VOL. VI

NO. 9

OMEWHERE in this world there may be a prettier spot than Abbotsford, but if there be, my wandering footsteps have never led me to it. It was a perfect day when I visited it. It may have been because the sun shone brightly, the birds sang merrily and the leaves were getting their first streaks of yellow that it impressed me, but I shall not soon forget my day's pilgrimage in the land ofthe great enchanter of the North.

Hume was also an occupant of the place, and Bobbie Burns lived, during his visit to the Scottish Athens, not far away. In the Cannongate churchyard are the remains of Adam Smith and the poet Ferguson. Burns reared a monument to the latter's memory, and paid for it from the earliest instalment of the money obtained from the Edinburgh edition of his poems. Then there is the old house where

Edinburgh is one of the prettiest cities in the three kingdoms. Its every nook recalls a bit of history. Its gardens, Princess Street, its monuments, its castles, Holyrood palace, the home of John Knox, the Cowgate,-these and a score of other equally interesting objects, claim the visitor's attention.

The house and shop of Allen Ramsay, The Gentle Shepherd," is worthy a visit. The old rookery where Oliver Goldsmith lived while studying medicine is pointed out to visitors. In St. James Court is the house where rare Ben Jonson and Boswell lived. David

"Prior's Kitty ever fair" gave Gay, the poet, a home; and the White House Close where Scott laid one of the principal scenes in Waverly.

But, after all, it is the land of Scott more than any other man. Everything breathes of the great novelist. The Scott monument is a magnificent affair, and the house he occupied in Castle Street is just the sort of a place that one would expect him to select as a town residence. It was in this house that there actually occurred the incident which Sir Walter utilizes in the "Bride of Lammermoor," when he represents the faithful Caleb Balderstone as excusing the nonappearance of dinner by the fiction of a fall of soot down the chimney. Sir Walter had

invited a numerous party to his house one day, and they were chatting together in another apartment till dinner was announced. The butler entered with a face like that of him who “drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night," and beckoning to his master, informed. him of the catastrophe which had taken place.

The tour of Abbotsford, Melrose and Dryburgh Abbey can be made without difficulty in one day, leaving Edinburgh in the morning and returning in the evening. The traveler is whisked along in a fast train, past thriving Scotch hamlets, until Abbotsford ferry is reached. The house of the great writer is situated close to the public road from Melrose to Selkirk, is surrounded by plantations, and overlooks a beautiful hauge or grassy bank of the Tweed. The plantations, as well as the house itself, are the creation of Scott, who transformed the place from a moorland farm into its present picturesque condition.

What most of all led Scott to select a somewhat unpromising spot for his contemplated mansion was that it made him the owner of the whole ground of the famous Border Battle of Melrose from Skirmish-Field to TurnAgain, and Thomas the Rhymer's Glen. The building of the house was begun in 1811, and was gradually extended year after year until it attained dimensions considerably beyond what had been at first contemplated. On the mansion and estate at least £50.000 were expended.

The property is now owned by the family of the late Mr. Hope Scott, who made additions to it for his own residence. It is a pretty spot. The great charm of Abbotsford House is that it has grown to its present condition without any complete architectual plan

previously designed. It is regularly irregular in its structure, every part of the edifice having been constructed as its author often constructed his stories, on the inspiration of the moment and with a view to meet aesthetic and domestic arrangements, as these suggested themselves to the superintending mind. And so there are gables, spirelets, pinnacles, balconies and turrets in admirable confusion.

The walls of the house, as well as those of the garden, are set with curious old sculptured stones gathered from ancient buildings and ruins in all parts of Scotland. Among other relics may be mentioned the door of the Old Tolbooth of Edinburgh for which a place has been contrived in the lower court at the west end of the house. The grounds are laid out in terraces and winding paths, and rustic seats and lounges are placed wherever the view is especially interesting or striking.

The

The entrance, adorned with petrified stags' horns, is from the east side of the house, through a porch copied from one in Linlithgow Palace. walls of the vestibule are panelled with carved oak from Dunfermline Palace, and the arched roof is of the same material.

Except in the drawing-room, which was left to Lady Scott's taste, all the roofs in the house are, in appearance at least, of antique carved oak, often relieved by coats of arms placed at the intersections of the beams, and resting on cornices with heads, beautiful or grotesque, copied from the architecture of Melrose and Roslin. Round the whole cornice there are armorial bearings of the Douglasses, the Scotts, Kers, Armstrongs, and other stout Border clans, who, as an inscription tells the visitor, "keepit the

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On one side of the hall there are stained glass windows, and the spaces between the windows are decorated with pieces of armor, crossed sword and stags' horns. On each side of the door at the bottom of the hall there is a figure in complete armor, one with a huge two-handed sword, another with a spear, standing in a Gothic niche with a canopy above. The fireplace is a fine specimen of carving; it was designed from a niche in Melrose

just as the great novelist left it. There is a portrait of Rob Roy on the wall that shows that bold Scotsman in a very gentle and pleasant mode. There are other interesting relics, and the tiny apartment, or turret room, opening from the study, is the place where the great novelist used to see visitors who called upon him for a quiet chat. It will interest antiquarians to know that the carved paneling of the little chamber is said to have belonged to a bedstead used by Queen Mary at Jed

Abbey. Opposite the fireplace is a kind of side table constructed from the boards of the pulpit of the old church of Dunfermline, in which Ralph Erskine, one of the founders of the Secession Church, had preached. The floor is laid with black and white marble.

Of all the places of interest in this house that is still a palace, even in these days of extravagance, there is nothing that so attracts the visitor's attention as Sir Walter's study. There is his writing table and chair. The ormer was made of pieces of wood be

burgh in 1566. There is also conspicuously placed a bust of the great writer It is given the place of honor. During Scott's lifetime a bust of the bard of Avon occupied the place, but on the day of the novelist's death his son substituted that of his father for the immortal Shakespeare.

The library is the largest and most magnificent of all the rooms. I should say that it is 60 by 50 feet broad. The roof is elaborately carved after old Gothic models. The walls are covered with book-cases, containing 25 000 volumes; many of them rare works of