address for which rats are remarkable, to take it back to a particular apartment, on the skull having been removed to any other.

+ The only error of any note in the Monastery,' (or, indeed in the author's whole works,) which has run the gauntlet of the critics is that absurd passage in which the White Lady profanes her own angelic purity by taking a bodkin from her hair. The impossibility of immaterial essence such as she consisted of, sustaining any gross or earthly substance, or being at all palpable to its touch, is a glaring fault, abstract from all consideration of the vulgarity of the bodkin.' But still it is not more absurd than the general representation of apparitions in the works of other authors: for is it at all more unnatural that the White Lady should have a pin to her head-dress, than the rest of our common herd of ghosts should appear shrouded in twenty yards of stout linen? How can they, any more than the White Lady, be supposed capable of bearing such 'stout stuff' upon their spectral limbs? This absurdity is well ridiculed in a lute ballad, where the ghost of a sailor is thus represented.