the Duke of, was a natural son of James II. by Arabella Churchill, sister to the great Duke of Marlborough. "The youth, named James Fitzjames (Macaulay's Hist. of Eng., vol. ii. p. 326), had as yet given no promise of the eminence which he afterwards attained; but his manners were so gentle and inoffensive that he had no enemy except Mary of Modena, who had long hated the child of the concubine with the bitter hatred of a childless wife. A small part of the Jesuitical faction had, before the pregnancy of the Queen was announced, seriously thought of setting him up as a competitor of the Princess of Orange. It does not appear that this absurd design was ever countenanced by the king. The boy, however, was acknowledged; and whatever distinction a subject not of the royal blood could hope to attain were bestowed on him. He had been created Duke of Berwick; and he was now loaded with honourable and lucrative employments, taken from those noblemen who had refused to comply with the royal commands." At the revolution of 1688, he became an exile with his father in France, where he was recommended to the court by his superior merit. He was created marshal of France, knight of the Holy Ghost, duke and peer of France, grandee of Spain, and commander-in-chief of the French armies; nor were these honours and employments greater than his services merited. He lived in an age when the Prince of Orange and many other great generals commanded against him; yet his reputation as a warrior suffered no eclipse by the comparison; while the victory of Almanza, which secured Spain to the Bourbon dynasty, stamped his character as a great and successful commander. His courage was cool and steady; and he was eminently remarkable for entire self-possession in all circumstances, even the most critical—watchful, cautious, and persevering; ever ready to take advantage of a fault or an oversight committed by an antagonist, yet, throughout his whole career, frugal of the blood of his soldiers, and anxious that it should not on any occasion be wantonly or unnecessarily shed. The system of discipline he maintained was rigid; and although the wants of the soldier were scrupulously attended to, no commander ever punished excesses with greater severity.

The Duke of Berwick was much blamed by the more zealous and violent adherents of the Stuart family for not being sufficiently attached to the Jacobite party, which was that of his own family. But on a cool examination of his actions it will appear that his behaviour in this particular was, like the rest of his conduct, equally sensible and just. When he accepted of employments, received honours and dignities, and became naturalized in France, he considered it his duty to become a Frenchman in reality, and to be regulated in regard to the cause of the Stuarts according to the will and pleasure of the sovereign whom he served. But when commanded by his king to promote the views of the Stuart family, he acted with the greatest sincerity, and took the most sensible and effectual methods to serve his unhappy house. In a word, the Duke of Berwick was a man of high principle and honour; and he showed by his life and actions that moral integrity is compatible and consistent with the life of a statesman and a great general. He was killed by a cannon-ball at the siege of Philipsburg on the Rhine, in 1734, in the sixty-fourth year of his age.

BERWICKSHIRE, a county situated at the S.E. extremity of Scotland, is bounded by the German Ocean on the E.; by East Lothian on the N.; by a part of Mid-Lothian, but chiefly by Roxburghshire, on the W.; by the river Tweed, and that part of Roxburghshire which lies to the N. of the same river, on the S.; and by the township of Berwick on the S.E. On the S., the Tweed, in a winding course of about 35 miles, divides it, first, from the part of Roxburghshire which lies south of the river; secondly, from Northumberland; and thirdly, from North Durham. Its northern extremity is situated in N. Lat. 55° 58'. 30.; and its southern point upon the Tweed is in 55° 36' 30". Dunse, its principal town, is situated nearly in the centre of the county. The extreme length of the county is 31½ miles, and its extreme breadth 19½ miles. Its superficies is 446 square miles, or 285,440 acres, of which more than one-half is supposed to be arable, the remainder consisting of upland pasture and unclaimed moor.

The county consists of two divisions distinguished from each other by well-marked natural features. The first comprises the Lammermuirs, a portion of that range of graywacke hills which, commencing with the bold promontory of St Abb's Head in this country, stretches quite across to the opposite coast of Scotland. The second consists of the level district which fills up the space between the base of the Lammermuir hills and the river Tweed. This comparatively level tract is called the Merse, a name which in various printed accounts is said to be derived from its ancient name the March or Border district. There is, however, no derivation in the case, as Merse (meprc) is simply the old Saxon spelling of Marsh, a term which, however inapplicable to the district as we now see it, must have been singularly appropriate to it in its natural state. The valley of the Leader, called Lauderdale, forms a subdivision of the Lammermuir district.

