ments in which the royalty of former days found shelter and accommodation. About a mile and a half to the east of Coldstream are the ruins of the church of Lennel, surrounded by a burying-ground. Here there was also a village, which was so completely destroyed during the border wars that the precise site is unknown. This was the name and Kirktown of the parish, before Coldstream existed. The inhabitants of that town still use the buryingground. It was in Lennel House that the venerable Patrick Brydone, known to the literary world by his travels in Sicily and Malta, spent the latter years of a long life. A peculiar turn of the Tweed immediately above Coldstream gives additional beauty to the beautiful house and pleasure-ground of Lees, the seat of Sir John Marjoribanks, Bart. It is worth mentioning, that the river here almost every year makes some encroachment upon the English territory, and adds just as much to the kingdom of Scotland; a very patriotic line of conduct on the part of the Tweed. Not long ago, Sir John Marjoribanks thus acquired several acres of ground, which the opposite proprietor cannot reclaim, except at the good will and pleasure of the genius of the stream. Scotland, it is true, has not always been favoured by the caprice of the river; for the water flows over a place opposite the site of the nunnery, where Monk used to review his troops. Hume Castle is the next object worthy of attention, in pursuing westward the survey of the Merse. Hume Castle properly does not exist; but the late Earl of Marchmont raised the walls from the ruins into which they had fallen, and, by battlementing them, produced something like a castle, or which at least may pass for that at a distance. It is from situation a conspicuous, and indeed a picturesque object. Placed on a considerable eminence, it commands a view of the whole Merse, and a great deal of Roxburghshire; the view being bounded on one side by the hills of Cheviot, and on the other by those of Lammermuir. The space within the exterior wall, at least half an acre, is now fitted up as a kitchen garden for the farmer who keeps "the key of the castle." Traces of the vaults are yet distinguishable, and the well still exists. This was the station of one of the beacons erected during the last war, for the alarm of the country in case of invasion; and it partook in the mistake by which the militia of a great part of the south of Scotland were roused and collected in the course of a single night; an incident that has been introduced with good effect into the novel entitled "The Antiquary." The ashes may now be seen lying idle in the grate, while the house of the superintendent is converted into a potato girnel; a striking memorandum of the change of times since the year 1803. The false alarm is supposed to have arisen from what is termed a househeating. Hownamlaw, in Roxburghshire, mistook the festive blaze which proceeded from the windows of a house in the neighbourhood of Dunse, for the beacon of Dunslaw. Dunslaw, in turn, lighted up at sight of the blaze on Hownamlaw. Owing to some delay or negligence, Blackcastle did not take up the alarm, otherwise the whole of the Lothians would have poured forth their patriot steel. The Berwickshire yeomanry came to Dunbar, and the Haddington volunteers went over to Dunse; those of Teviotdale assembled at Jedburgh. The emphatic prayer of an old woman, when the yeomanry were marching through Dunse, was worthy of a Grecian matron, "Lord, grant that they may return victorious, or return no more.' Hume Castle was the seat of the ancient and powerful family whose name it bears or rather conferred, the leading family of the Merse. It was besieged in 1541 The Teviotdale yeomanry marched into Jedburgh early in the morning of the alarm, playing the spirit-stirring old tune, "Wha daur meddle wi' me ?" On this being told to Leyden in India, he is said to have started up from the sick-bed on which he was reclining, and, shouting "Wha daur meddle wi' me? Wha daur meddle wi' me ?" at the top of his voice, rushed out of the apartment to give vent to his feelings. Intense nationality seems to have been one of the most remarkable characteristics of this wonderful man. by the English under the Duke of Somerset, when, after having stood out for some time under the command of Lady Home, it was delivered up on fair terms. During the time of the Commonwealth, when governed by a person of the sterner sex, Oliver Cromwell sent from Haddington a requisition for its surrender, to which a reply was sent in doggerel rhyme, I, Willie Wastle, Stand firm in my castle, And a' the dogs o' your town Will no drive Willie Wastle down; though, ere long, on Old Noll taking more serious measures with it, the garrison saw fit to recognise in more respectful terms a power which they could not oppose. The village of Hume was once much more extensive than now, stretching