Where naked cliffs were rudely piled;
But ever and anon between
Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green;
And well the lonely infant knew
Recesses where the wall-flower grew,
And honeysuckle loved to crawl
Up the low crag and ruined wall.
I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade
The sun in all his rounds surveyed;
And still I thought the shattered tower
The mightiest work of human power:
And marveled as the aged hind
With some strange tale bewitched my mind--
Of forayers, who, with headlong force,
Down that same strength had spurred their horse,
Their southern rapine to renew,
Far in the distant Cheviots blue;
And home returning, filled the hall
With revel, wassail-rout, and brawl.
Methought that still with trump and clang
The gateway's broken arches rang;
Methought grim features, seamed with scars,
Glanced through the window's rusty bars.
And even, by the winter hearth
Old tales I heard of woe and mirth,
Of lover's slights, of lady's charms:
Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms;
Of patriot battles won of old
By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold;
Of later fields of feud and fight,
When, pouring from their Highland height,
The Scottish clans in headlong sway,
Had swept the scarlet ranks away.
While stretched at length upon the floor,
Again I fought each battle o'er;
Pebbles and shells in order laid,
The mimic works of war displayed;
And onward still the Scottish lion bore,
And still the scattered southron fled before."
Here we have the elements of Waverley at work in the child of four or
five years old. In fact, the years that he spent here were crowded
with the impressions of romance and the excitement of the imagination.
He was surrounded by singular and picturesque characters. The recluse
old clergyman;--old MacDougal, of Markstoun, in his little laced
cocked hat, embroidered scarlet waistcoat, light-colored coat, and
white hair tied military fashion, kneeling on the carpet before the
child, and drawing his watch along to induce him to follow it. Old
Ormistoun, the herdsman, that used to carry him out into the
moorlands, telling him all sorts of stories, and blew his whistle when
the nurse was to fetch him home. The nurse herself, who went mad, and
to escape from this solitude, confessed that she had carried the child
up among the crags, under a temptation of the devil, to cut his throat
with her scissors, and bury him in the moss; and was therefore
dismissed at once, but found to be a maniac. All these things were
certain of sinking deep into the child's mind, amid the solitude and
wildness of the place; but all this time too he was stuffed daily with
all sorts of border and other ballads: Watt of Harden, Wight Willie of
Aikwood, Jamie Telfer of the fair Dodhead, Hardyknute, and the like;
and the stories of the cruelties practiced on the rebels at Carlisle,
and in the Highlands, after the battle of Culloden, related to him by
a farmer of Yethyn who had witnessed them--"tragic tales which," said
Scott, "made so great an impression upon me." In fact, here again were
future materials of Waverley. Before quitting the stern old tower of
Smailholm, and Sandy-knowe, why so called, and why not rather
Whinstone-knowe, it were difficult to say,--we may, in the eloquent
words of Mr. Lockhart, point out the celebrated scenes which lie in
view from it. "Nearly in front of it, across the Tweed, Lessudden, the
comparatively small, but still venerable and stately abode of the
lairds of Raeburn; and the hoary abbey of Dryburgh, surrounded with
yew-trees as ancient as itself, seem to lie almost at the feet of the
spectator. Opposite him rise the purple peaks of Eildon, the
traditional scene of Thomas the Rhymer's interview with the Queen of
Faerie; behind are the blasted peel which the seer of Erceldoun
himself inhabited, 'The Broom of the Cowdenknowes,' the pastoral
valley of the Leader, and the black wilderness of Lammermoor. To the
eastward, the desolate grandeur of Hume Castle breaks the horizon, as
the eye travels toward the range of the Cheviot. A few miles westward,
Melrose, 'like some tall rock with lichens gray,' appears clasped amid
the windings of the Tweed; and the distance presents the serrated
mountains of the Gala, the Ettrick, and the Yarrow, all famous in
song. Such were the objects that had painted the earliest images on
the eye of the last and greatest of the border minstrels."
The next place which became a haunt of the boyhood of Scott was Kelso.
Here he had an uncle, Captain Robert Scott, and an aunt, Miss Janet
Scott, under whose care he had spent the latter part of his time at
Sandy-knowe. Scott, as I have observed, was one of the most fortunate
men that ever lived in the circumstances of his early life, in which
every possible event which could prepare him for the office of a great
and original novelist concurred, as if by appointment of Providence.
He was led to visit and explore all the most beautiful scenery of his
country--the Borders, the Highlands, those around Edinburgh; and in
every place at that time existed multitudes of singular characters,
many of them still retaining the quaint garb and habits of a former
day. We have seen that his school and college fellows comprised almost
all the afterward distinguished men of their age, no trivial advantage
to him in his own progress. At Sandy-knowe, beside the characters we
have referred to, his old grandfather and grandmother, and their quiet
life--"Old Mrs. Scott sitting, with her spinning-wheel, at one side of
the fire in a _clean, clean_ parlor; the grandfather, a good deal
failed, in his elbows-chair opposite; and the little boy lying on the
carpet at the old man's feet, listening to the Bible, or whatever good
book Miss Jenny was reading to them." He was away sometimes at
Prestonpans, and there, as fortune would have it, for he must be
enriched with all such treasure, he saw in George Constable the
original of Monkbarns, and also the original Dalgetty. Kelso now added
to the number of his original characters, and scenes for future
painting. Miss Janet Scott lived, he tells us, in a small house in a
large garden to the eastward of the church-yard of Kelso, which
extended down to the Tweed. This fine old garden of seven or eight
acres, had winding walks, mounds, and a banqueting house. It was laid
out in the old style, with high pleached hornbeam hedges, and had a
fine plane-tree. In many parts of the garden were fine yews and other
trees, and there was also a goodly old orchard. Here, as in a very
paradise, he used to read and devour heaps of poetry. Tasso's
Jerusalem Delivered, Percy's Reliques, and the works of Richardson,
Fielding, Smollett, Mackenzie, and other of the great novelists. The
features of this garden remained deeply imprinted in his mind, and
have been reproduced in different descriptions of his works. Like the
garden of Eden itself this charming old garden has now vanished.
Indeed, he himself relates with what chagrin he found, on revisiting
the place many years afterward, the good old plane-tree gone, the
hedges pulled up, and the bearing trees felled! I searched for some
trace of it on my visit there in vain, though its locality is so well
defined. There was, however, the old grammar-school not far off to
which he used to go, and where he found, in Lancelot Whale, the
prototype of Dominie Sampson, and in two of the boys, his future
printers, James and John Ballantyne. The neighborhood of Kelso, the
town itself, quiet and old-fashioned, was well calculated to charm a
boy of his dreaming and poetry-absorbing age. The Tweed here is a
fine, broad stream, the banks are steep and magnificently hung with
splendid woods. The adjoining park and old castle, the ruins of the
fine abbey in the town, and charming walks by the Tweed or the Teviot,
which here unite, with their occasional broad, sandy beach, and
anglers wading in huge boots; all made their delightful impressions
upon him. He speaks with rapture of the long walks along the river
with John Ballantyne, repeating poetry and telling stories. His uncle,
Captain Robert Scott, lived somewhat farther out on the same side as
his aunt, at a villa called Rosebank, which still stands unchanged
amid much fine lofty timber, and with its lawn running down to the
Tweed.
