Melrose Abbey was the eldest daughter, I believe, of Rievaulx Abbey, in Yorkshire, which has already been noticed; a year or two older in its foundation than Fountain Abbey, in Studley Park. The fecundity with which these ecclesiastical buildings multiplied and replenished England and Scotland is a marvel, considering the age in which they were erected and the small population and the poverty of the country. But something on this aspect of the subject hereafter. Here lie the ashes of Scottish kings, abbots and knights whose names figured conspicuously in the history of public and private wars which cover such a space of the country's life as an independent nation. The Douglas family especially with several of its branches found a resting-place for their dust within these walls. Built and rebuilt, burnt and reburnt, mutilated, dismembered, consecrated and desecrated, make up the history of this celebrated edifice, and that of its like, from Land's End to John O'Groat's. It is a slight but a very appreciable mitigation of these destructive acts that it was ruined _artistically_; just as some enthusiastic castle and abbey- painter would have suggested. Although I spent the night at Melrose, it was a dark and cloudy one, so that I could not see the abbey by moonlight--a view so much prized and celebrated. The next day I literally walked from morning till evening among the tombstones of antiquity and monuments of Scotch history invested with an interest which will never wane. In the first place, I went down the Tweed a few miles and crossed it in a ferry-boat to see Dryburgh Abbey. Here, embowered among the trees in a silver curve of the river, stands this grand monument of one of the most remarkable ages of the world. Within an hour's walk from Melrose, and four or five years only after the completion of that edifice, the foundations of this were laid. It is astonishing. We will not dwell upon it now, but make a separate chapter on it when I have seen most of the other ruins of the kind in the kingdom. The French are given to the habit of festooning the monuments and graves of their relatives and friends with immortelles. Nature has hung one of hers to Dryburgh Abbey. It is a yew-tree opposite the door by which you enter the ruins. The year-rings of its trunk register all the centuries that the stones of the oldest wall have stood imbedded one upon the other. The tree is still green, putting forth its leaf in its season. But there is an immortelle hung to these dark, crumbling walls that shall outlive the greenest trees now growing on earth. Here, in a little vaulted chapel, or rather a deep niche in the wall, lie the remains of Sir Walter Scott, his wife and the brilliant Lockhart. How many thousands of all lands where the English language is spoken will come and stand here in mute and pensive communion before the iron gate of this family tomb and look through the bars upon this group of simply-lettered stones!