Page images
PDF
EPUB

WALLINGTON HOUSE.

31

dicity and Hospitality. I spent a short time with Sir John and Lady Swinburne, whose mind and manners would give attractions to a spot less agreeable than Capheaton. Near this place is a lane, called the Silver Lane, so called from some Roman sacra and coins having been found there.

Upon my return I visited Wallington, the seat of my highly-respected friend John Trevelyan, Esq. This noble mansion was the residence of the late Sir Walter Calverly Blackett, Bart. whose memory will be long remembered for every quality which can adorn a leading character in a large and opulent county. The grounds are finely wooded and truly beautiful. The woods have been planted about seventy years. The beech, elm, and oak, are highly thriving; and the larch are considered to be the finest and the largest in the kingdom. The gardens are very spacious and well stocked, and contain a great extent of glass pineries, vineries, &c. and also a numerous collection of herbaceous and other plants. In a piece of water near the house, I saw some beautiful nymphæ alba and nymphæ luteæ, gracefully grouped with other aquatic plants, growing in great perfection, which the refined taste of the owner has led him to cultivate with equal care and judgment. In the house are a fine whole-length portrait of Sir W. C.. Blackett, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, the colours happily in

[blocks in formation]

high preservation; two pictures of the Blackett family, by Sir Peter Lely; a portrait of Mrs. Hudson, sister of Sir John Trevelyan, by Gainsborough; and a portrait by Hoppner, of which it may be most justly remarked, that, had the beauty pourtrayed in the picture been less, it had been in that degree less like its amiable and accomplished original, Mrs. Trevelyan. There is also a very fine collection of curious and valuable china.

Adjoining to Wallington is the hamlet of Cambo, only worthy of notice on account of its having given birth to the ingenious Mr. Brown, better known by the appellation of Capability Brown. Upon my return to Hesleyside, I saw, in a little hamlet not far from the mansion, a vestige of the miserable condition to which the Border Country between England and Scotland was frequently reduced before the Union, (one of the happiest measures that ever occurred for the benefit of both countries,) in a strong ancient square building, called, in the Border times, a peel, into which, upon a signal of an approaching Scottish irruption, the adjoining farmers and their cattle took refuge. The former and their families occupied the upper rooms, and the latter were kept below; and the entrance was secured by a strong door, and a massy bolt of oak. There are several such buildings along the borders, remaining as melancholy memorials of an age of rapine. At Hesleyside a spur is kept as

[blocks in formation]

a curiosity, which at that period used to be sent up in the last dish at the table of the chieftain, to denote to his lawless followers that their provisions were exhausted, and that they must scour the Border Country for more.

F

CHAP. III.

DEBATEABLE LAND-THE SHEPHERDS-FEROCITY OF THE AN-
CIENT BORDERERS-ANECDOTE OF BERNARD GILPINA ROYAL
REMARK UPON A COW-BEAUTIFUL RIDE TO JEDBURGH-
DOCTOR JOHNSON'S ENTRANCE INTO SCOTLAND-THE CATHE-
DRAL OF JEDBURGH-SCOTTISH GARDENERS-THE LITTLE
NOSEGAY GIRLS THE PRISON-EILDON HILLS-MELROSE-
REMARKS UPON ITS
ARCHITECTURE-A LUNAR MISTAKE-
THE TWEED-A TRAVELLER'S FIRST IMPRESSION OF EDIN-
BURGH.

THE imagination can scarcely picture a more dreary ride than I had from Hesleyside to Burness, a distance of nearly twenty miles, although called, in the random reckoning of the natives, only twelve. Not a tree or a hut was visible. The clouds, which rolled heavily and low, as soon as I asc nded this desert began to disburthen themselves with the copiousness of a shower-bath all the rest of the way. High up in these mountains of heath, two melancholy drenched shepherds, wrapped up in their plaids, and their flocks plucking the scanty blade, and shaking off the rain from their fleecy coating, were all of animated nature that I saw, save an attendant game-keeper, who, having been annually accustomed to spread desolation amongst the grouse of these mournful and trackless borders, conducted me through

DEBATEABLE LAND.

35

them, by the assistance of remembered marks and points of land, to our first stage, as if we had been at sea.

Before the Union, this tract of country was called the Debateable Land, as subject by turns to England and Scotland, and was frequently the theatre of many a sanguinary This unhappy state of warfare is well described in Home's Douglas :

scene.

"A river here, there an ideal line

"By fancy drawn, divides the sister kingdoms.
"On each side dwells a people, similar

"As twins are to each other, valiant both,

"Both for their valour famous through the world;

"Yet will they not unite their kindred arms,
"And, if they must have war, wage distant war;
"But with each other fight in cruel conflict."

This country was inhabited by a ferocious banditti, trained to arms, who lived entirely by plunder on both sides the barrier; and what they plundered on one side they exposed to sale on the other, and thus eluded the arm of justice. So skilful were they in robbery, that they could twist a cow's horn, or mark a horse, so as its owners could not know it; and in every other lawless manœuvre their daring craft and ingenuity set the most active vigilance at defiance.

« PreviousContinue »