This oldest harbour of Christianity was founded in the pagan world by monks from Iona. Therefore by way of Ireland and not from Rome, blessed by Saint Columba sixty years before Saint Augustine came to Canterbury. It was the chief "island" between Iona and Lindisfarne. Very haughty were these monks of the West. "Rome errs, Alexandria errs, all the world errs; only the Scots and the Britons are in the right." There is surely something still left of the old spirit in Scotia, particularly in spiritual Scotia. [Illustration: MELROSE ABBEY.] Near Melrose was born that Cuthbert who is the great saint of the North, either side the Border, and who lies in the midst of the splendour of Durham. A shepherd, he watched his sheep on these very hills round about us, and saw, when abiding in the fields, angels ascending and descending on golden ladders. Entering Melrose as a novice he became prior in 664, and later prior at Lindisfarne. When the monks were driven from the Holy Island by the Danes they carried the body of St. Cuthbert with them for seven years, and once it rested at Melrose-- "O'er northern mountain, march and moor, From sea to sea, from shore to shore, Seven years St. Cuthbert's corpse they bore, They rested them in fair Melrose; But though alive he loved it well, Not there his relics might repose." When King David came to the making of Scotland, he came into the Middle Marches, and finding them very lovely--even as you and I--this "sair sanct to the Croon," as his Scottish royal descendant, James VI saw him--and James would have fell liked to be a saint, but he could accomplish neither sinner nor saint, because Darnley crossed Mary in his veins--David determined to build him fair Abbeys. Of which, Melrose, "St. David's ruined pile," is the fairest. He brought Cistercians from Rievaulx in Yorkshire, to supplant the Culdees of Iona, and they builded them a beautiful stone Melrose to supplant the wooden huts of old Melrose. It centered a very active monastic life, where pavements were once smooth and lawns were close-clipped, and cowled monks in long robes served God, and their Abbot lorded it over lords, even equally with kings.