Kelso was the last country abode of the boyhood of Scott. Edinburgh,
with his occasional flights into the Highlands, and his _raids_
into Liddesdale, kept him till his manhood. That found him with his
blithe little wife in his cottage at Lasswade.
Lasswade is a lovely neighborhood. It is thrown up with lofty ridges
all finely wooded. The country there is rich, and the noble woods, the
fine views down into the fertile valleys, and the Esk coming sounding
along its channel from Rosslyn and Hawthornden, make it very charming.
It is in the immediate neighborhood not only of Rosslyn with its
beautiful chapel, and the classic cliffs and woods of Hawthornden, but
of Dalkeith; and Lord Melville's park is at Lasswade itself.
The cottage of Scott is still called Lasswade cottage. Every one still
knows the house as the one where he lived. A miller near said, "He
minded him weel. He was an advocate then, and his wife a little dark
Frenchwoman." The house is now occupied as a ladies' school, kept by
two Miss Mutters. It looks somewhat neglected, and wants painting and
keeping in more perfect order; but it is itself a very sweet, secluded
place. It is before you come to the village of Lasswade, about
half-way down the hill, from an ordinary hamlet called Loanhead. It
stands about fifty yards from the roadside; and, in fact, the road
divides at the projecting corner of its higher paddock; the main
highway descending to the left to Lasswade, and the other to the right
proceeding past several pleasant villas to the Esk. There are two
roads leading from the highway up to the house; one being the carriage
drive up to the front, and the other to the back, past some laborers'
cottages. It is a somewhat singular-looking house, having one end
tall, and thatched in a remarkably steep manner; and then a long, low
range, running away from it. The whole is thatched, whitewashed, and
covered with Ayrshire roses, evergreen plants, and masses of ivy. When
you get round to the front, for it turns its back on the road, you
find the lofty part projecting much beyond the low range, and having a
sort of circular front. A gravel walk or drive goes quite round to
this side, and is divided from a paddock by laurels. There are three
paddocks. One opposite to the tall end, and extending down to the
road, one in front, and one behind the house, in which stands, near
the house, in a still smaller inclosure, a remarkably large
sycamore-tree. The paddocks are all surrounded by tall, full-grown
trees, and they shut in the place to perfect retirement. At the end of
the low range lies a capital large kitchen garden, with plenty of
fruit trees; and this extends to the backlane, proceeding toward the
valley of the Esk. The neighborhood is full of the houses of people of
wealth and taste. Here for many years lived Henry Mackenzie, the Man
of Feeling. Here, at this cottage, however secluded, Scott found
plenty of literary society. He was busy with his German translations
of Lenore, Gôtz von Berlichingen, etc.; and his Border Minstrelsy.
Here Mat. Lewis, and Heber, the collector of rare books, visited him;
as well as the crabbed Ritson, whom the rough and impatient Leyden put
to flight. Then came Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, from a tour in
the Highlands; and Scott set off on a ramble down to Melrose and
Teviotdale. He had here partly written the Lay of the Last Minstrel,
and edited and published Sir Tristram. These facts are enough to give
a lasting interest to the cottage of Lasswade. The duties of his
sheriffdom now called him frequently to the forest of Ettrick, and he
fixed his abode at the lovely but solitary Ashestiel.
Ashestiel occupied as an abode a marked and joyous period of Scott's
life. He was now a happy husband, the happy father of a lovely young
family. Fortune was smiling on him. He held an honorable and to him
delightful office, that of the sheriff of the county of Selkirk; which
bound him up with almost all that border ballad country, in which he
reveled as in a perfect fairy land. He was fast rising into fame, and
in writing out the visions of poetry which were now warmly and rapidly
opening upon his mind, he was located in a spot most auspicious to
their development. The solitude of Ashestiel was only felt by him as a
refreshing calm, for his spirit was teeming with life and action, and
his rides over hill and dale, his coursing with his favorite dogs and
friends, along the hills of Yair, "his burning of the water," in the
deep and dark Tweed, which rolled sounding on beneath the forest banks
below his house--that is, spearing salmon by torch-light: these were
all but healthy and joyous set-offs to the bustle of inward life in
the composition of The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, The Lady of
the Lake, The Lord of the Isles, of Waverley, and the active labors on
Dryden, and a host of other literary undertakings. I believe Scott
resided about seven years at Ashestiel; and it is amazing what a mass
of new and beautiful compositions he worked off there. It was here
that his poetic fame grew to its full height; and he was acknowledged,
though Southey, Wordsworth, Campbell, and Coleridge were now pouring
out their finest productions, to be the most original and popular
writer of the day. There was to be one fresh and higher flight even by
him, that of "The Great Unknown," and this was reserved for
Abbotsford. There the fame of his romances began, there grew into its
full-blown greatness; but here the sun of his poetic reputation
ascended to its zenith. In particular, the poem of Marmion will
forever recall the memory and the scenery of Ashestiel. The
introductions to the several cantos, than which there are no poems in
the English language more beautiful of this kind, are all imbued with
the spirit of the place. They breathe at once the solitary beauty of
the hills, the lovely charm of river, wood, and heath, and the genial
blaze of the domestic hearth; on which love, and friendship, and
gladsome spirits of childhood, and the admiration of eager visitors to
the secluded abode of "The Last Minstrel," had made an earthly
paradise. The summer rambles up the Ettrick or Yarrow, by Newark
Tower, St. Mary's Loch, or into the wilds of Moffatdale, when
"The lavroch whistled from the cloud:
The stream was lively, but not loud;
From the white-thorn the May-flower shed
Its dewy fragrance round our head:
Not Ariel lived more merrily
Under the blossomed bough than we."
Then how the time flew by in the brighter season of the year, by dale
and stream, in wood and wold, till the approach of winter and the
Edinburgh session called them to town. How vividly are these days of
storm and cloud depicted.
