I again walked up the mile-long plantation, running along the hillside from the house up the valley, and found it again merely a walk through a plantation--nothing more. It is true that, as you get a good way up, you arrive at some high ground, and can look out up the valley toward Selkirk, and get some views of the Tweed, coming down between its moorland hills, which are very sweet. But the fault of Abbotsford is, that it is not laid out to the advantage that it might be. The ground in front of the house, highly capable of being laid out in beautiful lawn and shrubbery, is cut up with trees that shut out the noblest feature of the scene--the river. One side of the house is elbowed up with square brick garden walls, which ought to be at a distance, and concealed; the other with an unsightly laundry-yard, with its posts and lines. Just down before the house, where the sweet and rich verdure of lawn should be, is set the farmyard; and then comes the long, monotonous wood. This, in some degree, might be altered, and probably sometime will. At present, the fault of the whole estate is stiffness and formality. The plantations of fir have, necessarily, a stiff, formal look; but this, too, will mend with time. They are now felling out the fir timber; and then what is called the hard-wood, that is, the deciduous trees, will in course of time, present a softer and more agreeable look. I ranged all through these plantations, from the house to the foot of the Eildon hills, down by the Rhymer's glen and Huntly burn. It is amazing what a large stretch of poor land Sir Walter had got together. It is not particularly romantic, except for the fine background of the Eildon hills; but Sir Walter saw the scene with the eyes of poetic tradition. He saw things which had been done there, and sung of; and all was beautiful to him: and in time, when the trees are better grown, and have a more varied aspect, and the plantations are more broken up, it _will_ be beautiful. The views from the higher grounds are so now. Down at the house the trees have so grown and closed up the prospects, that you can scarcely get a single glimpse of the river; but when you ascend the woods, and come to an opening on the hills, you see up and down the valley, far and wide. Near a mount in the plantations, on which an old carved stone is reared, and held upright by iron stays, probably marking the scene of some border skirmish, there are seats of turf, from which you have fine views. You see below Abbotsford, where the Gala water comes sweeping into the Tweed, and where Galashiels lies smoking beyond, all compact, like a busy little town as it is. And in another direction, the towers and town of Melrose are discerned at the foot of the bare but airy Eildon hills; and, still farther, the black summit of the Cowdenknowes.