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in the encounters of these rude warriors on either side, the nations maintained the character of honour, courage, and generosity, assigned to them by Froissart. "Englishmen on the one party, and Scotchmen on the other party, are good men of war; for when they meet then is a hard fight without sparing; there is no hoo (i. e. cessation for parley) between them, as long as spears, swords, axes, or daggers, will endure; but they lay on each upon other, and when they be well beaten, and that the one party hath obtained the victory, they then glorify so in their deeds of arms, and are so joyful, that such as be taken they shall be ransomed ere they go out of the field; so that shortly each of them is so content with other, that at their departing courteously, they will say, 'God thank you.' But in fighting one with another, there is no play nor sparing."

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That there should be poetry and legends among such people is not wonderful; but then, for religion! That, too, was sure to have a place among their notions and observances; and it was in a form not much out of harmony with the feeling which could invoke God' to thank' men for their gallantry and exultation among swords, daggers, axes, and dead bodies. They never,' says our Author, told their beads, according to Lesley, with such devotion as when they were setting out upon a 'marauding party, and expected a good booty as the recompense of their devotions.' In several Scottish districts which he names, he says there were no resident ecclesiastics to celebrate the rites of the Church. A monk from Melrose, called, from 'the porteous or breviary which he wore in his breast, a booka-bosom, visited these forlorn regions once a year, and solemnized marriages and baptisms.' It was no question for the monk how they came by the means of paying for his services; nor would he have hesitated to visit them at shorter intervals, if their spoils and wills had allowed an adequate remuneration. Uncanonical customs, some of which are noticed, could not fail to arise, and to acquire an appearance of sanction, under this infrequency of the regular offices of the Church. Parts of the English Border were better supplied with really authorized, or self-appointed churchmen, many of whom attending the freebooters as Friar Tuck is said to have done upon Robin Hood, partook in their spoils, and mingled with the reliques of barbarism the rites and ceremonies of the Christian Church.' These ghostly abettors' of theft and rapine are exposed, with emphatic censure, in a pastoral admonition of Fox, Bishop of Durham, dated about the end of the fifteenth century, and cited by our Author, as descriptive also of the general savage mode of life, which it is charged upon the nobles, and even the king's "officers,' that they likewise patronized and participated. barbarous customs were found remaining in full prevalence, by the venerable Bernard Gilpin, some of the remarkable and romantic anecdotes of whose life are here very properly repeated.

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Mr. Scott seems to admit, not without some reluctance, non-conforming presbyterian preachers were the first who brought this rude generation to any sense of the benefits of re'ligion.' To this sentence he subjoins, in a note, as a quotation from a history of Scottish Worthies,' a curious passage in the life of Richard Cameron, who gave name to the sect of Ca

meronians.

After he was licensed, they sent him at first to preach in Annandale. He said, How could he go there? He knew not what sort of people they were. But Mr. Welch said, Go your way, Ritchie, and set the fire of hell to their tails. He went, and the first day he preached upon that text, How shall I put thee among the children, &c.? In the application he said, Put you among the children! the offspring of robbers and thieves. Many have heard of Annandale thieves. Some of them got a merciful cast that day, and told it. afterwards, that it was the first field-meeting that ever they attended; and that they went out of curiosity to see how a minister could preach in a tent, and people sit on the ground.'

The remainder of this historical Introduction consists of a statement, considerably at large, and containing a variety of curious details and anecdotes, of the measures of government adopted by the two States, for keeping the Borders in some degree of order. The predominant comprehensive institution was, the appointment and residence of officers of high rank, holding special commissions from the crown of either country, and entitled wardens, or guardians of the marches,' sometimes two, often three, on each side of the boundary, with sometimes a lord-warden-general to superintend their conduct.

The duties committed to the charge of the wardens were of a two-fold nature, as they regarded the maintenance of law and good order amongst the inhabitants of their jurisdiction themselves, and as they concerned the exterior relations betwixt them and the opposite frontier.

The abodes of the Scottish wardens were generally their own castles on the frontiers, such as we have described them to be; and the large trees, which are still to be seen in the neighbourhood of these baronial strong-holds, served for the ready execution of justice or revenge on such malefactors as they chose to doom to death.'

The mention of revenge' as a principle operating and so promptly gratified in the administration of these guardians, may suggest how very imperfectly the institution could have answered its proper end. In truth, though it did prevent an entire anarchy, it not only often failed in the repression and redress of wrong, but was sometimes directly perverted to the perpetration of it. The Scottish monarchs were not sufficiently powerful in their southern territories, to dare confer the office on any but the proud nobles who were already, in virtue of their

own possessions and influence, a kind of regents in the border tracts. This was the case also with the English kings till the time of Henry VIII., when the power of the government became sufficiently established to appoint to the office men in dependent of the northern nobility, and who, sustained by the immediate authority of the Court, could act in defiance of them. It is obvious what mischief must have inevitably resulted from investing with all the weight of a royal and extensive commission, the lords of the Border, who had their own local selfish interests, their ambition, their competitions, their quarrels, and their arrears of revenge, combined with a feudal ascendency in their respective districts. It was infallibly certain that they would, as they often in fact did, avail themselves of their commission, and the military and fiscal force assigned to them for its execution, to gratify their rapacity or revenge, by acts of flagrant injustice against their personal rivals and enemies.

In the hands of independent, upright, and intelligent men, such as some of the English wardens in the later reigns, the authority of the office was exerted to a highly beneficial effect; but among so many fierce wild animals, existing in sections ill affected to one another, and continually coming in hazardous contact with the rival irregularity and fierceness of the opposite Borderers, the wardens had often, as our Author's account of the rules and expedients of their administration, and his amusing interspersion of unlucky incidents, may serve to illustrate, a most difficult exercise for all their resolution and prudence. Sir Robert Cary, whose Memoirs were published a few years since, was an example of this hard exercise of these qualities, and of its general efficacy.

