CHAPTER II.

Melrose Abbey - Abbotsford - Dryburgh,

Melrose Abbey is now reached by Railway, from Edin burgh, a distance of some thirty-seven miles. Melrose itself is a charming village, nestling in the loveliest of valleys. A ten minutes walk from the Railway station, down a little narrow street; brings you face to face with the celebrated Abbey ruin, like

"Some tall rock, with lichen gray,"

it rises before you. Aside from its situation, it is the loveliest pile of monastic ruins the eye can contemplate, or the imagination conceive of. The windows, and especially the glorious East window, with all its elaborate tracery, are certainly unsurpassed, as specimens of gothic architecture. In the old cloisters are seven niches, ornamented with sculptured foliage, and reminding one of those lines of Scott, so life-like in their description: "Spreading herbs, and flowerets bright, Glistened with the dews of night;

No herb, nor floweret, glistened there,

But was carved in cloistered arch as fair."

Each glance at the glorious East window, recalls in like manner, the stanzas from the same poem;

"The moon on the East oriel shone,

Through slender shafts of shapely stone,

By foliaged tracery combined;

Thou would'st have thought some fairy's hand
"Twixt poplars straight the ozier wand,

In many a freakish knot, had twined;

Then framed a spell, when the work was done,

And changed the willow wreaths, to stope,"

Melrose Abbey was founded by David I., of Scotland, somewhere in the year 1136. The English on their retreat under Edward II., devastated it, and left hardly one stone upon another. Four years after this act of vandalism, the celebrated Robert Bruce, by a tax on the Baronies of the Realm, rebuilt it in a style of magnificence, far surpassing its former state. The present ruin which is a mere fragment of the perfect edifice in Bruce's time; clearly manifests by the rich tracery of its windows, and the elaborate carvings of the pilasters of its capitals, that it must have been among the most perfect works, of the best age of that description of ecclesiastical architecture to which it belongs. The entire edifice suffered very much during the Scottish reformation, from the insane zeal of the religious fanatics of that period; and after several devastations, the entire property of the Abbey passed into the hands of the family of Buccleuch, near the middle of the seventeenth century-where it has ever since remained. The ruins of the church alone, with remnants of the cloisters, are now all that exist of the extensive buildings of the once magnificent Abbey. The portions remaining of the church, which is in the cruciform shape, are the choir, and transept-the west side, and fragments of the north and south walls of the great tower, part of the nave, nearly the whole of the southern aisle, and part of the north aisle. Within its moss grown area, broken slabs tell where repose many a warrior, and venerable priest. Under the East window a slab of marble, greenish in its hue, with petrified shells imbedded in it, marks the last resting place of Alexander II., of Scotland. Here too, beneath where once the high altar, glittered with its rich gifts, was placed "the low and lonely urn" of the brave

Douglass, who encountered Harry Percy in the bloody fight of Otterburne: That grey slab, marks the spot where they laid "the dark Knight of Liddesdale," down to sleep among the bones of the long line of his noble ancestors of the House of Douglass, so famed in Scottish song, and story. And they still show the spot where the grave's huge portal expanded before the iron bar of William of Deloraine, when he looked into the vault, and saw before him

"The wizard lay,

As if he had not been dead a day."

and from which, the light of that mystic lamp beside his knee,

"Broke forth so gloriously,

Streamed upwards to the chancel roof,
And through the galleries far aloof!
No earthly flame blazed e'er so bright;
It shone like heaven's own blessed light."

It is while lingering in spots like these, the favorite haunts
of Scott, and which he has made memorable by his
genius; that one learns to appreciate his wonderful
powers of description. As you stand in the ruined aisles..
of Melrose, and look round; there are the corbels, "carved
so grotesque and grim"-the shafts of the columns look-
ing as the poet so aptly describes them, like

"Bundles of lances, which garlands had bound;"

And there, the cloistered arches with the foliage upon their capitals, so nicely chiselled, that fairy's hand might well have traced them, and magic spell changed them when the work was done, to stone.

But Time the great devourer has been too surely doing his work on this old pile-gnawing at the edges of the ancient fret-work, crumbling the top from some buttress

pinnacle, or stripping the leaves of stone, off some ancient capital. Sunlight and moonlight, alike no doubt, suit this graceful ruin: by day its colors are richer, but to visit it aright, one must no doubt go there by the pale moonlight-for on every ruin that I noticed, the moon's rays appear to have a harmonizing power; edges of masonry soften, harsh tints are mellowed down, arches transmit a silvery light, and buttresses throw a deeper shadow. That which in the full glare of noon, had a matter of fact appearance, under the wierd influence of moonlight, puts on the garb of romance, and becomes at the same time dream-like and real-a dumb ruin, yet a speaking portent.

Standing within the shadow of such a pile as Melrose, thoughts come upon you, that will not down at a bidding. Those skeleton windows, once through their gorgeous. medium of glass, stained with prismatic hues, the marble floor of this ruined nave. These aisles, once resounded with the pealing anthem of white robed choirs: Here, was the solemn and burley Abbot, and the dark files of cowled monks, and a vassal peasantry crowded at an awful distance from their holy superiors. On some high. festival, how have these lofty arches shone with the glare of torches-and this grass grown nave exhibited its long perspective of brilliant and solemn colors, venerable forms, and awful symbols. Then came the age, (as it is now,) when children loitered, and clambered among the ruins, and the sheep fed quietly round broken images, and the defaced carved work of the sanctuary: And again with what an exultant joy, must the decay of this noble fabric, have been surveyed by the stern soldiery of the Covenant-while perhaps some highly gifted, and many scarred trooper, placing himself upon a mass of the ruin, may have dis

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coursed with his Bible in one hand, and his dented sword in the other, upon the mansions of the heavenly Jerusalem, which the elect were to inherit; then warming with his subject, amid the shattered buttresses, and roofless aisles, might have led the grim enthusiasts beneath him, in a hymn of thanksgiving and triumph, for the fall of Babylon, and the destruction of the high places of idolatry in the land. As a ruin, Melrose is now softened, made beautiful, and inspired with one consistent character and soul by the overgrowth of luxuriant ivy. The green foliage of trees, wave dappled shadows over the walls, and weed matted area within; and Melrose Abbey, with its broken columns, shattered arches, and crumbled ornaments, seems to have become a portion of universal nature, an original member of the landscape, in which it stands, born of the same mother, and in the same generation as the ivy which crowns, the trees which overshadow, and the blue sky, and bright sun which illumine, and smile upon it. The gray mossy stones, now look as if they had grown up like the hills and woods around, by some internal energy from the centre, and expanded themselves amid co-operating elements into a pile of silent loveliness-a place for solemn and lonely meditation, fit for the quiet reveries of the idly active, or the high and varied fancies of the poet. Those green and stately plants, and the rich leaved. creepers, which enwreath and robe every pointed arch, and slender column, and wrap the harsh grey fragments of walls, have taken away all the roughness and soreness of desolation from the pile; and kindly nature, which manifests itself with so much glory in the heavens above, and so much sublimity in the rich landscape around, seems to press with her soft embrace, and hallows with