Methought grim features, seam'd with scars, By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold; When pouring from their Highland height, . I was wayward, bold, and wild, Was still endured, beloved, caress'd." This tower is also the scene of his fine ballad, "The Eve of Saint John," said to have been thus associated by him, to induce Scott of Harden, then proprietor, to carefully preserve it. The ballad spiritedly begins describing how, "The Baron of Smaylho'me rose with day, He spurr'd his courser on " and tells how he went, not to a Border fight, though he went fully armed, — but in search of a strange knight who, when darkness came on, "stood by the lonely flame" on the "eiry Beacon Hill," "And many a word that warlike lord Did speak to my lady there;" A mysterious tale of conjugal experience grew of their meetings, till it could be said in the final verses of the ballad, "There is a nun in Dryburgh bower, Ne'er looks upon the sun; There is a monk in Melrose tower, That nun, who ne'er beholds the day, That monk, who speaks to none, That nun, was Smaylho'me's Lady gay, This tower is also the supposed original of Avenel Castle, in "The Abbot," and in "The Monastery" (the next novel that will be sketched on these pages), the scenes of both whic in and around Melrose. all From Smailholm, the traveller may go over Bemerside Hill to Dryburgh Abbey, and thence, crossing the Tweed, return to Melrose. The route is varied, and generally quite pleasant. At Bemerside may be found the ancient seat of the Haigs, a stronghold similar to Smailholm, but entire, and inhabited by a family who have held the estate since the time of Malcolm IV., in the middle of the twelfth century, and of whom Thomas the Rhymer made his well-known prediction, that has held true long enough to prove him a respectable prophet,— "Tide, tide, whate'er betide There'll aye be Haigs in Bemerside." From the crest of the hill, not far off, on the route taken, is one of the finest road views in the south of Scotland. One sees from the lofty-pointed Cowdenknows on the right, over a great sweep of country, to the distant ridges of the Cheviots on the left. In front is the triple Eildon,-its summits hence appearing widely spaced, its broad sides covered with loose stones or brown grass and whin. Deep in the foreground, encircling the wooded site of old Melrose, comes the winding Tweed from past Melrose town and abbey and heights of the Abbotsford estate, and, flowing hence far away through its broad vale of beautiful agricultural country, leads one's gaze again to the Southern Border. By a shady path one may gain a point, commanding a portion of this view, where, facing it, stands a great, red sandstone statue, twenty-one feet high. The pedestal is inscribed, - As a work of art, it is ordinary; but it is said to have the merit of being the first monument erected to the hero in this land for which he fought. DRYBURGH ABBEY is reached through the Earl of Buchan's park, not far distant. Its remains are in a quiet, secluded, and very delightful spot, invested with some of the most sacred of earthly associations. The appropriate effect of these is, however, marred by the approach. The entrance to the grounds is, or was, through an ungraceful gateway, erected by an earl contemporary with Scott. This admits to an orchard, and is inscribed in Latin, "Hoc Pomarium sua manus satum Parentibus suis optimis sac: D. S. Buchaniæ Comes." Accompanying this classic demonstration of filial affection, is, or was, the very visible English warning, "Man-traps and spring-guns placed in this orchard." Beyond the gate and some ugly fencing are the ruins of the venerable abbey, and that, happily, is in the repose and beauty of its own sanctity, veiled with ivy and green shrubbery, — hoary, solemn, and eloquent even in silent desolation. It is placed where Tweed sweeps around a fresh, green tract of wooded lowland, in one of those retired, beautiful, little vales that the old monks loved and chose so well. The religious associations of Dryburgh take our thoughts far back, even to Pagan times; indeed, its very name is said to signify, "settlement of the Druids." On its site, as early as the beginning of the sixth century, dwelt Christian missionaries, one of whom, Modan, was revered as a saint. But ravages of the dark ages swept over the spot; and it was not until about the middle of the twelfth century that Hugh de Morville and his wife, Beatrix Beauchamp, really established the monastery, and King David I. confirmed their bounty. On Saint Martin's day (Nov. 10), 1150, the cemetery was consecrated "that no demons might haunt it;" and on the 13th Dec., 1152, portions of the monastery buildings were completed and first occupied by monks, who "were of the Premonstratensian Order, commonly designated White Canons, from their dress," and who came from the abbey of Alnwick. This order was then new, having been founded only about twenty years before by St. Norbert, "a celebrated preacher and religious reformer." The first establishment of the order was at a spot in the vale of Coucy, designated to its founder, in a vision, by the Virgin, — whence the name, from pratum monstratum, Pré-montré, the appointed field. The garment worn by members of the order was also appointed by the