The _genius loci_, greatest of all, while born in Edinburgh, sprang from a Border family of “Scotland’s gentler blood.” The cradle of his race was in Upper Teviotdale, near Hawick, that thriving “Glasgow of the Borders,” among whose busy mills the old Douglas Tower still stands as an hotel, and rites older than Christian Scotland are cherished at its time-honoured Common Riding. Not far off are Harden, home of Wat Scott the reiver, and Branxholme, that after being repeatedly burned by the English, bears an inscription of its rebuilding by a Sir [Illustration: ABBOTSFORD, ROXBURGHSHIRE] Walter Scott of Reformation times, whose namesake and descendant would make its name known so widely. At Sandyknowe farm, between the Eden and the Leader Water, he lived as a sickly child in his grandparents’ charge, and under the massive ruin of Smailholm Tower, drank in with reviving health the inspiration of Border lore and romance-- Ever, by the winter hearth, Old tales I heard of woe or mirth, Of lover’s sleights, of ladies’ charms, Of witches’ spells, of warriors’ arms; Of patriot battles, won of old By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold; Of later fields of feud and fight, When, pouring from their Highland height, The Scottish clans, in headlong sway, Had swept the scarlet ranks away. While stretch’d at length upon the floor, Again I fought each combat o’er, Pebbles and shells, in order laid, The mimic ranks of war display’d; And onward still the Scottish Lion bore, And still the scatter’d Southron fled before. Later on, the old folks being dead, his sanatorium quarters were shifted to his aunt’s home at Kelso, where also an uncle bought a house, inherited by the lucky poet. For a time he attended the Grammar School, whose pupils had for playground the adjacent ruins of the Abbey, so roughly handled in Border wars and by iconoclastic zealots. This boy had other resources than play, who could forget his dinner in the charms of Percy’s _Reliques_; and his lameness did not hinder him from roaming over the beautiful country in which Tweed and Teviot meet. Their confluence encloses the ruins of Roxburgh Castle, once a favourite royal residence and strong Border fortress, before whose walls James II., trying to wrest it back from the English, was killed by the bursting of one of those new-fangled “engines” that were to break down moated castles, replaced by such sumptuous mansions as Floors, the modern _château_ of the Duke of Roxburghe. Roxburgh town has disappeared more completely than its castle, its name surviving in that of the picturesque Border shire where, off and on, Scott spent much of his youth, photographing on a sensitive mind the scenes he has made famous, and getting to know the flesh-and-blood models of Meg Merrilies, Edie Ochiltree, Old Mortality, Dandie Dinmont, Josiah Cargill, and other “characters” that but for him might now be forgotten.