THE TWEED: COLDSTREAM BRIDGE.

"Yarrow and Tweed to mony a tune

Owre Scotland rings."

WHEN Burns, in May, 1787, visited the chief scenes on the Scottish Border, onreaching Coldstream he wrote in his memorandum book, “Coldstream - went over to England-glorious river Tweed-clear and majestic." To those words, few but beautiful, a deeper and more pointed meaning was given by Robert Ainslie, of Berrywell, the companion of his tour. "As soon," said he, as the Poet reached the English side of the stream, he knelt down, and with extreme emotion, and a countenance rapt and inspired, prayed for Scotland, repeating aloud these lines of his Cotter's Saturday Night:

"O Scotia! my dear, my native soil,

For whom my warmest wish to heaven is sent;

Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil

Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content:
And oh may Heaven their simple lives prevent
From luxury's contagion, weak and vile!
Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,

A virtuous populace may rise the while,

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And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved isle."

Coldstream is a thriving and beautiful little town, and the parish in which it stands is cultivated like a garden : the Tweed, clear, deep, and broad, flows close to the place, commencing four miles higher, at Carham, its separation of England from Scotland, and presenting on both sides romantic and shady walks for those who love to

meditate and muse. The town is undefiled by manufactures: here are old ruins, warlike and devotional, to exercise the conjectures of the antiquary: here the historian may contemplate the ford in the river, through which, in other days, the English made their military inroads, and were driven

"Travel-soiled and weather-beaten back; and by which the Scots often penetrated, spear in hand, to the gates of Durham and York: nor is it unimportant to say, that he may do all this, and stand on the handsome bridge which, like the union of which it is a type, joins in peace and love the once hostile nations. Here too General Monk raised that celebrated regiment, the Coldstream guards, and watched the doings of Parliament, as well as the movements of his rival, General Lambert; and more than all, here stands the private temple, and here dwells the priest, to whom all impetuous lovers hasten from the cruelty of parents, or the reluctant delay of a scrupulous church, and are satisfactorily united in what ancients and moderns call "the bonds of Hymen."

All around, but more particularly on the Scottish side of the Bridge, are places well known in tale and history. Where Swinton House now stands, there was once a castle of great antiquity, the stronghold of the gallant family of Swinton, one of whose chiefs slew, in the battle-front, the Duke of Clarence, brother to Henry the Fifth; and from one of whose daughters, the illustrious Sir Walter Scott, of Abbotsford, claimed descent. Here is shown the field of Hollywell Haugh, where Edward the First met the nobility of Scotland, on the death of the Fair Maiden of Norway, and as insolently as unjustly claimed the right of lord paramount over a free nation.

Literature too has its claims: less than a mile from Coldstream stands Lennel-House, lately the residence of Patrick Brydone, author of the Travels in Sicily and Malta; and the district gave birth to Alexander Hume, a poet of high powers, who sings very sweetly as well as truly of his parent stream.

"How mony happy hearts ye make, how mony mou's ye feed, The very weanies, lisping, pray for blessings on ye, Tweed.”

It is, in truth, Poetry which sheds enduring glory on a land. But for the bards of Greece, her memory would have only been a name and a few broken stones; but for the authors of Rome, what should we have known of the proud flight of her eagles. Virgil's verse, and Homer's song, have long outlived their native empires. What those mighty poets did for their countries of old, Burns and Scott have done of late for Scotland: the whole kingdom, highland and lowland, is brightened with romance and vocal with song: the genius of Scott has driven a railroad through the terra incognita of the North, and shown, instead of a wild race dwelling among rocks and heather, and hostile to all who had not the taste to wear tartan, a highly chivalrous people, and a highly romantic land. Before Burns arose in the West, we only knew that Coila was a clever dairy-maid, who excelled in butter and cheese; we knew not, till he proved it, that her vales were lovely, and her maidens beautiful.

"Nae poet thought her worth his while,

To set her name in measured stile;
She lay like some unkenned-of isle
Beside New Holland."

The breath of the Muse removed the cloud, as the sun dispels the mist; and Ayrshire in all its beauty was made known to the rest of the world.

THE LASS OF BALLOCHMYLE.

"With careless step I onward strayed,
My heart rejoiced in nature's joy;
When, musing in a lonely glade,

A maiden fair I chanced to spy."

ALONG the right or north bank of the Ayr, near the small village of Catrine, and about two miles from the residence of Burns at Mossgiel, lie the beautiful Braes of Ballochmyle. "The whole course of the Ayr," says Currie, "is fine; but the banks of that river, as it bends to the eastward above Mauchline, are singularly beautiful." When the Poet was a boy, the house and estate of Ballochmyle were the property of Sir John Whitefoord, the nephew of Oliver Goldsmith's Caleb Whitefoord,

"That compound of oddity, frolic, and fun,"

and the Papirius Cursor of many a curious newspaper column. The Whitefoords were of old standing in Ayrshire, and generally respected; but on the decline of their fortunes, their fine property passed from their hands into those of Claud Alexander, Esq. a gentleman who had returned to his native country, from a long and prosperous residence in India. The farewell of the Whitefoords to the home of their ancestors was commemorated by Burns in a song, not one of the happiest of his effusions.

"Farewell the bonny banks of Ayr,

Farewell the braes of Ballochmyle."

The Whitefoords were the friends of the Bard: with the Alexanders he had yet to get acquainted; and this he seems to have sought in a poetic way.

The Braes of Ballochmyle was one of Burns's favorite haunts; it was literally his musing ground: happening to meet, one fine evening of July, with Miss Wilhelmina Alexander, the sister of the new proprietor, then very young, and, it is said, very beautiful, he was so much. struck with her charms, that he recorded them in the song of the Lass of Ballochmyle, a production elegant, and sweet, and impassioned. He had recently published the Kilmarnock edition of his Poems, and his name was so well known in the district by the month of November, that he thought he might inform the lady of the strain she had inspired. He accordingly wrote it out in a fair hand, and enclosing it in a rather elaborate letter, sent it to Miss Alexander. He was on the wing for Jamaica-for, he says, some ill-advised person had uncoupled the merciless pack of the law at my heels." This was his expiring effort to obtain the notice of the rich of his native land.

The letter contains much of the man, and relates the circumstances under which the song was composed. "Poets," he says, "are such outré beings, so much the children of wayward fancy and capricious whim, that I believe the world generally allows them a larger latitude in the laws of propriety than the sober sons of judgment and prudence. I mention this as an apology for all the liberties that a nameless stranger has taken with you, in the enclosed poem, which he begs leave to present you with. The scenery was nearly taken from real life : though I dare say, madam, you do not recollect, as I believe you scarcely noticed, the poetic rêveur as he wandered by you. I had roved out, as chance directed, in