What struck me as not less curious was the following handbill, posted on the jamb of the church-door:-"Gooseberries for sale, by public roup. The gooseberries in he orchards of Bothwell manse, also at Captain Bogles Laroyet, and in, &c. &c. Sale to begin at Bothwell manse, at five o'clock P. M., 10th of July." This was, certainly, characteristic of "Fruitland." Though Miss Baillie only spent the first four years of her life at this sweet and secluded parsonage, it is the place in her native country which she said she liked best to think of. And this we may well imagine; it is just the place for a child's paradise, embosomed amid blossoming trees, with its garden lying like a little hidden yet sunny fairyland in the midst of them, with its flowers and its humming bees, that old church and half wild churchyard alongside of it, and its hanging crofts, and little umbrageous valley. To Bothwell brig you descend the excellent highway towards Hamilton, and coming at it in something less than a mile, are surprised to find what a rich and inviting scene it is. The brig, which you suppose, from being described as narrow, steep, and oldfashioned in the days of the Covenanters, to be something grey and quaint, reminding you of Claverhouse and the sturdy Gospellers, is, really, a very respectable, modern-looking bridge. The gateway which used to stand in the centre of it has been removed, the breadth has been increased, an additional arch or arches have been added at each end, and the whole looks as much like a decent, every-day, well-to-do, and toll-taking bridge as bridge well can do. There is a modern toll-bar at the Bothwell end of it. There is a good house or two, with their gardens descending to the river. The river flows on full and clear, between banks well cultivated and well covered with plantations. Beyond the bridge and river the country again ascends with an easy slope towards Hamilton, with extensive plantations, and park walls belonging to the domain of the Duke of Hamilton. You have scarcely ascended a quarter of a mile, when on your left hand, a handsome gateway, bearing the ducal escutcheons, and with goodly lodges, opens a new carriage-way into the park. Everything has an air of the present time, of wealth, peace, and intellectual government, that make the days of the battle of Bothwell brig seem like a piece of the romance work of Scott, and not of real history. Scott himself tells us in his Border Minstrelsy, in his notes to the old Ballad of Bothwell Brig, that "the whole appearance of the ground as given in the picture of the battle at Hamilton Palace, even including a few old houses, is the same as the scene now presents. The removal of the porch or gateway upon the bridge is the only perceptible difference." There must have been much change here since Scott visited the spot. The old houses have given way to new houses. The old bridge is metamorphosed into something that might pass for a newish bridge. The banks of the river, and the lands of the park beyond, are so planted and wooded, that the pioneers would have much to do before a battle could be fought. All trace of moorland has vanished, and modern enclosure and M M cultivation has taken possession of the scene. When we bring back by force of imagination the old view of the place it is a far different one. "Where Bothwell's bridge connects the margin steep, And Clyde below runs silent, strong, and deep, To battle, deemed his cause the cause of Heaven. In vengeance for the great Montrose's fate, Let loose the sword, and to the hero's shade A barbarous hecatomb of victories paid."-Wilson's Clyde. When we picture to ourselves the Duke of Monmouth ordering his brave foot-guards, under command of Lord Livingstone, to force the bridge, which was defended by Hackstone of Rathillet, and Claverhouse sitting on his white horse on the hill-side near Bothwell, watching the progress of the fray, and ready to rush down with his cavalry, and fall on the infatuated Covenanters who were quarrelling amongst themselves on Hamilton haughs, we see a wild and correspondent landscape, rough as the Cameronian insurgents, and rude as their notions. The Bothwell brig of the present day has all the old aspect modernized out of it. Its smiling fields, and woods that speak of long peaceful times, and snug modern homesoh! how far off are they from the grand old melancholy tone of the old ballad: "Now farewell, father, and farewell, mother, And fare ye weel, my sisters three; An' fare ye weel, my Earlstoun, For thee again I'll never see! "So they're away to Bothwell hill, An' waly they rode bonnily! When the Duke of Monmouth saw them comin' To the left, looking over the haughs or meadows of Hamilton, from Bothwell brig, you discern the top of the present house of Bothwellhaugh over a mass of wood. Here another strange historical event connects itself with this scene. Here lived that Hamilton who shot in the streets of Linlithgow the Regent Murray, the half-brother of the queen of Scots. This outrage had been instigated by another, which was calculated, especially in an age like that when men took the redress of their wrongs into their own hands without much ceremony, to excite to madness a man of honour and strong feeling. The regent had given to one of his favourites Hamilton's estate of Bothwellhaugh, who proceeded to take possession with such brutality that he turned Hamilton's wife out naked, in a cold night, into the open fields, where before morning she became furiously mad. The spirit of vengeance took deep hold of Hamilton's mind, and was fanned to flame by his indignant kinsmen. He followed the regent from place to place, seeking on opportunity to kill him. This at length occurred by his having to pass through Linlithgow on his way from Stirling to Edinburgh. Hamilton placed himself in a wooden gallery, which had a window towards the street; and as the regent slowly, on account of the pressure of the crowd, rode past, he shot him dead. Add to these scenes and histories that Hamilton Palace, in its beautiful park, lies within a mile of the Bothwell brig, and it must be admitted that no poetess could desire to be born in a more beautiful or classical region. Joanna Baillie's father was at the time of her birth minister of Bothwell. When she was four years old he quitted it, and was