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other half being used for narrow cloths, which | steeple of the tolbooth alone exists as a melan

bring, in the market, from twentypence to six shillings and sixpence per yard, together with crumb-cloth or carpeting, of grey or mixed colours. The committee on prizes of the honourable the commissioners of the board of trustees for the encouragement of Scottish manufactures, have declared that, by the use of foreign wool, the flannels manufactured here have risen to a degree of fineness surpassing most of those made in Scotland, if not those even of the finest Welsh manufacture. Blankets, both of the Scottish and English fabric, are successfully made, and shawls, which are accommodated to all dimensions of purse as well as of person. Besides these, a manufacture of Indiana for ladies' gowns has arisen, the price of the article being from eight to nine shillings a-yard. The author of the new statistical account says, that the premiums given by the honourable the commissioners of the board of trustees for the encouragement of Scottish manufactures, for the best cloths at given prices, and their encouragement of the judicious outlay of capital, and the enlargement and improvement of machinery, have greatly contributed to the extension and improvement of the manufactures of Galashiels.

We cannot quit the subject of this wonderful rise of Galashiels and its manufactures, without quoting the following most gratifying passage from our friend Mr. Robert Chambers, on the subject of the morals of the place, which, if, as we have no reason to doubt, it be still correct and applicable, would seem to furnish a curious view of the idiocracy of man, arising from the longcultivated habits of his race. "The people of Galashiels," says Mr. Chambers, "are remarkable for steady industry; but, though active and enterprising far beyond their neighbours, it must be mentioned to their honour, that they are tainted by none of the vices appropriate to manufacturing towns. This is perhaps owing to the circumstance that manufactures have here risen naturally among the original people of the district, and not been introduced by a colony from any large manufacturing town; on which account, the inhabitants not having received vices by ordination, and being all along and still isolated amidst people of the highest primitive virtue, retain all the pleasing characteristics of the lowland rustic, with the industrious habits, at the same time, of the Manchester and Glasgow mechanic." For our own parts, we can with truth and sincerity affirm, that we believe the population of Galashiels to be of a very superior description, as regards honesty, and resolute determination of principle; and we can never forget the honour we received from them, when they marched up in a body with their flags and banners to the meeting which we have already noticed as having been held at Selkirk; and the three cheers with which they hailed us as they left the town still ring very gratefully in our ears.

The site of the old village can still be traced by the aid of a proper cicerone within the grounds of Gala House, where "the short little clay-built

choly monument of the deserted village. The vane on the top of this structure still obeys the wind, and the clock is still in motion; but both are alike useless to the people—the former being concealed from public view, while the dial-plate of the latter is a mere unlettered board, over which a single hour index wanders, like a blind man exerting his eloquence to a set of friends who have vanished before his face."

We shall make but one quotation more from our friend Mr. Chambers, in regard to the old village of Galashiels. "The armorial bearings of Galashiels are a fox and plum-tree; and the occasion is thus accounted for. During the invasion of Edward III., a party of English, who had been repulsed in an attempt to raise the siege of Edinburgh Castle, came and took up their quarters in Galashiels. It was in autumn, and the soldiers soon began to straggle about in search of the plums which then grew wild in the neighbourhood. Meanwhile, a party of the Scots having come up, and learned what their enemies were about, resolved to attack them, saying, that they would prove sourer plums to the English than they had yet gathered. The result was such as fully to justify the expression. They took the unhappy Southrons by surprise, and cut them off almost to a man. In commemoration of the exploit, the people have ever called themselves the Sour Plums of Galashiels, and they are celebrated in an old song, the air of which is well known to Scottish antiquaries for its great age. The arms, though originating in the same cause, seem to have been vitiated by the common fable of the fox and grapes. All the old people agree in the tradition, that Galashiels was once a hunting station of the king, when, with his nobles, he took his pastime in the forest. The lodge or tower in which he resided, was pulled down only twelve years ago, in order to make room for some additions to the parish school. It was called the Peel, and was a rudely-built square tower, with small windows, two stories high, rybots of freestone-stone stair-and finer in appearance than any other house in the whole Barony, that of Gala alone excepted. It was built of very large stones, some of them about six feet long, and extending through the whole thickness of the wall. A narrow lane leading from this tower to a part of the town nearer Galahill, was called the king's shank; and what adds to the probability of the tradition, there was a clump of birches on the south or opposite side of the hill, called the touting birk, where it is conjectured the hunters would be summoned from the chase, the forest lying open before the place." Galashiels may be considered as the port or gate that shuts in the whole glen of the Gala water. But the stream itself, after leaving the village, and having been thoroughly polluted by the various coloured dyes and chemical agents employed in the manufactures, has a run of about a mile to the eastward, through the property of Langlee, till its junction with the Tweed. Much has been done by our old friend Mr. Bruce, the proprietor, for the embellishment of this place, and

