tage in her devotions. The impure
air, the terrific dirt which surround the working people, must make
all progress in higher culture impossible; and I saw nothing which
seemed to me so likely to have results of incalculable good, as this
practical measure of the Simpsons in support of the precept,

"Wash and be clean every whit."

We returned into England by the way of Melrose, not content to leave
Scotland without making our pilgrimage to Abbotsford. The universal
feeling, however, has made this pilgrimage so common that there
is nothing left for me to say; yet, though I had read a hundred
descriptions, everything seemed new as I went over this epitome of
the mind and life of Scott. As what constitutes the great man is more
commonly some extraordinary combination and balance of qualities, than
the highest development of any one, so you cannot but here be struck
anew by the singular combination in Scott's mind of love for the
picturesque and romantic with the plainest common sense,--a delight
in heroic excess with the prudential habit of order. Here the most
pleasing order pervades emblems of what men commonly esteem disorder
and excess.

Amid the exquisite beauty of the ruins of Dryburgh, I saw with regret
that Scott's body rests in almost the only spot that is not green, and
cannot well be made so, for the light does not reach it. That is not
a fit couch for him who dressed so many dim and time-worn relics with
living green.

Always cheerful and beneficent, Scott seemed to the common eye in like
measure prosperous and happy, up to the last years, and the chair in
which, under the pressure of the sorrows which led to his death, he
was propped up to write when brain and eye and hand refused their
aid, the product remaining only as a guide to the speculator as to the
workings of the mind in case of insanity or approaching imbecility,
would by most persons be viewed as the only saddening relic of his
career. Yet when I recall some passages in the Lady of the Lake, and
the Address to his Harp, I cannot doubt that Scott had the full share
of bitter in his cup, and feel the tender hope that we do about other
gentle and generous guardians and benefactors of our youth, that in a
nobler career they are now fulfilling still higher duties with serener
mind. Doubtless too they are trusting in us that we will try to fill
their places with kindly deeds, ardent thoughts, nor leave the world,
in their absence,

"A dim, vast