’Good Heaven! what sorrows gloomed that parting day
  That called them from their native walks away,
  When the poor exiles, every pleasure past,
  Hung round the bowers, and fondly looked their last,
  And took a long farewell, and wished in vain
  For seats like these beyond the western main;
  And shuddering still to face the distant deep,
  Returned and wept, and still returned to weep.’

A subsequent visit to what was once the thriving village, with its embowered cottages reflected from the waters of the Esk, its groups of romping children, its Sabbath melodies and its secular din, now changed to a nobleman’s preserves, recalled the following truthful sketch from the same poem:—­

’Thus fares the land by luxury betrayed, In Nature’s simplest charms arrayed; But verging to decline, its splendors rise, Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise; While, scourged by famine from the smiling land, The mournful peasant leads his humble band; And while he sinks, without one arm to save, The country blooms, a garden and a grave.’

Among those whom Mr. Craig had numbered with the friends of his better days, the first rank might have been conceded to that most eccentric and interesting child of genius, Thomas DeQuincey.

Mr. Craig had thrown open to his use a lovely cottage and grounds, commonly known as ‘the Paddock,’ which DeQuincey and his family occupied for several years as privileged guests.  ‘The Opium-eater,’ as he was universally called by the villagers, was not more remarkable in character than in appearance.  His attenuated form, though but five feet six in height, seemed singularly tall; and his sharply aquiline countenance was strongly indicative of reflection.  This aspect was increased by a downward cast of the eyes, which were invariably fixed upon the ground; and in his solitary walks he seemed like one rapt in a dream.  Such a character could not but be quite a marvel to the literary coterie of Cockpaine, which found in him an inexhaustible subject of discussion; while the more common class of the community viewed him with solemn wonderment—­’aye, there he gaes aff to th’ brae—­he’ll kill himsell wi’ ower thinkin’—­glowrin all the day lang—­ah, there’s na gude in that black stuff; it’s worse nor whiskey and baccy forbye.’  Such were some of the ordinary comments on the weird form which was seen emerging from ‘the Paddock’ and moving in solitude towards the hills.  Taciturnity was a striking feature in DeQuincey’s character, and was, no doubt, owing to intense mental action.  The inner life, aroused to extreme activity by continued stimulus, excluded all perceptions beyond its own limits, and the world in which he dwelt was sufficiently large without the intrusion of external things.  In his walks I would often follow in his track, with that fondness of imitation peculiar to childhood, but was never the object of his notice, and never heard him converse but once.  Overcome by such recluse