Scott Country

We had a day’s journey before us along the banks of the
Tweed, a name which has been sweet to my ears almost as far back as I can remember anything. After the first mile or two our road was seldom far from tile river, which
flowed in gentleness, though perhaps never silent; the hills on either side high and sometimes stony, but excellent pasturage for sheep. In some parts the vale was wholly of this pastoral character, in others we saw extensive tracts of corn ground, even spreading along whole hill-sides, and without visible fences, which is dreary in a flat country; but there is no dreariness on the banks of the Tweed, the hills, whether smooth or stony, uncultivated or covered with ripe corn, had the same pensive softness. Near the corn tracts were large farmhouses, with many corn-stacks; the stacks and house and outhouses together, I recollect, in one or two places upon the hills, at a little distance, seemed almost as large as a small village or hamlet. It was a clear autumnal day, without wind, and being Sunday the business of the harvest was suspended; and all that we saw and felt and heard combined to excite one sensation of pensive and still pleasure.
Dorothy Wordsworth

The Yarrow, mounting into an enchanted country where there is nothing but hill folded against hill, the slide and murmur of water, the flight of birds, and the slow movement of grazing sheep. It is a countryside that must instantly awaken the interest of anyone who is sensitive to landscape. It appeals to the eye in a thousand ways, in the sweetness of its sudden little glens and belts of trees, in the singing of the river over its shallow bed of pebbles, in the majestic sweep of moorlands, in the magnificent clouds that mass themselves to sail over hill-tops where the curlews cry.
H. V. Morton.

How sweet, on this autumnal day,
The wild-wood fruits to gather,
And on my true-love’s forehead plant
A crest of blooming heather!
And what if I enwreathed my own!
‘Twere no offence to reason;
The sober hills thus deck their brows
To meet the wintry season.
Wordsworth.

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