removed to different parishes, and finally, only three years before his death, was presented to the chair of divinity at Glasgow. After his death Miss Baillie spent with her family six or more years in the bare muirlands of Kilbride, a scenery not likely to have much attraction for a poetical mind, but made agreeable by the kindness and intelligence of two neighbouring families. She never saw Edinburgh till on her way to England when about twentytwo years of age. Before that period she had never been above ten or twelve miles from home, and, with the exception of Bothwell, never formed much attachment to places. After that, she only saw Scotland as a visitor, and at distant intervals. In 1810 For many years Joanna Baillie resided at Hampstead, where she was visited by nearly all the great writers of the age. Scott, as may be seen in his letters to Joanna Baillie, delighted to make himself her guest, and on her visit to Scotland, in 1806, she spent some weeks in his house at Edinburgh. From this time they were most intimate friends: she was one of the persons to whom his letters were most frequently addressed, and he planted, in testimony of his friendship for her, a bower of pinasters, the seeds of which she had furnished, at Abbotsford, and called it Joanna's bower. her drama, The Family Legend, was, through his means, brought out at Edinburgh. It was the first new play brought out by Mr. Henry Siddons, and was very well received, a fortune which rarely attended her able tragedies, which are imagined to be more suitable for the closet than the stage. There they will continue to charm, while vigour of conception, a clear and masterly style, and healthy nobility of sentiment, retain their hold on the human mind. Joanna Baillie died February 23d, 1851, aged 89, and is interred in Hampstead churchyard, beside her mother, who had also reached the venerable age of 86. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH was born at Cockermouth on the 7th of April, 1770. His father was a solicitor and law-agent to Sir James Lowther, afterwards Earl of Lonsdale. By his mother's side he was related to the Cooksons and Crackenthorps, families of Cumberland and Westmorland. He was educated at Hawkshead school, where he began to write poetry; he then went to St. John's College, Cambridge, of which his uncle, Dr. Cookson, had been a fellow. During the vacation of 1790, when, of course, he was twenty years of age, he went on a short tour in France and Switzerland, with a fellow-collegian, Robert Jones, a Welshman, returning by the Rhine. They travelled on foot, with knapsacks on their backs and twenty pounds each in their pockets at starting. On taking his degree, Wordsworth made a pedestrian tour in Wales with his friend Jones. In the autumn of 1791 he went again to France, and stayed rather more than a year. During his sojourn there the king was deposed, and the massacres of September took place while he was at Orleans. When he reached Paris the king, queen, and their children lay in prison, France was a republic, and the army of the allies was hovering on the frontiers. Soon after his reaching home the king was executed. At this period, Wordsworth was, like so many others, an ardent republican, and gave credit to all the fine sentimental theories of the revolutionists. The atrocities which they committed, and the subsequent career of Napoleon, cured him of all that. He became a decided advocate of monarchy, but he never ran into the extreme of despotism, like Southey; and as he had not published, like him, in the effervescence of youth, any such violent effusions as Wat Tyler, and the Botany Bay Eclogues, he escaped the fierce resentment which fell upon Southey, from those who were more steadfast to their original liberalism. On his return to England, Wordsworth continued for some time in an unsettled state. He could not bring his mind to take orders, and his resources were insufficient for his subsistence without a profession. He spent his time in rambling in the Isle of Wight, on Salisbury Plain, in Wales, and amongst his friends in the North. He thought of publishing a magazaine, and then of getting upon a London newspaper. At this juncture a young friend dying, left him 9007. About the same time he again regained the society of his sister Dorothy, who had been brought up by a relative. From this time the brother and sister were inseparable. Wordsworth and his sister took up their abode at Rouden, near Crewkerne, in Somersetshire, and there Coleridge, in 1795, paid them a visit. Coleridge had now become connected with Southey and Lovell, two Bristol men, and was in a great measure located there. The spirit of poetry had revived again after a long period of mere imitation; and by these circumstances three of the chief leaders of literary reform were thus brought together. Southey was a Bristol man, Coleridge was a Devonshire man, Wordsworth a Cumberland man; and Bristol for a time seemed as though it were to have the honour of becoming a sort of western Athens. But Bristol itself had no sympathy with any literary spirit. It is one of those places that have the singular fortune to produce great men, though it never cherishes them. It produced Chatterton, and let him perish; it produced Southey, and let him go away to rear the fabric of his fame where he pleased. The spirit of trade, and that not in its most adventurous or liberal character, was and is the spirit of Bristol. By a wretched and penny-wise policy, even of trade, it has allowed Gloucester, at many miles' distance from the sea, to become a great port at its expense; by the same spirit it has created Liverpool; and whoever now sees its wretched docks coming up into the middle of the town, instead of stretching, business-like and compactly, along the banks of the Avon, its dusty and unwatered streets, and altogether dingy and sluggish appearance, feels at once, that not even the poetry of trade can flourish there. Yet Bristol had the honour thrust upon it of issuing to the world the first productions of Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge. Joseph Cottle, the author of Alfred, an epic poem, whom Byron so mercilessly handled, grafting upon him the name of his brother Amos, for the sake of more ludicrous effect,- Joseph Cottle was a bookseller here, and became the |