rminated his superintendence before
Walter left Dr. Adam, and in the interval between this and his
entrance at College, he spent some time with his aunt, who now
inhabited a cottage at Kelso; but the Memoir, I suspect, gives too
much extension to that residence--which may be accounted for by his
blending with it a similar visit which he paid to the same place
during his College vacation of the next year.

Some {p.099} of the features of Miss Jenny's abode at Kelso are
alluded to in the Memoir, but the fullest description of it occurs in
his Essay on Landscape Gardening (1828), where, talking of grounds
laid out in the _Dutch taste_, he says:--"Their rarity _now_ entitles
them to some care as a species of antiques, and unquestionably they
give character to some snug, quiet, and sequestered situations, which
would otherwise have no marked feature of any kind. I retain an early
and pleasing recollection of the seclusion of such a scene. A small
cottage, adjacent to a beautiful village, the habitation of an ancient
maiden lady, was for some time my abode. It was situated in a garden
of seven or eight acres, planted about the beginning of the eighteenth
century by one of the Millars, related to the author of the Gardeners'
Dictionary, or, for aught I know, by himself. It was full of long,
straight walks, between hedges of yew and hornbeam, which rose tall
and close on every side. There were thickets of flowery shrubs, a
bower, and an arbor, to which access was obtained through a little
maze of contorted walks calling itself a labyrinth. In the centre of
the bower was a splendid Platanus, or Oriental plane--a huge hill of
leaves--one of the noblest specimens of that regularly beautiful tree
which I remember to have seen. In different parts of the garden were
fine ornamental trees, which had attained great size, and the orchard
was filled with fruit-trees of the best description. There were seats,
and hilly walks, and a banqueting house. I visited this scene lately,
after an absence of many years. Its air of retreat, the seclusion
which its alleys afforded, was entirely gone; the huge Platanus had
died, like most of its kind, in the beginning of this century; the
hedges were cut down, the trees stubbed up, and the whole character of
the place so destroyed that I was glad when I could leave it." It was
under this Platanus that Scott first devoured Percy's Reliques. I
remember well being with him, in 1820 or 1821, when he {p.100