" It was here at Lasswade that he bought the
phaeton, which was the first wheeled carriage that ever penetrated to
Liddesdale, a feat which it accomplished in the first August of this
century.
When Scott left the cottage at Lasswade in 1804, it was to take up his
country residence in Selkirkshire, of which he had now been made
sheriff, in a beautiful little house belonging to his cousin,
Major-General Sir James Russell, and known to all the readers of
Scott's poetry as the Ashestiel of the _Marmion_ introductions. The
Glenkinnon brook dashes in a deep ravine through the grounds to join
the Tweed; behind the house rise the hills which divide the Tweed from
the Yarrow; and an easy ride took Scott into the scenery of the
Yarrow. The description of Ashestiel, and the brook which runs through
it, in the introduction to the first canto of _Marmion_ is indeed one
of the finest specimens of Scott's descriptive poetry:--
"November's sky is chill and drear,
November's leaf is red and sear;
Late, gazing down the steepy linn,
That hems our little garden in,
Low in its dark and narrow glen,
You scarce the rivulet might ken,
So thick the tangled greenwood grew,
So feeble trill'd the streamlet through;
Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen,
Through bush and briar no longer green,
An angry brook, it sweeps the glade,
Brawls over rock and wild cascade,
And, foaming brown with doubled speed,
Hurries its waters to the Tweed.
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