to a considerable distance all round the castle, and inhabited by the numerous retainers of the Earl of Home. The bow-butts are yet to be seen where the men were exercised; and there is a field in the neighbourhood, called the post rig, from having been the dulcia arva of the Earl's running footman, a personage of whom a singular anecdote has been preserved by the tradition of Hume. He was once commissioned by the Earl to carry to Edinburgh a message which concerned a matter of the utmost consequence to his Lordship. It was night; but the poor fellow did not hesitate instantly to take his departure for the capital, a distance of at least thirty-five miles. He was so expeditious that he returned before morning; when, the Earl not being a-stir to receive intelligence of his dispatch, he threw himself upon a bench in the hall, and sought some repose. By and by Lord Home rose, and coming into the hall, found his footman lying snoring upon the bench, instead of being engaged in the performance of his pressing errand; which so enraged him, that he drew his sword, and was on the point of killing his faithful vassal, when providentially the man awoke, and explained the cause of his seeming GORDON-GREENLAW. 33 negligence. Perhaps the post-rig was a donation in reward of his meritorious expedition. It is remarkable of the united parishes of Hume and Stitchell, that although there is a schoolmaster and also a smith, there is not a public house within the bounds! What may be the natural cause of this apparent miracle goes beyond my information, and is equally inexplicable by conjecture. A series of basaltic rocks near Hume Castle, called the Largie Craigs, are considered a curiosity. Mellerstain House is one of the most conspicuous objects in the western parts of the Merse. It is a vast modern seat, supposed to have as many windows as there are days in the year. The former edifice and the estate belonged to a family of the name of Hatelie ; but for at least a century past, they have been the property of a branch of the Baillies of Jerviswood. Lady Murray of Stanhope, who wrote so sweet a narrative of the life of her mother, Lady Grizel Baillie, often resided at the old house. According to the information of an old domestic, who remembered seeing her, she was a little woman, somewhat marked with the small-pox. The parish of Gordon, in the western extremity of the Merse, is notable as the the prima sedes of the family of Gordon, who first acquired distinction by clearing this part of the country of wild beasts, and afterwards migrated northwards. Huntly and Huntly-wood are still the names of two different localities, formerly the property of that noble family. The people of Gordon were recently a very primitive race, some of them having lived in the same farms from father to son for several centuries. It was perhaps on that account they were stigmatized as "the gowks o' Gordon" in popular parlance, and in a rhyme which enumerates, in language as soft and fine as that in which Milton enumerates his beautiful localities, some places in the neighbourhood: 34 THE MERSE. Heckspeth wi' the yellow hair, The parish of Gordon once included that of Westruther, with a considerable part of Longformacus, and the church-town of Bassendean. The county town, Greenlaw, lies in a valley upon the north bank of the Blackadder, over which there are two bridges. It consists in one long straight street, with a square market-place receding from the north side about the middle. In the centre of this square stands the cross, a neat Corinthian pillar, surmounted by a lion presenting the coat-armorial of the Earl of Marchmont, who erected it. The upper side of the square is formed by a line of buildings comprising the church, the steeple, and the court-house, all surrounded by a burying-ground. The steeple seems as if inserted between the other two; and the circumstance of its having been used as the county jail, with its dark and dungeon-like appearance, suggested to a waggish stranger the following descriptive couplet: Here stand the Gospel and the Law, Wi' Hell's hole atween the twa. Hell's hole is now vacated, and there is a handsome new jail at a little distance. The town of Greenlaw was formerly situated upon the top of an eminence about a mile to the south, where a farm onstead is still denominated Old Greenlaw. The site is said to have been changed on its becoming the county town. About two miles north-west from the town, near a place called Newburn, there exists a singular curiosity. At the edge of a vast black heath, where the Blackadder runs at the bottom of a narrow valley, the precipitous sides of which are at least two hundred feet of sheer descent, is a small promontory, divided on both sides from the moor by deep ravines, and guarded on the side which connects it with the level ground by three distinct mounds and as many ditches. This well |