It has been remarked that at the grave, the burial service of the Episcopal Church was read by a clergyman of the Church of England (the Rev. John Williams, of Baliol College, Oxford, Rector of the Edinburgh Academy, and Vicar of Lampeter), although Sir Walter through life adhered to the persuasion of the Presbyterian or Church of Scotland. In Scotland no prayers are offered over the dead; when the mourners assemble in the house of the deceased, refreshments are handed round, previous to which a blessing is implored, (as at meals,) and _then_ only the minister alludes to the bereavement the family have suffered, and strength and grace are implored to sustain them under it. This gratuitous custom was adhered to, and previous to the funeral _cortège_ setting out from Abbotsford, the Rev. Principal Baird, offered up a prayer. But although a Presbyterian in practice, Sir Walter in several parts of his works expressed his dissent from several of the rigid canons of that Church, and an example occurs in that graphic scene in _the Antiquary_, the funeral group of _Steenie Mucklebacket_, where "the creak of the screw nails announced that the lid of the last mansion of mortality was in the act of being secured above its tenant. The last act which separates us for ever from the mortal relicks of the person we assemble to mourn has usually its effect upon the most indifferent, selfish, and hard-hearted:" and he adds in condemnation, "With a spirit of contradiction which we may be pardoned for esteeming narrow-minded, the fathers of the Scottish Kirk rejected even on this most solemn occasion the form of an address to the Divinity, lest they should be thought to give countenance to the ritual of Rome or of England." And he seizes the opportunity to applaud the liberal judgment of the present Scottish clergymen who avail themselves of the advantage of offering a prayer, suitable to make an impression on the living. The scenery around his burial-place is fraught with melancholy associations--enshrined as have been its beauties by him that now sought a bourn amidst them. It had been the land of his poetical pilgrimage: through its "bosomed vales" and alongside its "valley streams" his genius had journeyed with untiring energy, then to spread abroad its stores for the gratification of hundreds of thousands, who may about his grave Make dust their paper, and with rainy eyes Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth. --Only let us glance at a few of the storied sites that are to be seen around this hallowed spot: at Melrose, with antique pillar and ruins grey-- Was ever scene so sad and fair. Eildon Hill, where Sir Walter said he could stand and point out forty-three places famous in war and verse;[14] and above all, the tower of Smailholm Castle, where once "his careless childhood strayed,"--the _Alpha_ of his poetic fame. [14] Cunningham. FAMILY.