The remains of Sir Walter were buried in Dryburgh Abbey. "As we advanced," says one who was present at the funeral, which was conducted with the greatest simplicity and solemnity, "the ruined abbey disclosed itself through the trees; and we approached its western extremity, where a considerable portion of vaulted roof still remains to protect the poet's family place of interment, which opens to the sides in lofty Gothic arches, and is defended by a low rail of enclosure. At one extremity of it, a tall thriving young cypress rears its spiral form. Creeping plants of different kinds, 'with ivy never sere,' have spread themselves very luxuriantly over every part of the Abbey. These perhaps were in many instances the children of art; but however this may have been, nature had herself undertaken their education. In this spot especially, she seems to have been most industriously busy in twining her richest wreaths around those walls which more immediately form her poet's tomb. Amongst her other decorations, we observed a plum tree, which was perhaps at one period a prisoner, chained to the solid masonry, but which having long since been emancipated, now threw out its wild pendent branches, laden with purple fruit, ready to drop, as if emblematical of the ripening and decay of human life. "In such a scene as this, then, it was that the coffin of Sir Walter Scott was set down on trestles placed outside the iron railing; and here that solemn service, beginning with those words, so cheering to the souls of Christians, 'I am the resurrection and the life,' was solemnly read. The manly soldier-like features of the chief mourner, on whom the eyes of sympathy were most naturally turned, betrayed at intervals the powerful efforts which he had made to master his emotions, as well as the inefficiency of his exertions to do so. The other relatives who surrounded the bier were deeply moved; and amid the crowd of weeping friends, no eye, and no heart could be discovered that was not altogether occupied in that sad and impressive ceremonial, which was so soon to shut from them forever, him who had been so long the common idol of their admiration, and of their best affections. Here and there, indeed, we might have fancied that we detected some early and long tried friends of him who lay cold before us, who, whilst tears dimmed their eyes, and whilst their lips quivered, were yet partly engaged in mixing up and contrasting the happier scenes of days long gone by, with that which they were now witnessing, until they became lost in dreamy reverie, so that even the movement made when the coffin was carried under the lofty arches of the ruin, and when _dust was committed to dust_, did not entirely snap the thread of their visions. It was not until the harsh sound of the hammers of the workmen who were employed to rivet those iron bars covering the grave, to secure it from violation, had begun to echo from the vaulted roof, that some of us were called to