"When dark December glooms the day,
And takes our autumn joys away:
When short and scant the sunbeam throws
Upon the weary waste of snows,
A cold and profitless regard,
Like patron on a needy bard--
When sylvan occupation's done,
And o'er the chimney rests the gun,
And hang, in idle trophy near,
The game-pouch, fishing-rod, and spear:
When wiry terrier, rough and grim,
And grayhound with its length of limb,
And pointer, now employed no more,
Cumber our narrow parlor floor:
When in his stall the impatient steed
Is long condemned to rest and feed:
When from our snow-encircled home
Scarce cares the hardiest step to roam,
Since path is none, save that to bring
The needful water from the spring:
When wrinkled news-page, thrice conned o'er,
Beguiles the dreary hour no more,
And darkling politician, crossed,
Inveighs against the lingering post,
And answering housewife sore complains
Of carriers' snow-impeded wains:
When such the country cheer, I come,
Well pleased to seek our city home;
For converse, and for books, to change
The forest's melancholy range;
And welcome, with renewed delight,
The busy day and social night."
_Introduction to Canto v._
It was on a fine, fresh morning, after much rain, that, with a smart
lad as driver, I sped in a gig from Galashiels up the valley on the
way to Ashestiel. The sweet stream of the Gala water ran on our left,
murmuring deliciously, and noble woods right and left, among them the
classic mansion of Torwoodlee, and wood-crowned banks, made the way
beautiful. Anon we came out to the open country, bare but pleasant
hills, and small light streams careering along the valleys, and
shepherds, with their dogs at their heels, setting out on their long
rounds for the day. There was an inspiriting life and freshness in
every thing--air, earth, and sky. The way is about six miles in
length, from Galashiels to Ashestiel. About three parts of this was
passed when we came to Clovenfoot, a few houses among the green hills,
where Scott used often to lodge for days and weeks at the little inn,
before he got to Ashestiel. The country about Ashestiel consists of
moorland hills, still showing the darkness of the heather upon them.
It is wilder, and has an air of greater loneliness than the pastoral
mountains of Ettrick and Moffatdale; and the pleasant surprise is the
more lively, when at once, in the midst of this brown and treeless
region, after going on wondering where this Ashestiel can have hidden
itself, not a house or a trace of existence being visible, but bare
hill beyond hill, you suddenly see before you, down in a deep valley,
a mass of beautiful woodlands emerging into view; the Tweed displays
its broad and rapid stream at the foot of this richly wooded scene,
and a tasteful house on the elevated bank beyond the river shows its
long front and gables over the tree-tops. This is Ashestiel, the
residence of Scott, where he wrote Marmion and commenced Waverley. We
descended to the Tweed, where there is no bridge, but a ford, called
by Scott "none of the best," "that ugly ford," which after long rains
is sometimes carried away, and instead of a ford becomes a gulf. I
remembered the incident of Scott himself being once pushed into it,
when his horse found no bottom and had to swim across; and of a cart
bringing the new kitchen-range being upset, and leaving the much
desired fireplace at the bottom. The river was now much swollen, but
my stout-hearted lad said he did not fear it; he often went there; and
so we passed boldly through the powerful stream, and up the woodland
bank to the house. The proprietor and present occupant, Major General
Sir James Russell, a relative of Sir Walter's, was just about to mount
his horse to go out, but very kindly turned back and introduced me to
Lady Russell, an elegant and very agreeable woman, the sister of Sir
James and Captain Basil Hall. They showed me the house with the
greatest pleasure, and pressed me to stay luncheon. The house, Sir
James said, was in Scott's time much less than at present. It was a
farmhouse made out of an old border tower, by his father, and in the
room looking down the Tweed, a beautiful view, Scott wrote Marmion,
and the first part of Waverley, as well as the conclusion of the Lay
of the Last Minstrel, and the whole of the Lady of the Lake. That room
is now the center sitting-room, and Sir Walter's little drawing-room
is Sir James's bedroom. Sir James has greatly enlarged and improved
the house. He has built a wing at each end, running at right angles
with the old front, and his dining-room now enjoys the view which
Scott's sitting-room had before. The house is very elegantly
furnished, as well as beautifully situated. The busts of Sir Walter
Scott and Captain Basil Hall occupy conspicuous places in the
dining-room, and recall the associations of the past and the present.
The grounds which face the front that is turned from the river and
looks up the hill, are very charming; and at a distance of a field is
the mound in the wood called "The Shirra's knowe," because Scott was
fond of sitting there. Its views are now obstructed by the growth of
the trees, but if they were opened again would be wildly woodland,
looking down on the Tweed, and on a brook which rushes down a deep
glen close by, called the Stiel burn. The knowe has all the character
of a cairn or barrow, and I should think there is little doubt that it
is one. It does not, however, stand on Sir James's property, and
therefore it is not kept in order. Above the knowe, and Sir James's
gardens, stretch away the uplands, and on the distant hill lies the
mound and trench called Wallace's trench.
One would have thought that Scott was sufficiently withdrawn from the
world at Ashestiel; but the world poured in upon him even here, and
beside the visits of Southey, Heber, John Murray, and other of his
distant friends, the fashionable and far wandering tribes found him
out. "In this little drawing-room of his," said Sir James Russell, "he
entertained three duchesses at once." Adding, "Happy had it been for
him had he been contented to remain here, and have left unbuilt the
castle of Abbotsford, so much more in the highway of the tourist, and
offering so much more accommodation." That is too true. The present
house is good enough for a lord, and yet not too good for a private
gentleman; while its situation is, in some respects, more beautiful
than that of Abbotsford. The site of the house is more elevated,
standing amid its fine woods, and yet commanding the course of the
bold river deep beneath it, with its one bank with dark hanging
forests, and that beyond open to the bare and moorland hills. But
Scott would to Abbotsford, and so must we.
I have, somewhere else, expressed how greatly the landlords of
Scotland are indebted to Scott. It is to him that thousands of them
owe not merely subsistence, but ample fortunes. In every part of the
country where he has touched the earth with his magic wand, roads have
run along the heretofore impassable morass, rocks have given way for
men, and houses have sprung up full of the necessary "entertainment
for man and horse." Steamers convey troops of summer tourists to the
farthest west and north of the Scottish coast; and every lake and
mountain swarms with them. On arriving at Melrose, I was greatly
struck with the growth of this traffic of picturesque and romantic
travel. It was twenty years since I was in that village before. Scott
was then living at Abbotsford, and drew up to the inn door to take
post-horses on to Kelso. While these were got out, we had a full and
fair view of him as he sat, without his hat, in the carriage reading,
as we ourselves were breakfasting near the window of a room just
opposite. Then, there was one small inn in the place, and very few
people in it; now, there were two or three; and these, beside
lodging-houses, all crammed full of guests. The inn-yards stood full
of traveling carriages, and servants in livery were lounging about in
motley throngs. The ruins of the abbey were like a fair for people,
and the intelligent and very obliging woman who shows them said, that
every year the numbers increased, and, that every year, foreigners
seemed to arrive from more and more distant regions.
