to Abbotsford.  The inmates and guests we found there were Sir Walter, Major Scott, Anne Scott, and Mr. and Mrs. Lockhart; Mr. Liddell, his lady and brother, and Mr. Allan, the painter, and Mr. Laidlaw, a very old friend of Sir Walter’s.  One of Burns’s sons, an officer in the Indian service, had left the house a day or two before, and had kindly expressed his regret that he could not wait my arrival, a regret that I may truly say was mutual.  In the evening, Mr. and Mrs. Liddell sang, and Mrs. Lockhart chaunted old ballads to her harp; and Mr. Allan, hanging over the back of a chair, told and acted odd stories in a humorous way.  With this exhibition, and his daughter’s singing, Sir Walter was much amused, and, indeed, were we all, as far as circumstances would allow.  But what is most worthy of mention is the admirable demeanour of Major Scott during that evening.[6] He had much to suffer from the sight of his father’s infirmities and from the great change that was about to take place at the residence he had built, and where he had long lived in so much prosperity and happiness.  But what struck me most was the patient kindness with which he supported himself under the many fretful expressions that his sister Anne addressed to him or uttered in his hearing, and she, poor thing, as mistress of that house, had been subject, after her mother’s death, to a heavier load of care and responsibility, and greater sacrifices of time, than one of such a constitution of body and mind was able to bear.  Of this Dora and I were made so sensible, that as soon as we had crossed the Tweed on our departure, we gave vent at the same moment to our apprehensions that her brain would fail and she would go out of her mind, or that she would sink under the trials she had passed and those which awaited her.

[6] In pencil—­This is a mistake, dear Father.  It was the following evening, when the Liddells were gone, and only ourselves and Mr. Allan present.

On Tuesday morning, Sir Walter Scott accompanied us, and most of the party, to Newark Castle, on the Yarrow.  When we alighted from the carriages, he walked pretty stoutly, and had great pleasure in revisiting these his favourite haunts.  Of that excursion, the verses, ‘Yarrow Revisited’ are a memorial.  Notwithstanding the romance that pervades Sir Walter’s works, and attaches to many of his habits, there is too much pressure of fact for these verses to harmonise, as much as I could wish, with the two preceding poems.  On our return in the afternoon, we had to cross the Tweed, directly opposite Abbotsford.  The wheels of our carriage grated upon the pebbles in the bed of the stream, that there flows somewhat rapidly.  A rich, but sad light, of rather a purple than a golden hue, was spread over the Eildon Hills at that moment; and, thinking it probable that it might be the last time Sir Walter would cross the stream, I was not a little moved, and expressed some of my feelings in the sonnet beginning,