versing the romantic ravine called the Nameless Dean, is thrown off from side to side alternately, like a billiard ball repelled by the sides of the table on which it has been played; and in that part of its course, resembling the stream which pours down Glen Dearg, may be traced upwards into a more open country, where the banks retreat farther from each other, and the vale exhibits a good deal of dry ground, which has not been neglected by the active cultivators of the district. It arrives, too, at a sort of termination, striking in itself, but totally irreconcilable with the narrative of the romance. Instead of a single Peelhouse, or Border-tower of defence, such as Dame Glendinning is supposed to have inhabited, the head of the Allan, about five miles above its junction with the Tweed, shews three ruins of Border Houses belonging to different proprietors, and each, from the desire of mutual support so natural to troublesome times, situated at the extremity of the property of which it is the principal messuage. One of these is the ruinous mansionhouse of Hillslap, formerly the property of the Cairncrosses, and now of Mr. Innes of Stowe ; a second, the tower of Colmslie, an ancient inheritance of the Borthwick family, as is testified by their crest, the goat's head, which exists on the ruin; a third, the house of Langshaw, also ruinous, but near which the proprietor, Mr Bailie of Jerviswood and Mellerstain, has built a small shooting-box, All these ruins, so strangely

to us, who well remember it at the time when some, even of the oldest plantations, were only making, it does appear a most wonderful change to see the great extent of well-grown young timber that now exists, and under the shade of which one may ride; and this may be said to be nothing more than a sample of the general improvement which has taken place all over this beautiful wide valley, of which Melrose and its venerable ruins may be considered as the centre, and the extent of which may be said to run from the mouth of Gala water to that of the Leader. At the time the monks made their first settlement here, it was doubtless far from being one of the poorest districts in the country; but, although we know that a great deal of oak timber then existed in this vale, yet we question much whether in their time, or ever since, it has exhibited so truly rich an appearance as it does at present, for it may be said to be literally filled with tasteful dwellings, embosomed in orchards and gardens, and in tufted groves and shrubberies, whilst the gay little villages of Gattonside and Newstead, and those of Melrose and Darnwick, much more antique, but now greatly extended since our first acquaintance with them, present interesting features in the scene; and the noble ruins of the ancient Abbey seem to preside over the whole, with a holy and religious air, whilst the lovely Eildon hills, rising with their tricuspid summits immediately to the south, afford a prominent feature, which distinguishes this scene from every other similar vale whatso-huddled together in a very solitary spot, have re

ever.