At Abbotsford it was the same. It must be recollected, that there had
been a summer of incessant rain, yet both at the inn and at the abbey
the people said that it had appeared to make no difference, they had
been constantly full. As I drove up toward Abbotsford it was getting
toward evening, and I feared I might be almost too late to be allowed
to see through the house, but I met three or four equipages returning
thence, and as many fresh ones arrived while I was there. Some of
these were obliged to wait a long time, as the housekeeper would not
admit above a dozen persons or so at once; and carriages stood about
the court as though it were some great visiting day there. That
visiting day endures the whole summer through; and the money received
for inspection alone must be a handsome income. If the housekeeper
gets it all, as she receives it all, she will eventually match the old
housekeeper of the Duke of Devonshire, at Chatsworth, who is said to
have died a few years ago, worth £120,000! and was still most anxious
to secure the reversion of the post for her niece, but in vain; the
duke probably and very justly thinking, that there should be
turn-about even in the office of such liberal door-keeping.
Abbotsford, after twenty years' interval, and having then been seen
under the doubly exaggerating influence of youth and the recent
influence of Scott's poetry, in some degree disappointed me. I had
imagined the house itself larger, its towers more lofty, its whole
exterior more imposing. The plantations are a good deal grown, and
almost bury the house from the distant view, but they still preserve
all their formality of outline, as seen from the Galashiels road.
Every field has a thick, black belt of fir-trees, which run about,
forming on the long hillside the most fantastic figures. The house is,
however, a very interesting house. At first, you come to the front
next to the road, which you do by a steep descent down the plantation.
You are struck, having a great castle in your imagination, with the
smallness of the place. It is neither large nor lofty. Your ideal
Gothic castle shrinks into a miniature. The house is quite hidden till
you are at it, and then you find yourself at a small, castellated
gateway, with its crosses cut into the stone pillars on each side, and
the little window over it, as for the warden to look out at you. Then
comes the view of this side of the house with its portico, its bay
windows with painted glass, its tall, battlemented gables, and turrets
with their lantern terminations; the armorial escutcheon over the
door, and the corbels, and then another escutcheon aloft on the wall
of stars and crescents. All these have a good effect; and not less so
the light screen of freestone finely worked and carved with its
elliptic arches and iron lattice-work, through which the garden is
seen with its espalier trees, high brick walls, and greenhouse, with a
doorway at the end leading into a second garden of the same sort. The
house has a dark look, being built of the native whinstone, or
grau-wacke, as the Germans call it, relieved by the quoins and
projections of the windows and turrets in freestone. All looks
classic, and not too large for the poet and antiquarian builder. The
dog Maida lies in stone on the right hand of the door in the court,
with the well known inscription. The house can neither be said to be
Gothic nor castellated. It is a combination of the poet's, drawn from
many sources, but all united by good taste, and forming an unique
style, more approaching to the Elizabethan than any other. Round the
court, of which the open-work screen just mentioned is the farther
boundary, runs a covered walk, that is, along the two sides not
occupied by the house and the screen; and in the wall beneath the
arcade thus formed, are numerous niches, containing a medley of old
figures brought from various places. There are Indian gods, old
figures out of churches, and heads of Roman emperors. In the corner of
the court, on the opposite side of the portico to the dog Maida, is a
fountain, with some similar relics reared on the stone-work round it.
The other front gives you a much greater idea of the size. It has a
more continuous range of façade. Here, at one end, is Scott's square
tower, ascended by outside steps, and a round or octagon tower at the
other; you can not tell, certainly, which shape it is, as it is
covered with ivy. On this the flag-staff stands. At the end next to
the square tower, _i.e._, at the right-hand end as you face it,
you pass into the outer court, which allows you to go round the end of
the house from one front to the other, by the old gateway, which once
belonged to the Tolbooth of Edinburgh. Along the whole of this front
runs a gallery, in which the piper used to stalk to and fro while they
were at dinner. This man still comes about the place, though he has
been long discharged. He is a great vagabond.
Such is the exterior of Abbotsford. The interior is far more
interesting. The porch, copied from that of the old palace of
Linlithgow, is finely groined, and there are stags' horns nailed up in
it. When the door opens, you find yourselves in the entrance-hall,
which is, in fact, a complete museum of antiquities and other matters.
It is, as described in Lockhart's Life of Scott, wainscoted with old
wainscot from the kirk of Dumfermline, and the pulpit of John Knox is
cut in two, and placed as chiffonniers between the windows. The whole
walls are covered with suits of armor and arms, horns of moose deer,
the head of a musk bull, etc. At your left hand, and close to the
door, are two cuirasses, some standards, eagles, etc., collected at
Waterloo. At the opposite end of the room are two full suits of armor,
one Italian, and one English of the time of Henry V., the latter
holding _in its hands_ a stupendous two-handed sword, I suppose
six feet long, and said to have been found on Bosworth field. Opposite
to the door is the fireplace of freestone, imitated from an arch in
the cloister at Melrose, with a peculiarly graceful spandrel. In it
stands the iron grate of Archbishop Sharpe, who was murdered by the
Covenanters; and before it stands a most massive Roman camp kettle. On
the roof, at the center of the pointed arches, runs a row of
escutcheons of Scott's family, two or three at one end being empty,
the poet not being able to trace the maternal lineage so high as the
paternal. These were painted accordingly _in nubibus_, with the
motto, _Nox alta velat_. Round the door at one end are emblazoned
the shields of his most intimate friends, as Erskine, Moritt, Rose,
etc., and all round the cornice ran the emblazoned shields of the old
chieftains of the Border, with this motto, in old English
letters:--"THESE BE THE COAT ARMOURIES OF THE CLANNIS AND CHIEF
MEN OF NAME WHO KEEPIT THE MARCHYS OF SCOTLAND IN THE AULDE TYME OF
THE KING. TREWE WEARE THEY IN THEIR TYME, AND IN THEIR DEFENCE, GOD
THEM DEFEND IT."
The chairs are from Scone Palace. On the wall hangs the chain shirt of
Cromwell; and on a table at the window where visitors sign their
names, lies the huge, tawny lion skin, sent by Thomas Pringle from
South Africa.
A passage leading from the entrance-hall to the breakfast-room has a
fine groined ceiling, copied from Melrose, and the open space at the
end, two small full-length paintings of Miss Scott, and Miss Anne
Scott.
In the breakfast-room where Scott often used to read, there is a
table, constructed something like a pyramid, which turns round. On
each side of this he laid books of reference, and turned the table as
he wanted one or the other. Here is also a small oak table, at which
he breakfasted. His daughter Anne used generally to join him at it;
but if she did not come, he made breakfast himself, and went to work
again without waiting. In this room--a charming little room, with the
most cheerful views up the valley--there is such a collection of books
as might serve for casual reading, or to refresh the mind when weary
of writing, poetry and general literature: beside a fine oil painting
over the fireplace of the Wolf's craig, in Lammermoor, _i.e._,
Fast Castle, by Thomson, and numbers of sweet water-color pictures.