The Lammermuirs present the well-known aspect of graywacke hills, viz., a succession of round-backed ridges with long unbroken slopes covered for the most part with a stratum of peat of varying thickness, bearing a rough herbage of heather, bents, and mosses. Their general aspect is uninviting, and the whole range is bleak and unfertile. The summit level is about 1000 feet above the sea, and rises at one point, Criblaw, to 1615 feet. Along the base of these hills, and in the numerous hollows which run into them, a red soil prevails, overlying the old red sandstone, which in general is fertile and admits of profitable cultivation. The higher grounds are fit only for sheep-walks, and are with slight exceptions entirely devoted to that purpose. It is strange, however, to notice how large a portion of these elevated grounds has at some remote period been subjected to the plough. Some of these furrows obviously bear date from the close of the eighteenth and beginning of the present century, when the exorbitant price of grain tempted many of the hill farmers to cultivate an increased breadth of their lands. But these comparatively modern ploughings can at once be recognised by the straightness and uniform width of the ridges, whereas the really ancient ones are invariably serpentine and irregular. The present occupiers of these hills are in general fully alive to their unfitness for arable husbandry, and accordingly confine themselves to pastoral pursuits. These elevated grounds have been much improved for this purpose by judiciously disposed fir plantations, and other artificial means of shelter from the snow storms to which the district is much exposed, and still more by a wholesale system of surface draining. By these simple and inexpensive means, the health and well-being of the flocks has been very greatly enhanced. These consist of Cheviot and blackfaced sheep; both of which mountain breeds are here cultivated with eminent success.

To a spectator looking from the summit of any of the front-lying eminences of the Lammermuirs, the whole of the lower valley of the Tweed, with the Merse in the foreground, is seen spreading out in an apparently unbroken plain, from the base of the hill on which he stands to that of the opposite Cheviot range. And hardly anywhere can a lovelier landscape of the kind be met with, presenting as it does a wide expanse of richly wooded and highly cultivated country, surrounded by a natural barrier of picturesque hills which inclose it on all sides, except at the narrow opening through which the Tweed empties itself into the German Ocean. This apparently level plain has in reality a very undulating surface; the whole valley being traversed lengthwise by a succession of parallel wave-like ridges. It has this peculiarity in addition, that the land has a considerable slope from the coast inwards. An obvious proof of this latter fact is presented by the rivers Till on the Northumberland side, and Leet in Berwickshire, which fall into the Tweed near Coldstream after a course from the coast inland. The traveller finds also that the roads which traverse the Merse from east to west are comparatively level, whereas on those which run from south to north he is harassed by a perpetual rise and fall. The streams which drain the district flow through these hollows, for the most part in deep and narrow ravines, where they make little show in the general landscape, although rich in secluded nooks of exquisite beauty. The ancient marshiness of the district was not therefore owing to its flatness, but to the prevalence of land-locked hollows in which water stagnated. That very undulation of surface which occasioned its swampiness has in fact afforded peculiar facilities for its artificial drainage. This has been so effectually accomplished, that the county is now as remarkable for the absence of water as it once was for its presence. The salubrity of the district, as well as its fertility, has been greatly enhanced by this wholesale drainage. Ague, once the scourge of its inhabitants, has absolutely disappeared; and its flocks are now exempt from the rot.

Berwickshire is strictly an agricultural county, as—with the exception of its fisheries, a gingham factory (at Earlston), some small woollen mills, and two considerable paper mills—there are no branches of industry pursued but such as are either directly connected with or subservient to the culture of the soil. Its agriculture, however, is of the first order. For this it is chiefly indebted to natural advantages of soil and climate, but in no small degree also to its proximity to England. To the latter circumstance it owes the early introduction of improved varieties of grain and other crops, of improved modes of cultivation, of valuable breeds of live stock, and of good markets in which to dispose of its produce. In common with the neighbouring county of Roxburgh, it bears a striking resemblance in the style of its agriculture to several of the midland counties of England. The most marked features in its husbandry are the great extent and excellence of the turnip crops, and of the flocks and herds by which they are consumed. Until a comparatively recent date the cattle and sheep reared in this county were, after being brought to a fair state of flesh, transferred to England, where the fattening process was completed; but now, owing to the increased cultivation of turnips, the tide has completely turned, and immense herds of growing cattle are annually brought from the northern counties of England into the valley of the Tweed, where they are fully fattened and then returned to the butcher markets of the south. This great increase in the extent and weight per acre of the turnip crops is due in part to tile-draining, but still more so to the liberal use of extraneous manures, such as guano and bones. These improvements in the cultivation of the arable parts of the county have led to corresponding ones in the pastoral district. Formerly the sheep farmers brought their stock to market as full-grown wethers; but now their grounds are stocked almost entirely with ewes, the lambs from which are sold at weaning-time to the low-country farmers, and by them are sent to the butcher markets when from sixteen to twenty-four months old. The most of these lambs are a cross breed between Cheviot or black-faced ewes and Leicester rams. These yield a larger price to the breeders than they could obtain from the pure mountain stock, while the increased size and propensity to fatten which they derive from the mixture of Leicester blood, adapts them to the purposes of their low-country purchasers.