In following the stream of the Tweed downwards from the mouth of the Gala, we find the left bank covered with the plantations and pleasure-grounds of the Pavilion, a hunting-seat belonging to Lord Somerville, the creation of which, on the bare slope of the hill, may almost be said to be embraced within our recollection. The Tweed is here joined by a very pretty little stream called the Allan, which comes down from the hills on the north. It is remarkable for the excellence of its trout. Although Sir Walter Scott made no slavish sketches from the scenery of this glen, whilst he was describing his Glen Dearg in the Monastery, yet there is every reason to believe that he took many hints from the nature he found here. The glen is remarkable for the superstitious associations connected with it, and it bears the popular appellation of the Fairy Dean, or the Nameless Dean, from the belief that prevails that it is haunted from one end to the other by those tiny spirits who are always propitiated by the name of "the good neighbours" being bestowed on them. It would appear that, in evidence of the actual operations of the fairy people even in the present day, little pieces of calcareous matter are found in the glen after a flood, which either the labour of those tiny artists, or the eddies of the brook among the stones, have formed into a fantastic resemblance of cups, saucers, basins, and the like, in which children who gather them pretend to discern fairy utensils. Sir Walter Scott tells us, that the little stream of the Allan, "after tra

collections and traditions of their own." We have more than once threaded this solitary glen in days of yore, with very great delight. Indeed it was a common practice of ours to make a direct line of our journey from East Lothian to Melrose, in doing which we traversed the ancient Girthgate. This was a bridle way over the hills, used by the monks of Melrose, in the frequent communication between their Abbey and the Hospital or Hospice of Soltra; and well do we remember the ease with which we traced it, though unguided, and for the first time, entirely by the green-sward line which it had still left, through the heather, and often did we picture to ourselves the antique groups of monks and other such travellers, whose frequent feet, as well as those of their horses, had so worn off and entirely obliterated the heather.

Soltra was an hospital founded by Malcolm IV. for the relief of pilgrims, and for poor and sickly people, and it had the privilege of a sanctuary, as the name of Girth signifies. Milne, the author of the old description of the parish of Melrose, published in 1794, thus notices the bridge with which the Girthgate was connected-a bridge of which Sir Walter Scott has made so romantic a

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are the arms of the Pringles of Galashiels." So far as we are aware, not a vestige of this bridge remains, except the foundation of some of the pillars.

equalled, and which we are not ashamed to say were such as frequently to call forth a certain degree of moisture from our eyes, as well as from the eyes of the angling companion who sat opposite to us. Then his lively reel and strathspey music was equally remarkable in its way; and when his fancy led him suddenly to strike up Tullochgorum, or anything of that description, all manner of fatigue was forgotten in a moment, and we found ourselves, as if impelled by the enchanting effects of Oberon's horn, footing it to the music right featly, and cracking our fingers, and shouting like good ones. Many, many is the time that we have listened to the soft and touching airs, and danced to the lively strains of Nathaniel Gow-and it was once our lot to listen to this description of music performed by a superiorly gifted brother of his on board the Edgar seventy-four, in the Downs, where, strange to say, he was literally a sailor before the mast, but we hesitate not to assure our readers that the performances of poor blind Jamie Donaldson of Melrose were greatly superior to both. We must not forget to say, that he was equally remarkable in his performance on the clarionet which in his mouth, became quite a different instrument from what it is even in the hands of the best performers. Alas! our poor blind musician had the same thirst for strong drink that possessed his kind patron and protector and host, and accordingly, whilst David Kyle himself died in April, 1805, aged 52, poor Donaldson departed 31st March, 1808, aged 50. His tombstone in the Abbey church-yard bears no inscription, but a rude representation of his head, with the face marked with the small-pox, which disease was the cause of his blindness in early youth, and in the centre of the stone is a violin crossed with a clarionet. Alas! of all that fine family of whom David Kyle was indeed so justly proud at the time we knew him, we have reason to fear that not a single scion remains! As for the George itself, it has undergone enlargement and improvement, proportionable to the increased size of the village, as well as of the traffic which now passes through it; and although its present landlord, Mr. Manuel, may not rival old Kyle in regard to originality of character, he can in nowise be surpassed by any one in the attention which he pays to the guests, and in the exertions he uses in making them comfortable, and that in a style somewhat superior to what might have been termed the rough and round of those days to which we have been referring.