Also a bust of Mackenzie, the Man of Feeling, in a niche.
Then there is the library, a noble room, with a fine cedar ceiling,
with beautiful compartments, and most lovely carved pendants, where
you see bunches of grapes, human figures, leaves, etc. It is copied
from Rosslyn or Melrose. There are three busts in this room: the
first, one of Sir Walter, by Chantrey; one of Wordsworth; and in the
great bay window, on a table, a cast of that of Shakspeare, from
Stratford. There is a full-length painting of the poet's son, the
present Sir Walter, in his hussar uniform, with his horse. The
work-table in the space of the bay window, and the fine carved ceiling
in this part of the room, as well as the brass hanging lamp brought
from Herculaneum, are particularly worthy of notice. There is a pair
of most splendidly carved box-wood chairs, brought from Italy, and
once belonging to some cardinal. The other chairs are of ebony,
presented by George IV. There is a tall silver urn, standing on a
porphyry table, filled with bones from the Piræus, and inscribed as
the gift of Lord Byron. The books in this room, many of which are
secured from hurt by wire-work doors, are said to amount to twenty
thousand. Many, of course, are very valuable, having been collected
with great care by Scott, for the purpose of enabling him to write his
different works. Then, there is a large collection of both printed and
MS. matter, relative to the rebellions of '15 and '45; and others
connected with magic and demonology. Altogether the books, many of
which are presentation copies, from authors, not only of this but
various other countries, make a goodly show, and the room is a noble
one.
In the drawing-room, the wood also is of cedar; and here hangs the
large painting by Raeburn, containing the full-length portrait of Sir
Walter, as he sits under a wall, and of his two dogs. This, one often
sees engraved. It is said to be most like him, and is certainly very
like Chantrey's bust when you examine them together. There is a
portrait of Lady Scott, too. Oh! such a round-faced little blackamoor
of a woman! One instantly asks--where was Sir Walter's taste? Where
was the judgment which guided him in describing Di Vernon, Flora
MacIvor, or Rebecca? "But," said the housekeeper, "she was a very
brilliant little woman;" and this is also said by those who knew her.
How greatly, then, must the artist have sinned against her! The
portrait of Miss Anne Scott is lovely, and you see a strong likeness
to her father. Scott's mother is a very good, amiable,
motherly-looking woman, in an old-fashioned lady's cap. Beside these
articles, there is a table of verd antique, presented by Lord Byron.
This is placed between the front windows, and bears a vase of what
resembles purple glass, a transparent marble, inlaid beautifully with
gold. There is also a black ebony cabinet, which was presented by
George IV. with the chairs now in the library.
The armory is a most remarkable room; it is the collection of the
author of Waverley; and to enumerate all the articles which are here
assembled, would require a volume. Take a few particulars. The old
wooden lock of the Tolbooth of Selkirk; Queen Mary's offering-box, a
small iron ark or coffer, with a circular lid, found in
Holyrood-house. Then Hofer's rifle--a short, stout gun, given him by
Sir Humphry Davy, or rather by Hofer's widow to Sir Humphry for Sir
Walter. The housekeeper said, that Sir Humphry had done some service
for the widow of Hofer, and in her gratitude she offered him this
precious relic, which he accepted for Sir Walter, and delighted the
poor woman with the certainty that it would be preserved to posterity
in such a place as Abbotsford. There is an old white hat, worn by the
burgesses of Stowe when installed. Rob Roy's purse and his gun; a very
long one, with the initials R. M. C., Robert Macgregor Campbell, round
the touch-hole. A rich sword in a silver sheath, presented to Sir
Walter by the people of Edinburgh, for the pains he took when George
IV. was there. The sword of Charles I., afterward belonging to the
Marquis of Montrose. A collection of claymores, and of the swords of
German executioners, of the very kind still used in that
semi-barbarous, though _soi-disant_ philosophical country; a
country of _private_ trials without juries, of torture in prison,
and of the bloodiest mode of execution possible. There the criminal,
if not--as was a poor tailor of Köningsberg, in 1841--broken on the
wheel inch by inch for killing a bishop, is seated in a chair on the
platform, with his head against a post, and the executioner strikes
off his head. The head falls, the blood spouts like fountains from the
struggling trunk, and falls in a crimson shower all over the figure--a
horrible spectacle!
On the blades of one of these swords is an inscription, thus
translated by Scott himself:
"Dust, when I strike, to dust; from sleepless grave,
Sweet Jesu, stoop a sin-stained soul to save."
The hunting-bottle of James I.; the thumbikins with which the
Covenanters were tortured; the iron crown of the martyr Wishart;
Bonaparte's pistols, found in his carriage at Waterloo; the pistols of
Claverhouse, all of steel, according to the fashion of that time, and
inlaid with silver. Two great keys of the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, found
after the doors were burned by the mob who seized and hanged Captain
Porteus; and innumerable other objects of the like kind.
In the dining-room, the most curious thing is the painting of the head
of Mary Queen of Scots, immediately after decapitation. Of this, it is
said, Sir Walter took great pains to establish the authenticity. It is
by Amias Cawood, and, to my fancy, strange as it may seem, gives a
better notion of the beauty of Mary than any of her living portraits.
But the hair is still black, not gray, or rather white, as stated by
the historians. There are a considerable number of good portraits in
this room. A fine one of Nell Gwynn, also much handsomer than we
generally see her; it is a fellow to the one in Glammis Castle. An
equestrian portrait of Lord Essex, the parliament general. Thomson,
the poet, who must likewise have been handsome, if like this. John
Dryden. Oliver Cromwell, when young. The Duke of Monmouth. The
marriage of Scott of Harden, to muckle-mouthed Meg, who is making the
widest mouth possible, with a very arch expression, as much as to say,
"As you will be obliged to have me, I will, for this once, have the
pleasure of giving you a fright." Charles XII. of Sweden. Walter
Raleigh, in a broad hat, very different to any other portrait I have
seen of him--more common looking. Small full-lengths of Henrietta,
queen of Charles I., and of Ann Hyde, queen of James II. Prior and
Gay, by Jervas. Hogarth, by himself. Old Beardie, Scott's
great-grandfather. Lucy Walters, first mistress of Charles II., and
mother of the Duke of Monmouth; with the Duchess of Buccleugh,
Monmouth's wife.
