unceasing raids of the Scottish Borderers were scarely less destructive. The greater wealth of the country, also, was a stronger incitement to the Scottish freebooters, than revenge was to their southern adversaries. These plundering parties were so secret and so active in their movements, and so perfectly acquainted with all local facilities for passage and concealment, in a rough and diversified country, as to render in a great measure unavailing the special and elaborate defensive arrangements of the English warden of the marches, Lord Wharton, who

"Established a line of communication along the whole line of the Border, from Berwick to Carlisle, from east to west, with setters and searchers, sleuth hounds, and watchers by day and night. Such fords as could not be conveniently guarded, were, to the number of thirty-nine, directed to be stopped and destroyed, meadows and pastures were ordered to be inclosed, that their fences might oppose some obstacle to the passage of the marauders, and narrow passes by land were appointed to be blocked up, or rendered impassable."

CHARACTER AND ECONOMY OF THE SCOTTISH BORDERERS.

Mr. Scott gives an ample and spirited delineation of the character, and the economy, if it may be so called, of these border barbarians :

"Contrary to the custom of the rest of Scotland, they almost always acted as light-horsemen, and used small active horses accustomed to traverse morasses, in which other cavalry would have been swallowed up. Their hardy mode of life made them indifferent to danger, and careless about the ordinary accommodations of life. The uncertainty of reaping the fruits of their labour, deterred them from all the labours of cultivation; their mountains and glens afforded pasturage for their cattle and horses, and when these were driven off by the enemy they supplied the loss by reciprocal depredation."

It was no uncommon thing for women to share, and signalize themselves in, the daring exploits of these worthy freemen. And "the Borderers," says our author, 66 merited the devoted attachment of their wives, if, as we learn, one principal use of the wealth they obtained by plunder, was to bestow it in ornamenting the persons of their partners." Everything in the human shape appears to have been kept in willing preparation to kill and slay on all fitting occasions; to avoid it, in any instance, was matter of policy rather than

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of taste. It was an especial dictate of this policy, to make prisoners rather than victims. These, when they were persons of any account, were worth money, and they were sure to bring it. Nor was it, beyond the consideration of expense, any great calamity to be captured. If the prisoner was taken away, he was treated with civility till ransomed. But he was often set at large immediately, on giving his word to be a true prisoner, with an engagement to appear at a certain time and place, to treat of his ransom.

"If they were able to agree, a term was usually assigned for the payment, and security given; if not, the prisoner surrendered himself to the discretion of his captor. But where the interest of both parties pointed so strongly to the necessity of mutual accommodation, it rarely happened that they did not agree upon terms. Thus, even 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, who says: "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 are well beaten, and one party hath obtained the victory, they then glorify so in their deeds of arms, and are so joyful, that such as be taken shall be ransomed ere they go out of the field; that each is so content with the other, that at their departing courteously, they will say 'God thank you.' But in fighting one with another, there is no play nor sparing.""

SCANTY RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES OF THE BORDERERS.

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 recompence 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 book-a-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 relics 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. The 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.

ORIGIN OF THE CAMERONIANS.

Mr. Scott seems to admit, "that non-conforming presbyterian preachers were the first who brought this rude generation to any sense of the benefits of religion." To this sentence he subjoins, in a note, a curious passage in the life of Richard Cameron, who gave the name to the sect of Cameronians.

"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 fieldmeeting 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.”

CHARACTER OF THE WARDEN GOVERNMENT.

The Scottish monarchs were not sufficiently powerful in their southern territories, to dare confer the office of warden 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 independent 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 inevitably have 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 ascendancy 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, and by hell beneath 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."

SUMMARY MODE OF PUNISHING MARAUDERS.

With banditti or moss-troopers, when they were caught in the fact, the process of justice was very summary and conclusive; either hanging or drowning. The next tree, or the deepest pool of the nearest stream, was indifferently used on the occasions.

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

One of the most brave and renowned of these wardens, occupant of Naworth 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 by an officer who came to ask his commands concerning the disposal of several moss-troopers who had been just made prisoners. Displeased at the interruption, the warden answered heedless and angrily, 'Hang them, in the devil's name;' but, when he laid aside his book, his surprise was not a little, to find that his orders had been literally fulfilled."

MICKLE-MOUTHED MEG.

The account of Elibank Tower, Peebles-shire, contains a very amusing incident in the history of the ancestors of Mr. Walter Scott:

"William Scott (afterwards Sir William) undertook an expedition against the Murrays, of Elibank, whose property lay a few miles distant. He found his enemy upon their guard, was defeated, and made prisoner in the act of driving off the cattle