Melrose--the Kennaquhair of the 'Monastery'--is the most convenient headquarters for studying the homes and following the footprints of Sir Walter Scott. Scott may be said to have made Melrose. It was a mere village when Abbotsford was building. It really grew with the growth of Abbotsford, and in the wake of Scott's success. The name--_maol-ros_, 'the open or naked headland'--is a transfer from Old Melrose, two and a half miles further down the Tweed, where flourished the first monastic settlement, fragrant with the memories of Aidan, Boisil (whence St. Lessuden and St. Boswells), and most celebrated of them all, Cuthbert, that Leaderside shepherd lad, who rose to be head of the great See of Durham. It was David, 'the Sair Sanct,' who founded the second religious house of Melrose between the years 1136 and 1146. Dedicated to the Virgin, and tenanted by a colony of Cistercians from Rievalle, in Yorkshire, the pioneers of their Order in Scotland, Melrose quickly came to the front as the most famous establishment of its kind in the kingdom. For four centuries, like the rest of the Border Abbeys, Melrose held its place, and was a power in the land. During the Edwardian Wars it suffered frequently from fire and assault, and, indeed, about 1322, it was more or less a ruin. Mainly through the munificence of Robert the Bruce, it was rebuilt in 1326, 'in the most magnificent style of the period,' at a cost of £50,000 in modern money. By 1384 it was again sacked, this time by Richard II., and again restored. In 1544 Evers and Latoun, the English generals at Ancrum Moor, desecrated and demolished the Douglas tombs at Melrose, and in the following year, on the Hertford invasion, the work of destruction was complete. At the Reformation the Abbey was finally dismantled, and for long afterwards the ruin was used as a quarry by the towns-people. Not a little of the original Abbotsford found its way from Melrose Abbey. The statues, specially numerous and costly, were 'ground to powder' in 1649, and up to 1820 the nave was used as the parish church. Scott's genius and patriotism have done more for Melrose than anything else. To him, in large measure, as the Biography shows, the place owes its preservation as the finest ecclesiastical ruin in the country. None knew Melrose Abbey better, or bore a dearer regard to it, than Scott, and its architecture is nowhere more faithfully described than in the 'Lay.' To read the 'Lay' at Melrose is one of the delights of a lifetime. The best view is from the south-east corner of the churchyard. By the high altar Bruce's heart was interred. Here also lie the bodies of the brave Earl Douglas, hero of Otterburn, and of that other Douglas, the 'dark knight of Liddesdale,' a prominent figure in Border story. There, too, is the traditional grave of 'the wondrous Wizard,' Michael Scot, from whose cold dead hand Deloraine snatched the Book of Might. And many another--monarch and monk, priest and warrior, Border laird and