There is considerable interest, obsolete as the whole matter is, in reading the lively detail of the formalities, chivalrous or grotesque, of the administration of the warden's government. Curious as some of them were in themselves, they were peculiarly liable, from the character of the people, to become quite fantastic in the practice, by accompanying incidents, comical, tragical, or both at once. The very phraseology of an oath of purgation seems to speak the wild peculiarity of the popular character. "You shall swear by heaven above you, hell be"neath you, by your part of paradise, by all that God made in "six days and seven nights, and by God himself, you are whart "out sackless of art, part, way, witting, ridd, kenning, having, " or recetting of any of the goods and cattels named in this "bill, So help you God."

With the mere banditti, the moss-troopers, when they were caught in the fact, the process of justice was very summary and conclusive.

The Border marauders had every motive to exert their faculties

for the purpose of escape; for once seized upon, their doom was sharp and short. The mode of punishment was either by hanging or drowning. The next tree, or the deepest pool of the nearest stream, was indifferently used on these occasions. Many moss-troopers are said to have been drowned in a deep eddy of the Jed near Jedburgh. And in fine, the little ceremony used on these occasions added another feature to the reckless and careless character of the Borderers, who were thus accustomed to part with life with as little form as civilized men change their garments.'

Through the train of so many ages, what a melancholy scene have we on this devoted tract, of almost incessant energy, and movement, and enterprise, all worse than in vain! an extended series of tumult and destruction without an object; a process of nearly unmingled evil working to no manner and no possibility of ultimate good, The principle of the mischief had no self-corrective, and was of interminable operation. Every man of sober mind, at the time, must have been pleased at the event which reduced the whole wretched and infamous region under the general laws of one strong comprehensive government. Mr. Scott does not betray any petty nationality of feeling on this subject. That he should exultingly hail the change, was not, perhaps, fairly to be expected. His literary duty is performed, as we have already said, very respectably. It did not properly demand all the elaboration and punctilious correctness of composition deemed obligatory on the formal regular historian. Two or three days of revision would, however, have rectified many inaccuracies of construction which are left apparent in a performance which will, nevertheless, please by the spirit and freedom of its style. Some ten or twenty more dates inserted would have materially added to its value.

Little needs be said of the portions of illustrative letterpress attached respectively to the plates. Their historical part consists very much of genealogy and transfers of possession. The utter dryness of these, and of the architectural details very properly introduced, is relieved by curious anecdotes, and passages of picturesque description. We may transcribe two or three short specimens of the more attractive quality.

In the account of Bothwell Castle, Northumberland, there is a striking reference to the condition of captives, in these gloomy fortresses.

At the foot of the stairs is the door which leads to the prison. Imagination can hardly conceive any place more gloomy and horrible than those dungeons in baronial castles, which were allotted for the incarceration of captives: but here some guiding spirit of benevolence seemed to actuate the architect, for the prison, instead of being excavated from the dark recesses of the earth, was above ground; the cheerful light of heaven was admitted to gladden the sight of the forlorn inhabitant, though gleaming only through the narrow apertures

of massy walls, and the fanning breeze might sometimes breathe upon his wan and faded cheek, finding its passage through the same channel. Yet even this was comfort compared to the damp, dark, and profound cell, which commonly served for the dwelling of those whom the chance of war, or crime, or perfidy, placed within the power of the rude, unfeeling, and ferocious owners of these embattled edifices."

Should the reader descry some degree of discrepancy between such a picture of the fate of prisoners of war, and one of the representations previously cited from the introductory History, (to which we think a few other slight failures of consistency might be added,) we can only say that we cannot charge ourselves with the accountableness.

The description of Naworth Castle, a very grand structure of its class, and still entire, begins with this paragraph:

This Gothic edifice was, in former times, one of those extensive baronial seats which marked the splendour of our ancient nobles, before they exchanged the hospitable magnificence of a life spent among a numerous tenantry for the uncertain honours of court attendance, and the equivocal rewards of ministerial favour. If we allow that the feudal times were times of personal insecurity, we must also admit that they were favourable to the growth of manly and decided virtue; rude and unpolished in its structure, perhaps, but forcible and efficient in its operation. The evils of the institution were in some measure corrected by other qualities inherent in its system, while the good was pure and unmixed. There is a principle of affinity, more or less obvious, in every thing. The vast and solid mansions of our ancient nobility were like their characters; greatness without elegance, strength without refinement; but lofty, firm, and 'commanding.'

It is easy to dash away in this strain; but were the Writer reduced to the proof, we imagine it would be long enough before his moral chemistry, or alchymy, would produce forth in palpable form the 'pure and unmixed good' latent in that mass of barbarism. It is curious, too, that this extenuation and eulogy should occur at the commencement of the short section which so luckily contains the following for corroboration.

The dungeon of this castle instils horror into the beholder; consisting of four dark apartments, three below, and one above, up a long staircase, all well secured in the uppermost, one ring remains, to which criminals were chained, and the marks remain of many more such fastening places. Miserable abodes! where the wretched captive lingered out a hopeless life, shut from the sweet varieties of nature, the converse of friend or relative, and all that renders existence valuable by giving us an interest in its preservation,'

One of the most brave and renowned occupants of this castle, was Lord William Howard, a man at the same time devoted to books, of whom it is related that,

While busied deeply with his studies, he was suddenly disturbed

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