It is fortunate for the public that the place has fallen into the hands of a gentleman who affords the utmost facility for the inspection of it by strangers. Nothing can exceed the easy courtesy with which it is thrown open to them; and, as an old schoolfellow of Lord Byron’s, we believe Colonel Wildman is as desirous as any man can be not to obliterate any traces of his lordship’s former life here. There are some particulars, however, in which I think this care might have been carried more thoroughly into act. In the first place, I think a style of architecture in restoring the abbey might have been adopted more abbey-like--more in keeping with the old part of it--and more consonant to the particular state of feeling with which admirers of the noble poet’s genius would be likely to approach it. To my taste it is too square and massy in its _tout ensemble_. I do not see why the architect, whoever he was, should have gone back in the date of his style beyond that of the ancient remains. The old western front is a specimen of what Rickman calls the early English order of Anglo-Gothic architecture; so light, so airy, so pure and beautiful, that the juxta-position of a heavy Norman style, and especially of the ponderous, square, and stunted tower at the south-west corner, is strange, and anything but pleasing. A greater variety of outline--the projection of porches and buttresses--the aspiring altitude of pointed gables--clustered chimneys, and slender, sky-seeking turrets, would certainly have given greater effect. Instead of a square mass of stone, as it appears at a distance, it would have proclaimed its own beauty to the eye from every far-off point at which it may be discovered. Any one who has seen Fonthill, Abbotsford from the Galashiel’s road, or Ilam from the entrance of Dovedale, may imagine how much more that effect would be in accordance, not only with a low situation, but with the mental impressions of a poetic visiter. I cannot help, too, regretting that the poet’s study should now be converted into a common bed-room; and most of all, that the antique fountain which stood in front of the abbey, and makes so strong a feature in the very graphic picture of the place drawn in Don Juan, should be removed. It now adorns the inner quadrangle, or cloister court, and is certainly a very beautiful object there, as may be seen by the print in Murray’s edition of Byron’s Works. I do not wonder at Colonel Wildman desiring to grace this court with a fountain, but I wonder extremely at his gracing it with _this_ fountain. I must for ever deplore its removal, as the breaking up of that most vivid picture of the front, given by the poet to all posterity:--