Lastly, and on our way back to the entrance-hall, we enter the
writing-room of Sir Walter, which is surrounded by book-shelves, and a
gallery, by which Scott not only could get at his books, but by which
he could get to and from his bedroom, and so be at work when his
visitors thought him in bed. He had only to lock his door, and he was
safe. Here are his easy leathern chair and desk, at which he used to
work, and, in a little closet, is the last suit that he ever wore--a
bottle-green coat, plaid waistcoat, of small pattern, gray plaid
trowsers, and white hat. Near these hang his walking-stick, and his
boots and walking-shoes. Here are, also, his tools, with which he used
to prune his trees in the plantations, and his yeoman-cavalry
accouterments. On the chimney-piece stands a German light-machine,
where he used to get a light, and light his own fire. There is a chair
made of the wood of the house at Robroyston, in which William Wallace
was betrayed; having a brass plate in the back, stating that it is
from this house, where "Wallace was done to death by Traitors." The
writing-room is connected with the library, and this little closet had
a door issuing into the garden; so that Scott had all his books at
immediate command, and could not only work early and late, without any
body's knowledge, but, at will, slip away to wood and field, if he
pleased, unobserved. In his writing-room, there is a full-length
portrait of Rob Roy, and a head of Claverhouse. The writing-room is
the only sitting-room facing the south. It ranges with the
entrance-hall, and between them lies a little sort of armory, where
stand two figures, one presenting a specimen of chain armor, and the
other, one of wadded armor--that is, silk stuffed with cotton.
Here, then, is a tolerable account of the interior of Abbotsford. I
perceive that Mr. Lockhart, in his recent People's Edition of his Life
of Scott, has given an account said to have been furnished by Scott
himself to an annual. If it were correct at the time it was written,
there must have been a general rearrangement of paintings and other
articles. Mr. Lockhart says, he suspects its inaccuracy; but what
makes me doubt that Scott drew up the account is, that some of the
most ornamental ceilings, which can _not_ have been changed, are
stated to be of dark oak, whereas they are of pencil cedar.
I again walked up the mile-long plantation, running along the hillside
from the house up the valley, and found it again merely a walk through
a plantation--nothing more. It is true that, as you get a good way up,
you arrive at some high ground, and can look out up the valley toward
Selkirk, and get some views of the Tweed, coming down between its
moorland hills, which are very sweet. But the fault of Abbotsford is,
that it is not laid out to the advantage that it might be. The ground
in front of the house, highly capable of being laid out in beautiful
lawn and shrubbery, is cut up with trees that shut out the noblest
feature of the scene--the river. One side of the house is elbowed up
with square brick garden walls, which ought to be at a distance, and
concealed; the other with an unsightly laundry-yard, with its posts
and lines. Just down before the house, where the sweet and rich
verdure of lawn should be, is set the farmyard; and then comes the
long, monotonous wood. This, in some degree, might be altered, and
probably sometime will. At present, the fault of the whole estate is
stiffness and formality. The plantations of fir have, necessarily, a
stiff, formal look; but this, too, will mend with time. They are now
felling out the fir timber; and then what is called the hard-wood,
that is, the deciduous trees, will in course of time, present a softer
and more agreeable look.
I ranged all through these plantations, from the house to the foot of
the Eildon hills, down by the Rhymer's glen and Huntly burn. It is
amazing what a large stretch of poor land Sir Walter had got together.
It is not particularly romantic, except for the fine background of the
Eildon hills; but Sir Walter saw the scene with the eyes of poetic
tradition. He saw things which had been done there, and sung of; and
all was beautiful to him: and in time, when the trees are better
grown, and have a more varied aspect, and the plantations are more
broken up, it _will_ be beautiful. The views from the higher
grounds are so now. Down at the house the trees have so grown and
closed up the prospects, that you can scarcely get a single glimpse of
the river; but when you ascend the woods, and come to an opening on
the hills, you see up and down the valley, far and wide. Near a mount
in the plantations, on which an old carved stone is reared, and held
upright by iron stays, probably marking the scene of some border
skirmish, there are seats of turf, from which you have fine views. You
see below Abbotsford, where the Gala water comes sweeping into the
Tweed, and where Galashiels lies smoking beyond, all compact, like a
busy little town as it is. And in another direction, the towers and
town of Melrose are discerned at the foot of the bare but airy Eildon
hills; and, still farther, the black summit of the Cowdenknowes.
Something beyond this spot, after issuing out of the first mass of
plantations, and ascending a narrow lane, I came to a farmhouse. I
asked a boy in the yard what the farm was called; and a thrill went
through me when he answered--KAESIDE. It was the farm of William
Laidlaw, the steward and the friend of Sir Walter. We have seen how,
in his earlier, joyous days, Sir Walter fell in with Laidlaw, Hogg,
and Leyden. The expeditions into Ettrick and Yarrow, in quest of old
border ballads, brought Scott into contact with the two former. He
found, not only poetry, but actual living poets, among the shepherds
and sheep-farmers of the hills. I know nothing more beautiful than the
relation of these circumstances in Lockhart's Life of Scott. In
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal of July and August, 1845, there is also a
very interesting account of Laidlaw, and especially of the coming of
Scott and Leyden to Blackhouse farm, in Yarrow, Laidlaw's farm, and of
their strolling over all the classic ground of the neighborhood; to
St. Mary's Loch, to the thorn of Whitehope, Dryhope Tower, the former
abode of "the Flower of Yarrow," Yarrow Church, and the Seven Stones,
which mark the graves of the Seven Brothers, slain in "The Douglas
Tragedy." How Laidlaw produced the famous ballad of "Auld Maitland,"
and how Leyden walked about in the highest excitement while Scott read
it aloud. Then follows the equally interesting account of the visit of
Scott and Laidlaw to Hogg, in Ettrick. These were golden days. Laidlaw
and Hogg were relatives, and old friends. Hogg had been shepherd at
Blackhouse, with Laidlaw's father. The young men had grown poets, from
the inspiration of the scenes they lived among, and their mutual
conversation. Then comes the great minstrel of the time, seeking up
the scattered and unedited treasures of antiquity, and finds these
rustic poets of the hills, and they become friends for life. It is a
romance. Laidlaw was of an old and famous, but decayed family. The
line had been cursed by a maternal ancestress, and they believed that
the curse took effect: they all became lawless men. But Laidlaw went
to live at Abbotsford, as the factor or steward of Scott; and in him
Scott found one of the most faithful, intelligent, and sympathizing
friends, ready either to plant his trees or write down his novels at
his dictation, when his evil days came upon him. In our daydreams we
imagine such things as these. We lay out estates, and settle on them
our friends and faithful adherents, and make about us a paradise of
affection, truth, and intellect; but it was the fortune of Scott to do
this actually. Here, at his little farm of Kaeside, lived Laidlaw, and
after Scott's death went to superintend estates in Rosshire; and his
health at length giving way, he retired to the farm of his brother, a
sheep-farmer of Contin; and there, in as beautiful scenery as Scotland
or almost any country has to show, the true poet of nature, this
true-hearted man, breathed his last on the 18th of May, 1845.
