I am not sure that others like as well as myself these “nothings” about men of genius. I would rather hear the conversation between Scott and a peasant on the road, for example, than the most piquant anecdote of his brighter hours. I like a great mind in dishabille.
We returned by Melrose Abbey, of which I can say nothing new, and drove to Dryburgh to see the grave of Scott. He is buried in a rich old Gothic corner of a ruin—fittingly. He chose the spot, and he sleeps well. The sunshine is broken on his breast by a fretted and pinnacled window, over-run with ivy, and the small chapel in which he lies is open to the air, and ornamented with the mouldering scutcheons of his race. There are few more beautiful ruins than Dryburgh Abbey, and Scott lies in its sunniest and most fanciful nook—a grave that seems divested of the usual horrors of a grave.
We were ascending the Gala-water at sunset, and supped at Dalhousie, after a day crowned with thought and feeling.
BORDER SCENERY—COACHMANSHIP—ENGLISH COUNTRY-SEATS—THEIR EXQUISITE COMFORT—OLD CUSTOMS IN HIGH PRESERVATION—PRIDE AND STATELINESS OF THE LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE GENTRY—THEIR CONTEMPT FOR PARVENUS.
If Scott had done nothing else, he would have deserved well of his country for giving an interest to the barren wastes by which Scotland is separated from England. “A’ the blue bonnets” must have had a melancholy march of it “Over the Border.” From Gala-Water to Carlisle it might be anywhere a scene for the witches’ meeting in Macbeth. We bowled away at nearly twelve miles in the hour, however, (which would unwind almost any “serpent of care” from the heart,) and if the road was not lined with witches and moss-troopers, it was well macadamized. I got a treacherous supper at Howick, where the Douglas pounced upon Sir Alexander Ramsay; and, recovering my good humor at Carlisle, grew happier as the fields grew greener, and came down by Kendal and its emerald valleys with the speed of an arrow and the light heartedness of its feather. How little the farmer thinks when he plants his hedges and sows his fields, that the passing wayfarer will anticipate the gleaners and gather sunshine from his ripening harvest.
I was admiring the fine old castle of Lancaster, (now desecrated to the purposes of a county jail,) when our thirteen-mile whip ran over a phæton standing quietly in the road, and spilt several women and children, as you may say, _en passant_. The coach must arrive, though it kill as many as Juggernaut, and Jehu neither changed color, nor spoke a word, but laid the silk over his leaders to make up the back-water of the jar, and rattled away up the street, with the guard blowing the French horn to the air of “Smile again, my bonny lassie.” Nobody threw stones after us; the horses were changed in a minute and three quarters, and away we sped from the town of the “red nose.” There was a cool, you-know-where-to-find-me sort of indifference in this adventure, which is peculiarly English. I suppose if his leaders had changed suddenly into griffins, he would have touched them under the wing and kept his pace.