old Scotch towns are almost buried in a multitude of "smoky dwarf
houses"--a living poet, Mr. Matthew Arnold, has found the fitting

phrase for these dwellings, once for all. All over the Forest the
waters are dirty and poisoned: I think they are filthiest below

Hawick; but this may be mere local prejudice in a Selkirk man. To
keep them clean costs money; and, though improvements are often

promised, I cannot see much change--for the better. Abbotsford,
luckily, is above Galashiels, and only receives the dirt and dyes of

Selkirk, Peebles, Walkerburn, and Innerleithen. On the other hand,
your ill-omened later dwelling, "the unhappy palace of your race,"

is overlooked by villas that prick a cockney ear among their
larches, hotels of the future. Ah, Sir, Scotland is a strange

place. Whisky is exiled from some of our caravanserais, and they
have banished Sir John Barleycorn. It seems as if the views of the

excellent critic (who wrote your life lately, and said you had left
no descendants, le pauvre homme!) were beginning to prevail. This

pious biographer was greatly shocked by that capital story about the
keg of whisky that arrived at the Liddesdale farmer's during family

prayers. Your Toryism also was an offence to him.
Among these vicissitudes of things and the overthrow of customs, let

us be thankful that, beyond the reach of the manufacturers, the
Border country remains as kind and homely as ever. I looked at

Ashiestiel some days ago: the house seemed just as it may have been
when you left it for Abbotsford, only there was a lawn-tennis net on

the lawn, the hill on the opposite bank of the Tweed was covered to
the crest with turnips, and the burn did not sing below the little

bridge, for in this arid summer the burn was dry. But there was
still a grilse that rose to a big March brown in the shrunken stream

below Elibank. This may not interest you, who styled yourself
No fisher,

But a well-wisher
To the game!

Still, as when you were thinking over Marmion, a man might have
"grand gallops among the hills"--those grave wastes of heather and

bent that sever all the watercourses and roll their sheep-covered
pastures from Dollar Law to White Combe, and from White Combe to the

Three Brethren Cairn and the Windburg and Skelf-hill Pen. Yes,
Teviotdale is pleasant still, and there is not a drop of dye in the

water, purior electro, of Yarrow. St. Mary's Loch lies beneath me,
smitten with wind and rain--the St. Mary's of North and of the

Shepherd. Only the trout, that see a myriad of artificial flies,
are shyer than of yore. The Shepherd could no longer fill a cart up

Meggat with trout so much of a size that the country people took
them for herrings.

The grave of Piers Cockburn is still not desecrated: hard by it
lies, within a little wood; and beneath that slab of old sandstone,

and the graven letters, and the sword and shield, sleep "Piers
Cockburn and Marjory his wife." Not a hundred yards off was the

castle-door where they hanged him; this is the tomb of the ballad,
and the lady that buried him rests now with her wild lord.

Oh, wat ye no my heart was sair,
When I happit the mouls on his yellow hair;

Oh, wat ye no my heart was wae,
When I turned about and went my way! {7}

Here too hearts have broken, and there is a sacredness in the shadow
and beneath these clustering berries of the rowan-trees. That

sacredness, that reverent memory of our old land, it is always and
inextricably blended with our memories, with our thoughts, with our

love of you. Scotchmen, methinks, who owe so much to you, owe you
most for the example you gave of the beauty of a life of honour,

showing them what, by heaven's blessing, a Scotchman still might be.
Words, empty and unavailing--for what words of ours can speak our

thoughts or interpret our affections! From you first, as we
followed the deer with King James, or rode with William of Deloraine

on his midnighterrand, did we learn what Poetry means and all the
happiness that is in the gift of song. This and more than may be

told you gave us, that are not forgetful, not ungrateful, though our
praise be unequal to our gratitude. Fungor inani munere!

LETTER--To Eusebius of Caesarea (Concerning the gods of the heathen)
Touching the Gods of the Heathen, most reverend Father, thou art not

ignorant that even now, as in the time of thy probation on earth,
there is great dissension. That these feigned Deities and idols,

the work of men's hands, are no longer worshipped thou knowest;
neither do men eat meat offered to idols. Even as spake that last

Oracle which murmured forth, the latest and the only true voice from
Delphi, even so "the fair-wrought court divine hath fallen; no more

hath Phoebus his home, no more his laurel-bough, nor the singing
well of water; nay, the sweet-voiced water is silent." The fane is

ruinous, and the images of men's idolatry are dust.
Nevertheless, most worshipful, men do still dispute about the

beginnings of those sinful Gods: such as Zeus, Athene, and
Dionysus: and marvel how first they won their dominion over the

souls of the foolish peoples. Now, concerning these things there is
not one belief, but many; howbeit, there are two main kinds of

opinion. One sect of philosophers believes--as thyself, with
heavenly learning, didst not vainly persuade--that the Gods were the

inventions of wild and bestial folk, who, long before cities were
builded or life was honourably ordained, fashioned forth evil

spirits in their own savagelikeness; ay, or in the likeness of the
very beasts that perish. To this judgment, as it is set forth in

thy Book of the Preparation for the Gospel, I, humble as I am, do
give my consent. But on the other side are many and learned men,

chiefly of the tribes of the Alemanni, who have almost conquered the
whole inhabited world. These, being unwilling to suppose that the

Hellenes were in bondage to superstitions handed down from times of
utter darkness and a bestial life, do chiefly hold with the heathen

philosophers, even with the writers whom thou, most venerable, didst
confound with thy wisdom and chasten with the scourge of small cords

of thy wit.
Thus, like the heathen, our doctors and teachers maintain that the

gods of the nations were, in the beginning, such pure natural
creatures as the blue sky, the sun, the air, the bright dawn, and

the fire; but, as time went on, men, forgetting the meaning of their
own speech and no longer understanding the tongue of their own

fathers, were misled and beguiled into fashioning all those
lamentable tales: as that Zeus, for love of mortal women, took the

shape of a bull, a ram, a serpent, an ant, an eagle, and sinned in
such wise as it is a shame even to speak of.

Behold, then, most worshipful, how these doctors and learned men
argue, even like the philosophers of the heathen whom thou didst

confound. For they declare the gods to have been natural elements,
sun and sky and storm, even as did thy opponents; and, like them, as

thou saidst, "they are nowise at one with each other in their
explanations." For of old some boasted that Hera was the Air; and

some that she signified the love of woman and man; and some that she
was the waters above the Earth; and others that she was the Earth

beneath the waters; and yet others that she was the Night, for that
Night is the shadow of Earth: as if, forsooth, the men who first

worshipped Hera had understanding of these things! And when Hera
and Zeus quarrel unseemly (as Homer declareth), this meant (said the

learned in thy days) no more than the strife and confusion of the
elements, and was not in the beginning an idle slanderous tale.

To all which, most worshipful, thou didst answer wisely: saying
that Hera could not be both night, and earth, and water, and air,

and the love of sexes, and the confusion of the elements; but that
all these opinions were vain dreams, and the guesses of the learned.

And why--thou saidst--even if the Gods were pure natural creatures,
are such foul things told of them in the Mysteries as it is not

fitting for me to declare. "These wanderings, and drinkings, and
loves, and seductions, that would be shameful in men, why," thou