Those who wander through the woods of Abbotsford, and find their
senses regaled by the rich odor of sweet-brier and woodbines, with
shrubs oftener found in gardens, as I did with some degree of
surprise, will read with interest the following direction of Scott to
Laidlaw, in which he explains the mystery:--"George must stick in a
few wild roses, honeysuckles, and sweet-briers, in suitable places, so
as to produce the luxuriance we see in the woods which nature plants
herself. We injure the effect of our plantings, so far as beauty is
concerned, very much by neglecting underwood." In the woods of
Abbotsford the memory of Laidlaw will be often recalled by the sight
and odor of these fragrant plants.
Descending into a valley beyond Kaeside, I came to the forester's
lodge, on the edge of a little solitary loch. Was this cottage
formerly the abode of another worthy--Tom Purdie, whom Scott has, on
his grave-stone in Melrose abbey-yard, styled "Wood-forester of
Abbotsford?"--a double epithet which may be accounted for by foresters
being often nowadays keepers of forests where there is no wood, as in
Ettrick, etc. Whether this was Tom Purdie's abode or not, however, I
found it inhabited by a very obliging and intelligent fellow, as
porter there. The little loch here I understood him to be called
Abbotsford Loch, in contradiction to Cauldshiels Loch, which is still
further up the hills. This Cauldshiels Loch was a favorite resort of
Scott's at first. It had its traditions, and he had a boat upon it;
but finding that it did not belong to his estate, as he supposed, by
one of his purchases, he would never go upon it again, though
requested to use it at his pleasure by the proprietor. By the
direction of the forester, I now steered my way onward from wood to
wood, toward the Eildon hills, in quest of the glen of Thomas the
Rhymer. The evening was now drawing on, and there was a deep solitude
and solemnity over the dark pine woods through which I passed. The
trees which Scott had planted were now in active process of being
thinned out, and piles of them lay here and there by the cart tracks
through the woods, and heaps of the peeled bark of the larch for sale.
I thought with what pleasure would Scott have now surveyed these
operations, and the beginning of the marketable profit of the woods of
his own planting. But that day was passed. I went on over fields
embosomed in the black forest, where the grazing herds gazed wildly at
me, as if a stranger were not often seen there; crossed the deep glen,
where the little stream roared on, lost in the thick growth of now
lofty trees; and then passed onward down the Rhymer's glen to Huntly
burn: every step bearing fresh evidence of the vanished romance of
Abbotsford. How long was it since Miss Edgeworth sat by the little
water-fall in the Rhymer's glen, and gave her name to the stone on
which she was seated? The house at Huntly burn, which Scott had
purchased to locate his old friend Sir Adam Fergusson near him, was
now the house of the wood-factor; and piles of timber, and sawn boards
on all sides, marked its present use. Lockhart was gone from the
lovely cottage just by at Chiefswood. And Scott himself, after his
glory and his troubles, slept soundly at Dryburgh. The darkness that
had now closed thickly on my way, seemed to my excited imagination to
have fallen on the world. What a day of broad hearts and broad
intellects was that which had just passed! How the spirit of power,
and of creative beauty, had been poured abroad among men, and
especially in our own country, as with a measureless opening of the
divine hand; and how rapidly and extensively had then the favored
ministers of this intellectual diffusion been withdrawn from the
darkened earth! Scott, and almost all his family who had rejoiced with
him--Abbotsford was an empty abode--the very woods had yielded up
their faithful spirits--Laidlaw and Purdie were in the earth--Hogg,
the shepherd-poet, had disappeared from the hills. And of the great
lights from England, how many were put out!--Crabbe, Southey,
Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Campbell, Mrs. Hemans, Miss Landon,
Hood, and Lamb, many of them bidding farewell to earth amid clouds and
melancholy, intense as was the contrasting brightness of their noonday
fame. "Sic transit gloria mundi." The thought passed through me--but a
second followed it, saying, "Not so--_they only_ by whom the
glory is created travel onward in the track of their eternal destiny.
'Won is the glory, and the grief is past.'"
The next morning I took my way to Dryburgh, the closing scene of the
present paper. Dryburgh Abbey lies on the Tweed, about four miles from
Melrose. You turn off--when you have left the Eildon hills on your
right, and have seen on your left, in the course of the river, the
Cowdenknowes, Bemerside, and other classic spots--down a steep and
woody lane, and suddenly come out at a wide bend of the river, where,
on your side, the gravel brought down by the floods spreads a
considerable strand, and the lofty banks all round on the other are
finely wooded. Few are the rivers which can show more beautiful
scenery in their course than the Tweed. But what strikes you strangely
are the ruins of a chain bridge, which some time ago was carried away
by the wind. There stand aloft the tall white frames of wood to which
the bridge was attached at each end, like great skeletons; and the two
main chains stretch across, and fragments of others dangle in the
air--iron rags of ruin. It has a most desolate and singular look.
This, I suppose, was put up by the late whimsical Earl of Buchan, to
whom Dryburgh belonged, as now, to his nephew. At the opposite end of
the bridge peeps out of the trees the top of a little temple. It is a
temple of the Muses, where the nine sisters are represented
consecrating Thomson the poet. Aloft, at some distance in a wood, you
descry a gigantic figure of stone; and this, on inquiry, you find to
be William Wallace, who, I believe, was never here, any more than
Thomson. It was intended for Burns, but as the block was got out of
the quarry on the opposite side of the river, close to where you land
from the ferry-boat, the fantastic old fellow took it into his head
that, as it was so large a block, it should be Wallace.
As you ascend a lane from the ferry to go to the abbey, you find a few
cottages, and a great gate, built in the style of an old castle
gateway, with round stone pillars with lantern summits, and the cross
displayed on each--a sort of poor parody on the gateway at Abbotsford.
This castle gateway is the entrance, however, to no castle, but to a
large orchard, and over the gate is inscribed--"Hoc Pomarium sua manus
satum Parentibus suis optimis sac: D. S. Buchaniæ Comes." That is,
"This orchard, _sown_ by his own hands, the Earl of Buchan
dedicates to his best of parents." The whole is worthy of the man. If
there be any sense in it, the orchard was _sown_ by this silly
old lord, not the _trees_; and these were merely _sown_ by
him, and not _planted_. And why dedicate an orchard to his
deceased parents? Were they so excessively fond of apples? Why not
satisfy himself with some rational monument? But then he must have
been rational himself; and it must be recollected that this was the
man who, when Scott was once very ill, forced himself into the house
in order to get at the invalid, and arrange with him, in his last
moments, the honors of a great heraldic funeral procession; the same
man that Scott afterward congratulated himself was dead first, lest he
should have made some foolish extravagance of the sort over his
remains.
But, to return to the orchard gateway--it is droll enough, immediately
under the pious and tender inscription to his parents, in Latin, to
see standing this sentence, in plain English--"MAN-TRAPS AND
SPRING-GUNS PLACED IN THIS ORCHARD." Quere? Are they, too, dedicated
to his best of parents, or only to his poor brethren of mankind?
