"The learned Leland, Miss Wardour, who lost his senses on witnessing the destruction of the conventual libraries in England." "Now, I think," replied the young lady, "his misfortune may have saved the rationality of some modern antiquaries, which would certainly have been drowned if so vast a lake of learning had not been diminished by draining." "Well, thank Heaven, there is no danger now—they have hardly left us a spoonful in which to perform the dire feat." So saying, Mr. Oldbuck led the way down the bank, by a steep but secure path, which soon placed them on the verdant meadow where the ruins stood. "There they lived," continued the Antiquary, "with nought to do but to spend their time in investigating points of remote antiquity, transcribing manuscripts, and composing new works for the information of posterity." "And," added the Baronet, "in exercising the rites of devotion with a pomp and ceremonial worthy of the office of the priesthood." "And if Sir Arthur's excellence will permit," said the German, with a low bow, "the monksh might also make de vary curious experiment in deir laboraties, both in chemistry and magia naturalis." "I think," said the clergyman, "they would have enough to do in collecting the teinds of the parsonage and vicarage of three good parishes." "And all," added Miss Wardour, nodding to the Antiquary, "without interruption from womankind." "True, my fair foe," said Oldbuck; "this was a paradise where no Eve was admitted, and we may wonder the rather by what chance the good fathers came to lose it." With such criticisms on the occupations of those by whom the ruins had been formerly possessed, they wandered for some time from one moss-grown shrine to another, under the guidance of Oldbuck, who explained, with much plausibility, the ground-plan of the edifice, and read and expounded to the company the various mouldering inscriptions which yet were to be traced upon the tombs of the dead, or under the vacant niches of the sainted images. "What is the reason," at length Miss Wardour asked the Antiquary, "why tradition has preserved to us such meagre accounts of the inmates of these stately edifices, raised with such expense of labour and taste, and whose owners were in their times personages of such awful power and importance? The meanest tower of a freebooting baron or squire who lived by his lance and broadsword, is consecrated by its appropriate legend, and the shepherd will tell you with accuracy the names and feats of its inhabitants;—but ask a countryman concerning these beautiful and extensive remains—these towers, these arches, and buttresses, and shafted windows, reared at such cost,—three words fill up his answer—they were made up by the monks lang syne.'"