made his own upon the good old legitimate principle of might, so much despised in these days of statutory legislation, when the acts of Parliament extend to twenty times the size of the Bible.

Many anecdotes and stories have been recorded of Walter Scott of Harden; and we ourselves, we believe, have, in prior parts of our work, noticed him favourably. There can be little doubt, indeed, that he was a perfect man—that is, according to the estimate of qualities in the times in which he lived, as gallant in love as he was bold in war; and surely, letting the latter rest on his undisputed fame, the former could not be better proved than by his having, when still a fine bold riever, wooed and won the "Flower of Yarrow," Mary Scott, the daughter of Philip Scott of Dryhope—a young maiden, whose poetical appellation, expressive as it is, would go small way in carrying to the minds of those curious in beauties the perfections she enjoyed from nature. Of the manner in which Harden conducted his operations on the heart of this famous beauty, it may be difficult now to speak with that certainty which is applicable to his seizure and appropriations of his neighbours' live stock generally; but, judging from the analogy of the boldness of his other exploits, and from the circumstance that his father-in-law stipulated in the marriage-contract that he was "to find Harden in horse meat and man's meat, at his tower of Dryhope, for a year and a day, but that (as five barons pledge), at the expiry of that period, his son-in-law should remove without attempting to continue in possession by force,"[13] it may be presumed that the riever was not, in this instance, lost or forgotten in the lover. Old Dryhope knew him from the early fame he had acquired; and, while he had no objection to give him the Flower of Yarrow for his wife, he saw the necessity of providing against the occurrence which would, in all likelihood, have taken place, of Walter taking up his residence at Dryhope Tower, and becoming laird, at the same time that he kept a firm hold of Harden and his other lands. The spirit of appropriation, in short, was so strong and overpowering in the heart of the bold chief, that, as was frequently alleged of him, it was dangerous to let him sit down on a creepy stool belonging, to a bona fide proprietor; for three minutes' occupancy seemed to produce in him all the effects of the long positive prescription; and he never looked at an article of man's making, or nature's production, without considering whether it were a moveable or a fixture.

The only period of Harden's life in which his peculiar notions of meum and tuum were lost sight of, was during the sweet moon of his marriage with Mary Scott. For one lunation, the poor Border proprietors were safe; and, if the Harden motto, Cornua reparabit Phœbe, had any meaning in it, it was the only moon of his life that did not light him forth to commit some depredation. His marriage, with the slight exception already stated, had no such effect in modifying his appropriating spirit, as marriages now-a-days produce on reclaimed rogues or roués, for Mary Scott although the fairest of all the fair women of her time, had the same relish for cooking other people's kye, that her husband Walter felt in bringing them home. There was not a wife in all the Borders that served up "the feast of spurs" to her lord with greater regularity, and more attention to the rules of proper hussyskep, than the Flower of Yarrow. If Walter came in crying for supper—