Dryburgh is a sweet old monastic seclusion. Here, lying deep below the
surrounding country, the river sweeps on between high, rocky banks,
overhung with that fine growth of trees which no river presents in
more beauty, abundance, and luxuriance. A hush prevails over the spot,
which tells you that some ancient sanctity is there. You feel that
there is some hidden glory of religious art and piety somewhere about,
though you do not see it. As you advance, it is up a lane overhung
with old ashes. There are primitive-looking cottages, also
overshadowed by great trees. There are crofts, with thick, tall
hedges, and cattle lying in them with a sybaritic luxury of indolence.
You are still, as you proceed, surrounded by an ocean of foliage, and
ancient stems; and a dream-like feeling of past ages seems to pervade
not only the air, but the ground. I do not know how it is, but I think
it must be by a mesmeric influence that the monks and the holy
dreamers of old have left on the spots which they inhabited their
peculiar character. You could not construct such a place now, taking
the most favorable materials for it. Take a low, sequestered spot,
full of old timber and cottages, and old gray walls; and employ all
the art that you could, to give it a monastic character--it would be
in vain. You would feel it at once; the mind would not admit it to be
genuine. No, the old monastic spots are full of the old monastic
spirit. The very ground, and the rich old turf, are saturated with it.
Dig up the soil, it has a monastery look. It is fat, and black, and
crumbling. The trees are actual monks themselves. They stand and dream
of the Middle Ages. With the present age and doings they have no
feelings, no sympathies. They keep a perpetual vigil, and the sound of
anthems has entered into their very substance. They are solemn piles
of the condensed silence of ages, of cloistered musings; and the very
whisperings of their leaves seem to be muttered aves and _ora pro
nobises_.
This feeling lies all over Dryburgh like a living trance; and the
arrangements of these odd Buchans for admitting you to the tomb of
Scott, enable you to see the most of it. You perceive a guide-post,
and this tells you to go on to the house where the keys are kept. You
descend a long lane amid these old trees and crofts, and arrive at a
gate and lodge, which seem the entrance to some gentleman's grounds.
Here probably you see too a gentleman's carriage waiting, and present
yourself to go in. But you are told that, though this is the place,
you must not enter there. You must go on still farther to the house
where the keys are kept. At length, you find yourself at the bottom of
another stretch of lane, and here you stop, for the simple reason that
you can go no farther--you have arrived at the bank of the river.
Necessarily then looking about you, you see on one side a gate in a
tall wall, which looks into an orchard, and on the other a cottage in
a garden. On this cottage there is a board, bearing this
long-sought-after inscription--"The abbey keys kept here." You knock,
and ask if you can see the abbey; and a very careless "Yes," assures
you that you can. The people appointed to show the ruins and Scott's
grave, are become notorious for their lumpish, uncivil behavior. It
would seem as if the owner of the place had ordered them to make it as
unpleasant to visitors as possible; a thing very impolitic in them,
for they are making a fortune by it. Indeed, Scott is the grand
benefactor of all the neighborhood, Dryburgh, Melrose, and Abbotsford.
At Abbotsford and Melrose they are civil, at Dryburgh the very
reverse. They seem as though they would make you feel that it was a
favor to be admitted to the grounds of Lord Buchan; and you are
pointed away at the gate of exit with a manner which seems to say,
"There!--begone!"
The woman of the cottage was already showing a party; and her sister,
just as sulky, ungracious a sort of body as you could meet with, was
my guide. The gate in the wall was thrown open, and she said, "You
must go across the grass there." I saw a track across the grass, and
obediently pursued it; but it was some time before I could see any
thing but a very large orchard of young trees, and I began to suppose
this another Pomarium dedicated by old Lord Buchan to his parents, and
to wish him and his Pomaria under the care of a certain old gentleman;
but, anon!--the ruins of the abbey began to tower magnificently above
the trees, and I forgot the planter of orchards and his gracious
guides. The ruins are certainly very fine, and finely relieved by the
tall, rich trees, which have sprung up in and around them. The
interior of the church is now greensward, and two rows of cedars grow
where formerly stood the pillars of the aisles. The cloisters and
south transept are more entire, and display much fine workmanship.
There is a window aloft, I think in the south transept, peculiarly
lovely. It is formed of, I believe, five stars cut in stone, so that
the open center within them forms a rose. The light seen through this
window gives it a beautiful effect. There is the old chapter-house
also entire, with an earthen floor, and a circle drawn in the center,
where the bodies of the founder and his lady are said to lie. But even
here the old lord has been with his absurdities; and at one end, by
the window, stands a fantastic statue of Locke, reading in an open
book, and pointing to his own forehead with his finger. The damp of
the place has blackened and mildewed this figure, and it is to be
hoped will speedily eat it quite up. What has Locke to do in the
chapter-house of a set of ancient friars?
The grave of Scott, for a tomb he has not yet got, is a beautiful
fragment of the ruined pile, the lady aisle. The square from one
pillar of the aisle to the next, which in many churches, as in
Melrose, formed a confessional, forms here a burial-place. It is that
of the Scotts of Haliburton, from whom Scott descended; and that was
probably one reason why he chose this place, though its monastic
beauty and associations were, no doubt, the main causes. The fragment
consists of two arches' length, and the adjoining one is the family
burial-place of the Erskines. The whole, with its tier of small Norman
sectional arches above, forms, in fact, a glorious tomb, much
resembling one of the chapel tombs in Winchester; and the trees about
it are dispersed by nature and art so as to give it the utmost
picturesque effect. It is a mausoleum well befitting the author of the
Lay of the Last Minstrel; and, though many wonder that he should have
chosen to be interred in another man's ground and property, yet,
independent of all such considerations, we must say, that it would be
difficult to select a spot more in keeping with Scott's character,
genius, and feelings. But that which surprises every one, is the
neglect in which the grave itself remains. After thirteen years it is
still a mere dusty and slovenly heap of earth. His mother lies on his
right hand, that is, in front of him, and his wife on his left. His
mother has a stone laid on her grave, but neither Scott nor his wife
has any thing but the earth which covers them; and lying under the
arched ruin, nature herself is not allowed, as she otherwise would, to
fling over the poet the verdant mantle with which she shrouds the
grave of the lowliest of her children. The contrast is the stranger
now, that so splendid a monument is raised to his honor in Edinburgh;
and that both Glasgow and Selkirk have their statue-crowned column to
the author of Waverley. The answer to inquiries is, that his son has
been out of the country; but a plain slab, bearing the name, and the
date of his death, would confer a neatness and an air of respectful
attention on the spot, which would accord far more gratefully with the
feelings of its thousands and tens of thousands of visitors than its
present condition.
* * * * *
As this goes to press, I hear that at length a stone is preparing for
Sir Walter's grave.
[Illustration: Gateway of Glasgow College]