ers of the
Forest"--"I've seen the smiling of Fortune beguiling." Abbotsford was
Cartley Hole first--not Clarty--which is a mere vulgar play on the
original. From a small villa about 1811 it has grown to the present
noble pile. After Scott's day, Mr. Hope Scott did much for the place.
But it is of Sir Walter that one thinks. What a strenuous life was his
here! What love he lavished on the very ground that was dear to him--in
a double sense! And what longing for home during that vain sojourn
under Italian skies! "To Abbotsford; let us to Abbotsford!"--a desire
now echoed on ten thousand tongues year by year from all ends of the
earth. Behind Abbotsford are the Eildons, the "Delectable Mountains" of
Washington Irving's visit, "three crests against a saffron sky" always
in vision the wide Border over. Scott said he could stand on the Eildons
and point out forty-three places famous in war and verse. "Yonder," he
said, "is Lammermoor and Smailholm; and there you have Galashiels, and
Torwoodlee, and Gala Water; and in that direction you see Teviotdale and
the Braes of Yarrow, and Ettrick stream winding along like a silver
thread to throw itself into the Tweed. It may be pertinacity, but to my
eye these grey hills, and all this wild Border Country have beauties
peculiar to themselves. When I have been for some time in the rich
scenery about Edinburgh which is like ornamented garden land, I begin to
wish myself back again among my own honest grey hills; and if I did not
see the heather at least once a year, I think I should die." Melrose is
the "Kennaquhair" of the "Monastery" and the "Abbot." Its glory, of
course, is its Abbey, unsurpassed in the beauty of death, but all grace
fled from its environment. Were it possible to transplant the Abbey
together with its rich associations to the site of the original
foundation by the beautiful bend at Bemersyde, Melrose would sit
enthroned peerless among the shrines of our northern land. Within
Melrose Abbey, near to the High Altar, the Bruce's heart rests well--its
fitful flutterings o'er. Here, too, lie the brave Earl Douglas, hero of
Chevy Chase; Liddesdale's dark Knight--another Douglas; Evers and
Latoun, the English commanders at Ancrum Moor, that ran so deadly red
with the blood of their countrymen; and, according to Sir Walter,
Michael Scot--

"Buried on St. Michael's night,
When the bell toll'd one, and the moon shone bright,
Whose chamber was dug among the dead,