The agriculture of the county has recently derived considerable advantages from the railways by which it is now intersected and skirted. This at once led to the establishment of a weekly grain market at Dunse, in the centre of the county, and of a fortnightly cattle market at Berwick-on-Tweed. Nearly the whole produce of the county is now sent to market by this rapid and economical mode of conveyance. The facilities which it affords for obtaining draining and building materials, lime, extraneous manures, and fuel, have greatly furthered the agricultural improvement of the whole county, but especially of its more inland parts.

The arable farms usually contain from 300 to 500 acres, lying compactly together, and divided by well-kept thorn hedges into fields of from 20 to 40 acres each. Each farm has its substantial homestead, placed as near its centre as possible. They invariably possess thrashing machinery, which, when water is not available, is propelled by a steam-engine. Another feature of these homesteads is that they always comprise as many cottages as are required to accommodate the whole of the labourers steadily employed on the farm, which is at the rate of about one family for every 50 acres of arable land. Until a very recent period, these cottages were for the most part of the very rudest construction—mere hovels, in fact, with low unplastered walls, earthen floors, a single small window, the interior open to the rafters, and unpartitioned except by the box-beds of the occupants. A thorough reformation has, however, been in rapid progress during the past ten years. These cottages are now made higher in the walls, have good slated roofs, brick floors, partitions dividing them into two or more apartments below, and a deal floor and chambers above. The windows are large and made to open, and conveniences conducing to cleanliness and external neatness are usually provided. The establishment on a 400 acre farm of good land usually consists of a steward, a shepherd, five ploughmen, a man of all work, and perhaps a female cottar. These labourers are engaged for a year from Whitsunday to Whitsunday, and are paid for the most part in stipulated quantities of farm produce. The wages of an ordinary ploughman, or hind, as he is here called, consists of the following items: 5½ bushels of oats, 21 do. of barley, 9 do. of peas, the keep of a cow (viz., grass in summer, turnips and straw in winter), L4 in money, food for himself and wife in harvest, and some gratuities when sent to market with grain. This constitutes the hind's own wages; but, as he engages to provide at all seasons a young woman or lad for the lighter work of the farm, he receives at the rate of 10d. a-day for the actual time that this young person is employed; and to compensate him for her board, he gets one-third of an imperial acre of land on which to plant potatoes. The farmer furnishes manure and horse-labour for this crop, and the hind supplies the sets and undertakes the hoeing and digging. The farmer also provides a cottage and small garden for each hind, and the cartage of what fuel he requires; for which the latter pays rent by giving the labour of a female reaper (usually his wife or daughter) to assist in cutting down the crop of the farm. The money value of a hind's wages varies, of course, with the price of grain; but it usually keeps very near the rate currently paid in the district to day-labourers employed at job-work. The hind has this important advantage, however, that, being engaged for the year, his pay is not interrupted by occasional sickness or by bad weather. Farm-stewards and shepherds receive the same quantities of grain, &c., as the ploughmen; but the money wages of the former are greater by from L6 to L8, and the latter have the grazing of from eight to twelve sheep in lieu of the money wage. This had, indeed, formerly been the case with the ploughmen also, as they still speak of the money part of their wages as their "sheep siller." This hind system has undoubtedly wrought well for all concerned. The payments in produce guard the labourer from the injurious effects of excessive fluctuations in prices; they tend to encourage habits of thriftiness and sobriety; and the possession of a cow, a pig, and plenishing for a cottage, constitutes the hind a little capitalist, and furnishes at once a motive and guarantee, for his good behaviour. The farmer and his labourers, from living together as a distinct community, take an interest in each other's family affairs, and interchange a variety of good offices which exercise a most wholesome influence on all. The plan of engaging families rather than individuals, and giving them a cottage on the farm, has the effect of preserving intact that blessed relationship, and of retaining the young under its hallowed influences to a later period than would otherwise obtain. The most plausible objection urged against the system has reference to that feature in it that the hind is taken bound to keep a young person (hence called a bondager) for the lighter work of the farm. When a hind has no grown children of his own it is said to be a hardship to him to have to hire in a stranger for this purpose, and that the young person so hired suffers by removal from under parental superintendence, and by being usually necessitated to sleep in the same apartment with the hind and his wife. It must, however, be remembered that these young persons are just the children of other hinds, and that they live in all respects as they would do in their parents' houses, and are usually treated as if they were members of the family. What is an inconvenience to individuals thus becomes a benefit to the class, and the manner in which they are too often lodged is an argument rather for improving the cottages than for interfering with the system. The admirable conduct, intelligence, and general good condition of the peasantry of this county affords the best possible proof that the hind system is a wise and beneficial one.

