f speaking, that he and his neighbors were in the habit of reading
a great deal. I spoke of going to Dryburgh to see the grave of Scott,
and inquired if his works were much read by the common people. He said
that Scott was not so much a favorite with the people as Burns. I
inquired if he took a newspaper. He said that the newspapers were kept
at so high a price that working men were not able to take them;
sometimes they got sight of them through clubs, or by borrowing. How
different, thought I, from America, where a workingman would as soon
think of going without his bread as without his newspaper!

The cottages of these laboring people, of which there were a whole
village along here, are mostly of stone, thatched with straw. This
thatch sometimes gets almost entirely grown over with green moss. Thus
moss-covered was the roof of the cottage where we stopped, opposite to
Dryburgh grounds.

There was about this time one of those weeping pauses in the showery
sky, and a kind of thinning and edging away of the clouds, which gave
hope that perhaps the sun was going to look out, and give to our
persevering researches the countenance of his presence. This was
particularly desirable, as the old woman, who came out with her keys to
guide us, said she had a cold and a cough: we begged that she would not
trouble herself to go with us at all. The fact is, with all respect to
nice old women, and the worthy race of guides in general, they are not
favorable to poetic meditation. We promised to be very good if she would
let us have the key, and lock up all the gates, and bring it back; but
no, she was faithfulness itself, and so went coughing along through the
dripping and drowned grass to open the gates for us.

This Dryburgh belongs now to the Earl of Buchan, having been bought by
him from a family of the name of Haliburton, ancestral connections of
Scott, who, in his autobiography, seems to lament certain mischances of
fortune which prevented the estate from coming into his own family, and
gave them, he said, nothing but the right of stretching their bones
there. It seems a pity, too, because the possession of this rich, poetic
ruin would have been a mine of wealth to Scott, far transcending the
stateliest of modern houses.

Now, if you do not remember Scott's poem, of the Eve of St. John, you
ought to read it over; for it is, I think, the most spirited of all his
ballads; nothing conceals the transcendent lustre and beauty of th