After a pleasant chat here we came home; and after an interval of rest the carriage was at the door for Hawthornden.  It is about seven miles out from Edinburgh.  It is a most romantic spot, on the banks of the River Esk, now the seat of Mr. James Walker Drummond.  Scott has sung in the ballad of the Gray Brother,—­

  Sweet are the paths, O, passing sweet,
    By Esk’s fair streams that run,
  O’er airy steep, through copse-woods deep,
    Impervious to the sun.

  Who knows not Melville’s beechy grove,
    And Roslin’s rocky glen,
  Dalkeith, which all the virtues love,
    And classic Hawthornden?

“Melville’s beechy grove” is an allusion to the grounds of Lord Melville, through which we drove on our way.  The beech trees here are magnificent; fully equal to any trees of the sort which I have seen in our American forests, and they were in full leaf.  They do not grow so high, but have more breadth and a wider sweep of branches; on the whole they are well worthy of a place in song.

I know in my childhood I often used to wish that I could live in a ruined castle; and this Hawthornden would be the very beau ideal of one as a romantic dwelling-place.  It is an old castellated house, perched on the airy verge of a precipice, directly over the beautiful River Esk, looking down one of the most romantic glens in Scotland.  Part of it is in ruins, and, hung with wreaths of ivy, it seems to stand just to look picturesque.  The house itself, with its quaint, high gables, and gray, antique walls, appears old enough to take you back to the times of William Wallace.  It is situated within an hour’s walk of Roslin Castle and Chapel, one of the most beautiful and poetic architectural remains in Scotland.

Our drive to the place was charming.  It was a showery day; but every few moments the sun blinked out, smiling through the falling rain, and making the wet leaves glitter, and the raindrops wink at each other in the most sociable manner possible.  Arrived at the house, our friend, Miss S——­, took us into a beautiful parlor overhanging the glen, each window of which commanded a picture better than was ever made on canvas.

We had a little chat with Lady Drummond, and then we went down to examine the caverns,—­for there are caverns under the house, with long galleries and passages running from them through the rocks, some way down the river.  Several apartments are hollowed out here in the rock on which the house is founded, which they told us belonged to Bruce; the tradition being, that he was hidden here for some months.  There was his bed room, dining room, sitting room, and a very curious apartment where the walls were all honeycombed into little partitions, which they called his library, these little partitions being his book shelves.  There are small loophole windows in these apartments, where you can look up and down the glen, and enjoy a magnificent prospect.  For my part, I thought if I were Bruce, sitting there with a book in my lap, listening to the gentle brawl of the Esk, looking up and down the glen, watching the shaking raindrops on the oaks, the birches and beeches, I should have thought that was better than fighting, and that my pleasant little cave was as good an arbor on the Hill Difficulty as ever mortal man enjoyed.