The rivers of the county are, the Tweed, which skirts it for about 27 miles, and falls into the sea at Berwick; the Whittadder and the Blackadder, both taking their rise in different parts of the Lammermuir hills, and after uniting falling into the Tweed; the Ewe, running into the sea at Eyemouth; the Leader, which gives its name to Lauderdale; of smaller note, the Dye, the Leet, and (for a short part of its course, before it enters Roxburghshire) the Eden. The most of these rivers flow with a rapid current, and so afford an abundant water-power, which is extensively employed in propelling corn and other mills. The value of this power has, however, been seriously impaired by the recent extensive drainage of the district. The rapidity with which rain-water is now discharged gives rise on the one hand to floods of unwonted vehemence, and, on the other, to such a diminished stream in fair weather, that scarcely a season now occurs in which many mills are not occasionally idle for lack of water.

The salmon-fishery of the river Tweed is very valuable, and has been the subject of many royal grants. For a number of years past a steady decrease has occurred in the quantity of these fish sent to market. This is due, perhaps, in some measure to the contamination of the waters by the influx of refuse from an ever-increasing number of woollen, paper, and other mills on the higher streams, but chiefly to an excessive capture of the fish by the proprietors, and to the enormous destruction of breeding fish by poachers during the annual close-time. Several attempts are at present in progress for multiplying these fish by the use of artificial spawning beds and rearing ponds. It is a curious fact, that during the past thirty years the sea or bull trout has increased greatly in numbers in the Tweed, as compared with the salmon proper, and has even taken possession of some of its tributaries, to the entire exclusion of the more valuable species. A similar and contemporaneous phenomenon in the natural history of the county has occurred in the Lammermuirs, where the common brown grouse have to a considerable extent been supplanted by the black game.

The sea-fishings at Eyemouth, Bermouth, and Coldingham, are now of great and rapidly-increasing value. For a long time the inhabitants of these villages were much demoralized by being constantly engaged in a contraband trade in foreign spirits. The establishment of an efficient coast- guard entirely suppressed this pernicious traffic, and compelled the fishermen to apply themselves steadily to their legitimate calling. They are now an exceedingly industrious and prosperous class of people. No branch of industry in the county has benefited so much as theirs has done by the introduction of railways. Formerly they sold their fish, either to hawkers, who disposed of them in the neighbouring district; or to curers, who, by a process of salting and drying, prepared them for more distant markets. Now a large proportion of the fish is bought up by the agents of fishmongers in the great towns of England, to whom they are despatched by railway as soon as they are brought to shore.

Although Berwickshire has benefited in many ways by its proximity to England, there are other respects in which its Border position exposes its inhabitants to serious evils. The higher duty levied on Scotch whisky on its passage into England tends to encourage smuggling. The vigilance of the excise-officers, however, is such as to render this traffic extremely hazardous to those who engage in it: it is now almost totally discontinued. Another and more serious evil has grown out of a difference in the marriage law of the two countries. In Scotland a simple declaration, before witnesses, by the parties, that they are husband and wife, constitutes a valid marriage. Out of this has arisen the practice of couples from England crossing the Border, and being married by unauthorized persons who make this their trade. To impart something of formality to their proceedings, these men are in the habit (often when in liquor) of profanely making use of a form of prayer borrowed from the liturgy of the Church of England, and of filling up, with dates to suit the parties, a printed certificate of marriage, of which they have blank copies in readiness. Gretna Green has long possessed an unenviable notoriety for such proceedings; but the same irregular practice goes on at all the toll-bars and similar places situated on the borders between Berwickshire and Northumberland. Nor is it confined to parties from England; for a very large proportion of the marriages among the working classes in Berwickshire take place at these tolls. The facilities thus presented for taking the most important step in life in a clandestine manner, necessarily tend to foster innumerable evils.

