“Six thousand veterans practis’d in war’s game, Tried men, at Killicranky were arrayed Against an equal host that wore the plaid, Shepherds and herdsmen. Like a whirlwind came The Highlanders; the slaughter spread like flame; And Garry, thundering down his mountain road, Was stopped, and could not breathe beneath the load Of the dead bodies! ’Twas a day of shame For them whom precept, and the pedantry Of cold mechanic battle do enslave. Oh for a single hour of that Dundee, Who on that day the word of onset gave! Like conquest might the men of England see! And their foes find a like inglorious grave. In the year 1803, when this sonnet was written, an invasion was hourly looked for; and Miss Wordsworth and her brother (for Coleridge had left them, worried by the “evil chance,” and something worse perhaps at Loch Lomond) could not but think with some regret of the times when from the now depopulated Highlands, forty or fifty thousand men might have been poured down for the defence of the country, under such leaders as the Marquis of Montrose, or the brave man who had so distinguished himself upon the ground where they were standing. The tourists returned by way of Edinburgh, visiting Peebles and Melrose Abbey. Sir Walter, then Mr. Scott, was, at the time of their visit to the abbey, travelling as Sheriff of Selkirk to the assizes at Jedburgh. They dined together at the Melrose Inn. Sir Walter was their guide to the abbey, taking them into Mr. Riddel’s gardens and orchard, where they had a sweet view of it through trees, the town being quite excluded. Sir Walter was of course at home in the history and tradition of these noble ruins, and pointed out to his visitors many things which would otherwise have escaped their notice. Beautiful pieces of sculpture in obscure corners, flowers, leaves, and other ornaments, which being cut in the durable pale red stone of which the abbey is built, were quite perfect. What destroyed, however, the effect of the abbey, was the barbarous taste of the good Scotch people who had built an ugly, damp charnel house within the ruins, which they called a church! Quitting Melrose, they crossed the Teviot by a stone bridge, and visited Jedburgh. It rained all the way, and they arrived at the inn just before the judges were expected out of court to dinner, very wet and cold. There was no private room but the judges’ sitting-room, and they had to get private lodgings in the town. Scott sat with them an hour in the evening, and repeated a part of his “Lay of the Last Minstrel.” Their landlady was a very remarkable woman; and Wordsworth wrote some verses expressive of the feelings with which she inspired him. Here is the burden. “Aye! twine thy brows with fresh spring flowers, And call a train of laughing hours, And bid them dance, and bid them sing, And thou, too, mingle in the ring.”