e_ A MAN."

He was, in fact, one of the "prowest knights" of the whole
genealogy--a fearless horseman and expert spearman, renowned and
dreaded; and I suppose I have heard Sir Walter repeat a dozen times,
as he was dashing into the Tweed or Ettrick, "rolling red from brae to
brae," a stanza from what he called an old ballad, though it was most
likely one of his own early imitations:--

"To tak the foord he aye was first,
Unless the English loons were near;
Plunge vassal than, plunge horse and man,
Auld Boltfoot rides into the rear."

"From {p.055} childhood's earliest hour," says the poet in one of his
last Journals, "I have rebelled against external circumstances." How
largely the traditional famousness of the stalwart _Boltfoot_ may have
helped to develop this element of his character, I do not pretend to
say; but I cannot avoid regretting that Lord Byron had not discovered
such another "Deformed Transformed" among his own chivalrous
progenitors.

So long as Sir Walter retained his vigorous habits, he used to make an
autumnal excursion, with whatever friend happened to be his guest at
the time, to the tower of Harden, the _incunabula_ of his race. A more
picturesque scene for the fastness of a lineage of Border marauders
could not be conceived; and so much did he delight in it, remote and
inaccessible as its situation is, that, in the earlier part of his
life, he had nearly availed himself of his kinsman's permission to fit
up the dilapidated _peel_ for his summer residence. Harden (the ravine
of hares) is a deep, dark, and narrow glen, along which a little
mountain brook flows to join the river Borthwick, itself a tributary
of the Teviot. The castle is perched on the brink of the precipitous
bank, and from the ruinous windows you look down into the crows' nests
on the summits of the old mouldering elms, that have their roots on
the margin of the stream far below:--

"Where Bortha hoarse, that loads the meads with sand,
Rolls her red tide to Teviot's western strand,
Through slaty hills, whose sides are shagged with thorn,
Where springs in scattered tufts the dark-green corn,
Towers wood-girt Harden far above the vale,
And clouds of ravens o'er the turrets sail.
A hardy race who never shrunk from war,
The Scott, to rival realms a mighty bar,
Here fixed his mountain home;--a wid