Virgin, “a coarse, black tunic," covered by "a white woollen cloak, in imitation of the angels of heaven, 'who are clothed in white garments.'" This costume was completed by a white "four-cornered cap or beret," shaped like those worn by the Augustines, from whose illustrious order this directly emanated. Dedicating Dryburgh to the Blessed Virgin, the monks, through peace and through war, kept it about four centuries. Fierce English raids and iconoclastic violence then prevailed, until, in 1587, its lands and revenues were appropriated by the Crown. Subsequently the estate was sold to the Haliburtons of New Mains, many of whom are buried in the abbey precincts. From this family, through Robert Haliburton, grand-uncle of Sir Walter Scott, the estate passed by sale in 1767; and since then it has been the property of the earls of Buchan, respecting whom and whose ancestry no long dissertation is required here. This family association with the abbey was one of Sir Walter Scott's chief inducements to appoint it to be his burialplace, a romantic and appropriate place indeed, apart from such reason. The style of the edifice, -varied from Norman, indeed an almost Roman or Lombardic, massiveness and roundness, to Early-English Pointed, is a study. The structure is now very dilapidated and shattered, though it shows several rather complete portions. The material was almost entirely a red sandstone of a texture not good. It is now grown to a reddish-brown tint, with faded, worn surfaces, and some covering of hoary gray lichens, that at a distance give it a sad, dark, gray look. The abbey, although by no means as large or decorated as that at Melrose, contained noble buildings. One entering the ruins at the south, finds the remains of the refectory, with an ivy-mantled western gable, pierced by a Catherine wheel window, and also with an ivy-draped eastern gable. Passing under this latter, one enters a vaulted passage, having on the right, remains of a library, and left, the abbot's parlor, of which walls remain, but no roof, - two pillars that once supported the arched ceiling only existing. There is a chimney-piece, and a sort of corner porch, through which latter the chapter-house is reached. This is the most entire portion of the abbey, and is a massively built, barrel-vaulted room, with a floor about six feet below the level of the cloisters adjacent westward. It "is forty-seven feet long, twenty-three feet broad, and twenty feet in height. At the east end are five Early-English Gothic windows, and at the west end is a large, circular-headed centre window, with a small one on each side." An arcade of intersecting arches, that once lined the room, now exists only along the east end. The whole is almost green from dampness. Beyond is another room, abutting on the south transept of the church, tolerably entire, and said to be the chapel of St. Modan. One may go into the area, now grassy and open, where the cloisters once were, west of the chapter-house, and pass some broken, gloomy vaults, and along a curving walk lined by hedges of box half a dozen feet high, and shaded by beeches, and come to the west front of the church, and enter it beneath a superb Norman arch, showing some of the best of twelfth-century work little injured. The church was about one hundred and ninety feet long, cruciform, with short transepts and choir, and a chancel of one aisle lighted on three sides, similarly to that at Melrose. Scarcely more than the foundations of the nave and the bases of its pillars exist. The chancel is also a mere wreck. A single lancet window remains at the north-east angle of the north-transept gable. The south gable is nearly entire, and conspicuous for its heavily mullioned pointed window, high up. But the portion to which every visitor is most attracted is Saint Mary's Aisle, the shrine of Dryburgh. Its form is familiar as that of almost any structure, the two bays of the north side of the choir, in beautiful Early-English Pointed Gothic. Its mouldering sandstone has lost much of its once finished surface, and is bleached by centuries of weather-wear, tinted with lichens, and slowly crumbling. Externally, one sees, all about, the marks of man's destruction, and, within these two vaulted archways, the clayey, almost ghastly, gray but venerable frosting of time, and as well, also, Nature's garlanding of green grasses and bright blue and yellow flowers in the opening seams. Beneath the arches of this fragment of a "solemn temple," almost dissolving, appears in the eastern bay, on a red sandstone slab, upon the back wall, this inscription: "Hunc locum sepulturæ D. Seneschallus Buchaniæ Comes And beneath this, on the ground, are four large, flat, altar-like memorial stones, - polished red granite. First, one reads upon the chief of these, even now slightly dimmed by dust and damp, SIR WALTER SCOTT BARONET DIED SEPTEMBER 21 AD 1832. Where that stone now is, "about half-past five o'clock in the evening of Wednesday, the 26th Sept., 1832," hundreds of sincere mourners laid the remains of Sir Walter Scott "by the side of his wife in the sepulchre of his ancestors," there to rest "in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life," and fulfilment of the precious promises expressed in that noble service read when |