[Illustration: NEWARK TOWER] THE SCOTT COUNTRY Described by John Geddie Painted by E. W. Haslehust, R.B.A. [Illustration: (uncaptioned)] BLACKIE & SON LIMITED LONDON AND GLASGOW Blackie & Son Limited _50 Old Bailey, London_ _17 Stanhope Street, Glasgow_ Blackie & Son (India) Limited _Warwick House, Fort Street, Bombay_ Blackie & Son (Canada) Limited _Toronto_ BEAUTIFUL ENGLAND The Heart of London. Dartmoor. Canterbury. Oxford. Bath and Wells. In London’s By-ways. The Peak District. Winchester. The Thames. The Cornish Riviera. Shakespeare-land. Cambridge. York. The English Lakes. BEAUTIFUL SCOTLAND Loch Lomond and the Trossachs. Edinburgh. The Scott Country. The Shores of Fife. _Printed in Great Britain by Blackie & Son, Ltd., Glasgow_ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Facing Page Newark Tower _Frontispiece_ Kelso Bridge 5 Smailholm Tower 12 Roxburgh Castle 16 Branxholm Tower 21 Dryburgh Abbey 28 Bemersyde House 33 Melrose Abbey 37 Abbotsford 44 Traquair House 48 Ashestiel House 55 Neidpath Castle 62 [Illustration: KELSO: THE RIVER TWEED AND ABBEY RUINS] THE SCOTT COUNTRY [Illustration: THE SCOTT COUNTRY] Where—and what—is the “Scott Country”? Edinburgh—his birthplace, the centre of his literary and legal activities, the scene of _The Heart of Midlothian_ and of the _Chronicles of the Canongate_, his “own romantic town”—might surely claim to enclose, if not the kernel, an essential part of the interest that surrounds the fame and the name of Sir Walter. Around it, between the Pentlands and Lammermoors and the sea, is territory immortally associated with the life and the works of the “Master of Romance”—Lasswade and Roslin, Borthwick and Crichton, “Goblin Ha’” and Prestonpans, “Auchendinny’s hazel glade And haunted Woodhouselee”,