“This inborn and implanted recollection of the godlike,” says Schlegel, “remains ever dark and mysterious; for man is surrounded by the sensible world, which being in itself changeable and imperfect, encircles him with images of imperfection, changeableness, corruption, and error, and thus casts perpetual obscurity over that light which is within him.  Wherever, in the sensible and natural world, he perceives any thing which bears a resemblance to the attributes of the God-head, which can serve as a symbol of a high perfection, the old recollections of his soul are awakened and refreshed.  The love of the beautiful fills and animates the soul of the beholder with an awe and reverence which belong not to the beautiful itself—­at least not to any sensible manifestation of it—­but to that unseen original of which material beauty is the type.  From this admiration, this new-awakened recollection, and this instantaneous inspiration, spring all higher knowledge and truth.  These are not the product of cold, leisurely, and voluntary reflection, but occupy at once a station far superior to what either thought, or art, or speculation, can attain; and enter into our inmost souls with the power and presence of a gift from the divinity.”

Mr Scrope’s first visit to the Tweed was made before the “Ariosto of the North” had sung those undying strains which have since added so much associated interest to the finely varied courses of that fair river.  But many fond lovers of nature, then as now,

     “Though wanting the accomplishment of verse,”

were well acquainted with all its unrecorded beauties.

“What stranger,” asks our author, “just emerging from the angular enclosures of the south, scored and subdued by tillage, would not feel his heart expand at the first sight of the heathy mountains, swelling out into vast proportions, over which man had no dominion?  At the dawn of day he sees, perhaps, the mist ascending slowly up the dusky river, taking its departure to some distant undefined region; below the mountain range his sight rests upon a deep and narrow glen, gloomy with woods, shelving down to its centre.  What is hid in that mysterious mass the eye may not visit; but a sound comes down from afar, as of the rushing and din of waters.  It is the voice of the Tweed, as it bursts from the melancholy hills, and comes rejoicing down the sunny vale, taking its free course through the haugh, and glittering amongst sylvan bowers—­swelling out at times fair and ample, and again contracted into gorges and sounding cataracts—­lost for a space in its mazes behind a jutting brae, and re-appearing in dashes of light through bolls of trees opposed to it in shadow.

“Thus it holds its fitful course.  The stranger might wander in the quiet vale, and far below the blue summits he might see the shaggy flock grouped upon some sunny knoll, or struggling among the scattered birch-trees, and lower down