Adjoining is the Library, the largest and finest apartment in the house--40 feet long by 18 feet broad and 16 feet high--with an immense bay-window, commanding a lovely view of the Tweed. The book-presses, wired and locked, rise to a height of 11 feet, leaving a space of 5 feet accordingly between the top of the shelves and the magnificent cedar ceiling, whose rich Gothic ornamentation (of plaster, however) is modelled from Melrose and Rosslyn. Notice the familiar 'curly green' of the Melrose Abbots. Close on 20,000 volumes line the walls.[34] Many are presentation copies, and not a few contain MS. criticisms and jottings by Scott. The furniture of this room is very valuable. Two very richly-carved chairs, said to have come from the Borghese Palace, in Rome, were presented by Constable (see letter to Terry in Lockhart, vol. vii., p. 104). An ebony writing-cabinet, gorgeously figured, and once the property of George III., was presented by his successor. Note should be taken of Sir Walter's four-sloped reading-desk, movable at the will of the writer, thus enabling him to consult a number of works at one time. This was in constant use when 'Napoleon' was on the stocks. The great centre-table was the work of Joseph Shillinglaw, Darnick, 'the Sheriff planning and studying every turn as zealously as ever an old lady pondered the development of an embroidered cushion.' The hangings and curtains (not in use) were chiefly the work of a little hunch-backed tailor, William Goodfellow, who occupied a cottage on Scott's farm of the Broomielees. 'Not long after he had completed his work at Abbotsford,' says Lockhart, 'little Goodfellow fell sick, and as his cabin was near Chiefswood, I had many opportunities of observing the Sheriff's kind attention to him in his affliction. I can never forget the evening on which the poor tailor died. When Scott entered he found everyone silent, and inferred from the looks of the good women in attendance that their patient had fallen asleep, and that they feared his sleep was the final one. He murmured some syllables of kind regret. At the sound of his voice the dying tailor unclosed his eyes, and eagerly and wistfully sat up, clasping his hands with an expression of rapturous gratefulness and devotion that, in the midst of deformity, disease, pain and wretchedness, was at once beautiful and sublime. He cried with a loud voice, "The Lord bless and reward you!" and expired with the effort.' One painting only has place in the Library--a full-length of the second Sir Walter, by Sir William Allan (1822), in the uniform of the 15th Hussars, his horse by his side. 'A handsomer fellow never put foot into stirrup,' said Scott. The celebrated Chantrey Bust, of which Lockhart said that it 'alone preserved for posterity the cast of expression most fondly remembered by all who mingled in his domestic circle,' was placed in its present niche (at the end of the room) by young Sir Walter the day after his father's funeral.