We have already stated that we were wont to establish our piscatorial headquarters at Melrose. Our inn was the George, which was kept by David Kyle, who is so happily introduced into the introductory epistle which precedes "The Monastery." Sir Walter acknowledges that he drew the sketch from the life, and certainly he has been most successful in his portrait. When we knew him, he was a hale good-looking man, in the full vigour of life, but he was making daily and serious inroads on his constitution by the strength and depth of his potations. He took the whole management and control of the household economy of the inn, leaving his wife and daughters, who were all remarkably handsome lady-like persons, to follow their own domestic pursuits in the private part of the house towards the back. There was no pretence at any great degree of finery in the style of the table, but every thing was good of its kind, and put down in the most comfortable manner, and the cut of salmon, as well as "the fowls with egg sauce, the pancake, the minced-collops, and the bottle of sherry," of which Sir Walter makes him speak to Captain Clutterbuck, never failed to be first-rate of their kind. Our landlord was always ready, when he could conveniently absent himself from his concerns, to give us his company and his advice whilst angling, and when he joined us, as he often did after dinner over our bottle of sherry, we found him brimful of information. But, perhaps, the greatest source of enjoyment afforded by this quiet little village inn-for in those days it really was the small inn of a small village-arose from the circumstance that a certain blind man, an Orpheus, of the name of James Donaldson, resided permanently in the house, lodged and fed, partly, perhaps, from the good-natured liberality of David Kyle himself, and partly from the conviction, that his being here made many a traveller stretch a point towards evening to get on to the George for the night, or to tarry for the night there in spite of the affairs of travel that pressed him on. To us who, after the fatigues of a successful day's angling, and a comfortable dinner, were seated for the evening to enjoy our rest and a moderate glass of wine, it was indeed a luxury of the very highest order to get the blind man into our parlour; and he, for his part, held us so well in his books, that he never failed to be at our command whosoever might be in the house. We pray our gentle and indulgent reader to give us credit for our assertion that we do know something of music, and that, at all events, we should make no such flour-practised that mode of angling with the worm ish of trumpets as we may now appear to be making, unless as a prelude to something really first-rate in its way, and we solemnly declare, that this blind man's performance upon the violin was matchless in its own particular style. He performed the old Scottish airs, and especially those of the most tender and pathetic description, with a delicacy and feeling that we have never heard

David Kyle's father was a baker at Galashiels, and one of the most successful anglers whose fame has been recorded on all those waters. He was the first man, so far as we are aware, that

which Mr. Stoddart has so well described in his book. It must now be approaching the lapse of a century since he taught it to our father, who was then a lad. The system to which we allude is that of using the bait when the river is small and clear.

The angling from Gala Water foot to Leader foot is all excellent, both for salmon and trout, when the river is in proper condition; and then

Monastery itself was founded by King David in
the year 1136, and the architect was supposed to
be John Murdo or Morveau, as would seem to be
implied by these inscriptions. The first is over
a doorway, where there is the representation of a
compass.

"Sa gayes the compass ev'n about,
So truth and laute do but doubt,
Behold to the end.-JOHN MURDO."

the beauty and interest of all the surrounding | heroic James Lord Douglas, who was slain at the features of nature, and the silent grandeur battle of Otterburn, 5th August, 1388. The of the holy pile of ruin, are such that even the unsuccessful angler must find pleasure in wandering by the river side, quite enough to counterbalance the disappointment of empty baskets. The scenery of this country has become much more rich since we first knew it, by the increase of plantation, and the quick growth of the trees. The whole of this district and neighbourhood abounds with antiquities, in the shape of camps and stations, &c., British, Roman, and Romanized-British. A well-marked Roman camp occupies one of the tops of the Eildon hills. we must refer our reader, if he be devoted to such inquiries, to the learned author of Caledonia," for such information as he may want in this way; for, were we to go fully into this interesting subject, we should very soon find materials to swell this article to the size of that ponderous publication itself.

