autumn, sufficient light will
be thrown on them by the following letter; from which it is seen that
he had now completed a rather tedious negotiation with another
bonnet-laird, and definitively added the lands of _Kaeside_ to the
original estate of Abbotsford.

TO MISS JOANNA BAILLIE, HAMPSTEAD.

ABBOTSFORD, November 12, 1815.

I have been long in acknowledging your letter, my dear
friend, and yet you have not only been frequent in my
thoughts, as must always be the case, but your name {p.078}
has been of late familiar in my mouth as a household word.
You must know that the pinasters you had the goodness to
send me some time since, which are now fit to be set out of
the nursery, have occupied my mind as to the mode of
disposing of them. Now, mark the event: there is in the
middle of what will soon be a bank of fine young wood, a
certain old gravel-pit, which is the present scene of my
operations. I have caused it to be covered with better
earth, and gently altered with the spade, so as, if
possible, to give it the air of one of those accidental
hollows which the surface of a hill frequently presents.
Having arranged my ground, I intend to plant it all round
with the pinasters, and other varieties of the pine species,
and in the interior I will have a rustic seat, surrounded by
all kinds of evergreen shrubs (laurels in particular), and
all varieties of the holly and cedar, and so forth, and this
is to be called and entitled _Joanna's Bower_. We are
determined in the choice of our ornaments by necessity, for
our ground fronts (in poetic phrase) the rising sun, or, in
common language, looks to the east; and being also on the
north side of the hill--(don't you shiver at the
thought?)--why, to say truth, George Wynnos and I are both
of opinion that nothing but evergreens will flourish there;
but I trust I shall convert a present deformity into a very
pretty little hobby-horsical sort of thing. It will not bear
looking at for years, and that is a pity; but it will so far
resemble the person from whom it takes name, that it is
planted, as she has written, for the benefit as well of
posterity as for the passing generation. Time and I, says
the Spaniard, against any two; and fully confiding in the
proverb, I ha