certainly bodes good luck to the house of Montagu, and as there are three of them, I presume it is to come threefold. From the care with which they were concealed, I presume they had been closed in the days of Cromwell, or a little before, and that the artist employed (like the {p.171} General, who told his soldiers to fight bravely against the Pope, since they were Venetians before they were Christians) had more professional than religious zeal, and did not even, according to the practice of the time, think it necessary to sweep away Popery with the besom of destruction.[66] I am here on a stolen visit of two days, and find my mansion gradually enlarging. Thanks to Mr. Atkinson (who found out a practical use for our romantic theory), it promises to make a comfortable station for offering your Lordship and Lady Montagu a pilgrim's meal, when you next visit Melrose Abbey, and that without any risk of your valet (who I recollect is a substantial person) sticking between the wall of the parlor and the backs of the chairs placed round the table. This literally befell Sir Harry Macdougal's fat butler, who looked like a ship of the line in the loch at Bowhill, altogether unlike his master, who could glide wherever a weasel might make his way. Mr. Atkinson has indeed been more attentive than I can express, when I consider how valuable his time must be.[67] We are attempting no castellated conundrums to rival those Lord Napier used to have executed in sugar, when he was Commissioner, and no cottage neither, but an irregular somewhat--like an old English hall, in which your squire of £500 a year used to drink his ale in days of yore. [Footnote 65: Lady Montagu was the daughter of the late Lord Douglas by his first marriage with Lady Lucy Graham, daughter of the second Duke of Montrose.] [Footnote 66: Lord Montagu's house at Ditton Park, near Windsor, had recently been destroyed by fire--and the ruins revealed some niches with antique candlesticks, etc., belonging to a domestic chapel that had been converted to other purposes from the time, I believe, of Henry VIII.] [Footnote 67: Mr. Atkinson, of St. John's Wood, was the architect of Lord Montagu's new mansion at Ditton, as well as the artist ultimately employed in arranging Scott's interior at Abbotsford.] I am making considerable plantations (that is, considering), being greatly encouraged by the progress of those I formerly laid out. Read the veracious Gulliver's account of the Windsor Forest of Lilliput, and you will {p.172} have some idea of the solemn gloom of my Druid shades. Your Lordship's truly faithful