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But

It would be equally vain, as it would be useless, for us to attempt to give any history or description of the noble pile of Melrose Abbey, which is certainly one of the most sublime and beautiful ruins of this description that Great Britain can boast of, whether it be looked upon as a mass, or whether it be examined with that degree of detail which is necessary in order duly to appreciate the wonderful and exquisite delicacy of the carving. Sir Walter Scott says, that

"If thou would'st view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight;
For the gay beams of lightsome day
Gild, but to flout, the ruins grey.
When the broken arches are black in night,
And each shafted oriel glimmers white;
When the cold light's uncertain shower
Streams on the ruined central tower;
When buttress and buttress, alternately,
Seemed framed of ebon and ivory;
When silver edges the imagery,

And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die;
When the distant Tweed is heard to rave,

And the howlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave;

Then go-but go alone the while-
Then view St. David's ruined pile;

And, home returning, soothly swear

Was never scene so sad and fair."

And again :

"The moon on the east oriel shone,

Through slender shafts of shapely stone,

By foliage tracery combined;

Thou would'st have thought some fairy's hand, 'Twixt poplars straight, the osier wand

In many a freakish knot had twined, Then framed a spell, when the work was done, And changed the willow wreaths to stone." It is somewhat remarkable, that notwithstanding this strikingly vivid description, we have reason to believe, from a conversation we had with the author himself, that he never during his whole life visited the ruins of Melrose Abbey by moonlight, and yet, if one did go there under such witching circumstances, we have little doubt that the picture he has drawn here would be found strictly true to nature in all its parts.

Within the holy precincts of these ruined walls repose the remains of many distinguished individuals amongst others, King Alexander II., many of the Earls of Douglas, and especially the

And on the south side of this door there are these lines.

"John Murdo sum tym callit was I,
And born in Parysse certainly;
And had in kepving all mason werk
Of Sant Androys, the hye kyrk
Of Glasga, Melros and Pasla
lay,
Of Nyddysdayl, and of Galway,
Pray to God and Mari baith,

And sweet St. John, keep this haly kirk frae skaith.”

For John Murdo in these lines we ought unquestionably to read John Morveau, for such was the name of the Frenchman. Perhaps we may be forgiven for mentioning here that Mr. Kemp, the architect of the grand Scott monument at Edinburgh, who took his dimensions and general plan from the great arches of the nave and transept which supported the Tower of Melrose, gave in his design among the others with the name of John Morveau attached to it. After his design had been picked out as the best, the great difficulty arose as to where its author was to be found, and many weeks elapsed before John Morveau could be ferreted out. At last he was discovered, and his beautiful design was finally adopted, although its author was an humble man altogether unknown; and certainly the matchless beauty and grandeur of the structure, which has excited the admiration of every one who has beheld it, including strangers and foreigners of all ranks, have borne testimony in favour of the taste of the committee who made the selection.

The burial-ground which surrounds the Abbey has some curious monumental inscriptions in it. One of these has always appeared to us to be extremely quaint and curious.

The earth builds on the earth castles and towers,
The earth says to the earth, all shall be ours,
The earth goes on the earth glistening like gold,
The earth goes to the earth sooner than it would."

Although not to be found in the Abbey buryingground, and hardly now to be discovered any where, we may be permitted to notice the monumental stone which once covered the remains of Fair Maiden Lilliard, who fought so gallantly against the English at the battle of Ancrum

Moor.

"Fair Maiden Lilliard lies under this stane, Little was her stature, but mickle her fame, Upon the English lads she laid many thumps, And when her legs were off she fought upon her stumps." Many of the buildings both in the village of Melrose and in that of Darnwick are curious, antique, and picturesque, and the old cross of Melrose, situated in the open market-place, which formed nearly all the village when we first knew it, has a singularly venerable appear

ance.