The county is not rich in the more valuable minerals. Thin seams of coal are known to exist in the S.E. corner of it. On the sea-coast at Lamberton several attempts have recently been made to work these, but hitherto without success. Beds of clay suitable for the manufacture of bricks and draining tiles are scattered over the county, and are in numerous instances used for this purpose. Good building materials are obtained from numerous quarries in the rocks, both of the old red sandstone formation, and of the coal measures. At Ordweel on the Whitacliff, and some other places, copper ore has been found, and attempts made to work it, but hitherto without any encouraging success.

The antiquities of Berwickshire consist in the remains of military works, tumuli, and cairns; and in the ruins of many peel-houses and castles, the memorials of those incessant feuds and forays of which in the olden time this Border district was the scene. Until the beginning of the present century, there lingered among its inhabitants many traditional reminiscences of the exciting events, fierce manners, and precarious tenure of life and property with which the Border clans were once so familiar. These popular traditions have disappeared with the progress of modern civilization, even more thoroughly than the physical memorials have done under the effects of time and agricultural improvement. Of the religious houses once so numerous, few now remain. Coldingham Priory, the most famous of them, was burned by the Earl of Hertford in his barbarous inroad into Scotland in the year 1545. The abbey of Dryburgh shared the same fate by the same hands, but its ruins yet remain to delight the eye of the traveller. The deep glen of the Pease Burn, in the N.E. angle of the county, is notable in history as one of the natural defences of Scotland. The bridge of four arches by which it is spanned, used to be, from its great height and romantic situation, an object of some curiosity; but the stupendous railway works, with which the public eye is now familiar, have quite eclipsed the honours of such objects as the Pease Bridge.

Among the principal family seats in Berwickshire are the following: Thirlstane Castle (Earl of Lauderdale); the Hirsel (Earl of Home); Lennel House (Earl of Haddington); Dryburgh Abbey (Earl of Buchan); the Retreat (Earl of Wemyss); Mertoun House (Lord Polwarth); Nisbet (Lord Sinclair); Dunse Castle (Hay); Bemerside (Haig); Jerviswood (Baillie); Wedderburn (Home).

Berwickshire is divided into thirty-two parishes. The population, which in 1801 was 30,621, had increased in 1841 to 34,345, and in 1851 to 36,287. The parliamentary constituency in 1850 was 1062. It returns one member to parliament.

Its towns and villages are few and inconsiderable. Berwick, from which the county takes its name, forms no part of it, but yet is virtually its chief market-town. The other towns are Duns, Lauder, Eyemouth, Coldstream, and Greenlaw. The latter is the county town, but from its inconvenient position, the sheriff-court business has, by a recent act of parliament, been transferred to Duns. The valued rent of Berwickshire is £178,396 Scots. The annual value of real property, as assessed in 1815, was £245,379, and in 1842, £252,945. In 1849 the number of enrolled paupers was 1315, and the assessment for relief of the poor £9,403, 9s. 11d.

North, a parliamentary burgh and parish of Scotland, near Haddington, situated on the coast of the Firth of Forth, with a small harbour, but little or no trade. The town was constituted a royal burgh by James VI. Pop. of parish (1851) 1643, of whom 498 resided in the town. Distance from Haddington 9 miles, east from Edinburgh, by railway, 22½ miles. It unites with Haddington, Dunbar, Jedburgh, and Lauder, in sending a member to parliament. It is governed by a chief magistrate, two bailies, and twelve councillors. The people are chiefly engaged in agriculture. Fishing and quarrying afford employment to a limited number. The town consists of one principal street, and contains a parish church, Free church, and a United Presbyterian place of worship. North Berwick is frequented in the bathing season. The surrounding scenery is interesting. About 2½ miles to the east of the town stand the ruins of Tantallon Castle, so graphically described in Marmion. The parish of North Berwick contains about 4000 acres, mostly arable. The geological formation is red sandstone and trap. North-Berwick Law, a conical hill, 940 feet high, stands close to the town.