barbarous system of vengeance and retaliation ensued. Every act of violence and bloodshed was perpetrated; whilst the most nefarious practices of free-booting became the common occupation of the marauding clans; and a _raid_ into a neighbouring district had for them the same sort of charm and excitement which their descendants find in a modern fox chase. Even after the union of the two kingdoms under one sovereign, when the term "Borders" had been changed to "Middle Shires," as being more suitable to a locality which was now nearly in the centre of his dominions, the long cherished distinctions and prejudices of the inhabitants were maintained in all their vigour; and it required a long period of conflict with these to be persevered in, before the extinction of the border feuds could be completely effected. These distractions have now been at an end for more than two centuries. The mountains look down upon a peaceful domain; the valleys, everywhere the abode of quiet and security, yield their rich pasturage to the herds, or their corn-fields redden, though coyly, to the harvest; and the population, much of it rooted in the soil, and attached by hereditary ties to the same plots of ancestral ground in many instances for six or seven hundred years, is independent, prosperous, and happy. Some evidences of the old troublous times remain, in the dismantled Border Towers, and moated or fortified houses called Peles, which lie on the more exposed parts of the district; in the ruins of the conventual retreats; and in the crumbling strongholds of the chiefs, which still retain something of a past existence in the names which even yet cling about their walls, as if the spirits of their former possessors were reluctant to depart entirely from them. Whilst a few traditions and recollections survive of those stirring periods which have left their mark upon the nation's history, and are associated for ever with images of those illustrious persons whose familiar haunts were within the shadows of the hills.