Before leaving this section of the Tweed, I was one among the first seats in the kingdom of we must not forget to mention that the Knights the religious Keledei or Culdei, or, as Fordun exTemplars had a house and establishment on the plains the name, Cultores Dei, worshippers of east side of the village of Newstead. It was God. This monastery was supposed to have called the Red Abbey; the extensive founda- been founded by Columbus, or by Aidan, probations of houses were discovered here, and some bly about the end of the sixth century. It would curious seals were found in digging. Before appear that it was built of oak wood, thatched concluding this part of our subject, it appears with reeds, the neck of land being enclosed with to us to be very important, if not essential, a stone wall. It is supposed to have been burned to call our readers' especial attention to the by the Danes. The name given to it was decidsingular promontory of Old Melrose, on the right edly Celtic, and quite descriptive of its situationbank of the river. It is a high bare head, Maol-Ros, signifying the Bare Promontory-and around which the river runs in such a way as to from this the more recent Abbey and the whole convert it into a peninsula. Here it was that of the more modern parish of Melrose have dethe first religious settlement was made, indeed it rived their name.

FEMALE AUTHORS.-No. II.

MRS. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING,

BY GEORGE GILFILLAN.

IN selecting Mrs. Hemans as our first specimen of Female Authors, we did so avowedly, because she seemed to us the most feminine writer of the day. We now select Mrs. Browning for the opposite reason, that she is, or at least is said by many to be, the most masculine of our female writers.

no

To settle the respective spheres and calibres of the male and the female mind is one of the most difficult of philosophical problems. To argue, merely, that because the mind of woman has never hitherto produced a "Paradise Lost," or a “Principia,” it is therefore for ever incapable of producing similar masterpieces, seems to us unfair, for various reasons. In the first place, how many ages elapsed e'er the male mind realised such prodigies of intellectual achievement? And do not they still stand unparalleled and almost unapproached? And were it not as reasonable to assert that man as that woman can renew them more? Secondly, because the premise is granted-that woman has not-does the conclusion follow, that woman cannot excogitate an argument as great as the "Principia," or build up a rhyme as lofty as the "Paradise Lost?" Would it not have been as wise for one who knew Milton only as the Milton of "Lycidas" and "Arcades," to have contended that he was incapable of a great epic poem ? And is there nothing in Madame De Stael, in Rahel the Germaness, in Mary Somerville, and even in Mary Wollstonecraft, to suggest the idea of heights, fronting the very peaks of the Principia and the Paradise, to which woman may yet attain? Thirdly, has not woman understood and appreciated the greatest works of genius as fully as man? Then may she in time equal them; for what is true appreciation but the sowing of a germ in the mind, which shall ultimately bear similar fruit? There is nothing, says Godwin, which the human mind can conceive, which it cannot execute; we may add, there is nothing the human mind can un

derstand which it cannot equal. Fourthly, let us never forget that women, as to intellectual progress, is in a state of infancy. Changed as by malignant magic, now into an article of furniture, and now into the toy of pleasure, she is only as yet undergoing a better transmigration, and "timidly expanding into life."

Almost all that is valuable in Female Authorship has been produced within the last halfcentury, that is, since the female was generally recognised to be an intellectual creature; and if she has, in such a short period, so progressed, what demi-Mahometan shall venture to set bounds to her future advancement? Even though we should grant that woman, more from her bodily constitution than her mental, is inferior to man, and that man, having got, shall probably keep, his start of centuries, we see nothing to prevent woman overtaking, and outstripping with ease, his present farthest point of intellectual progress. We do not look on such productions as "Lear," and the "Prometheus Vinctus," with the despair wherewith the boy who has leaped up in vain to seize, regards ever after the moon and the stars; they are, after all, the masonry of men, and not the architecture of the gods; and if man may surpass, why may not woman, "taken out of his side,” his gentle alias, equal them?

Of woman, we may say, at least, that there are already provinces where her power is incontested and supreme. And in proportion as civilization advances, and as the darker and fiercer passions which constitute the fera natura subside, in the lull of that milder day, the voice of woman will become more audible, exert a wider magic, and be as the voice of spring to the opening year. We stay not to prove that the sex of genius is feminine, and that those poets who are most profoundly impressing our young British minds, are those who, in tenderness and sensibility-in peculiar power, and in peculiar weakness, are all but females. And whatever may be said of

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