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Seeing Europe with Famous Authors

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Since my visit, a massive tomb, of Aberdeen granite, has been placed
over the remains of Sir Walter and Lady Scott, and those of their eldest
son. A railway also now makes the place much more accessible, the
station for Dryburgh being at the village of Newtown, on the other side
of the river. Near St. Boswell's, opposite to Dryburgh, has also been
lately erected a bridge over the Tweed, opening up the communication
betwixt the north and south side of the river, and thus enabling the
tourist to explore at great convenience the scenes of ancient loves and
feuds, and the haunts of Scott. Here his dust lies amid the objects
redolent of his fame; and within a few miles, near Makerstoun, a view
may he obtained, from a hill, of Smailholme Tower, where the poet passed
some of the years of his boyhood, and the memory of which he has
perpetuated in one of the epistles which introduce each Canto
of Marmion.



MELROSE ABBEY [Footnote: From "The Ruined Abbeys of the Border."]

BY WILLIAM HOWITT.

The foundation of Melrose Abbey generally dates from 1136, when David I.
of Scotland, among his many similar erections, built a church here. But
Melrose, as a seat of religion, boasts a much earlier origin. It was one
of those churches, or more properly missionary stations, which the
fathers of Ireland and of Iona spread over Britain and the continent. It
was in fact a portion of that pure and beautiful British church which
existed prior to the Roman hierarchy in these islands, and of which the
professors presented in their primitive habits and primitive doctrines
so apostolic a character....

In 1136 the pious David raised a new and much superior abbey, about two
miles westward of the original site, but on the same south bank of the
Tweed, and established in it the Cistercians. He conferred on them
extensive lands and privileges; the lands of Melrose, Eldun, and
Dernwie; the lands and wood of Gattonside, with the fishings of the
Tweed along the whole extent of those lands; with the right of pasturage
and pannage in his forests of Selkirk and Traguair, and in the forest
between the Gala and the Leeder, with wood from those forests for
building and burning. In 1192 Jocelin, Bishop of Glasgow, granted to the
monks of Melrose the church of Hassindean, with its lands, tithes, and
other emoluments, "for the maintenance of the poor and of pilgrims
coming to the house of Melrose." From this cause the old tower of
Hassindean was called "Monks' Tower," and the farm adjoining the church
is still called "Monks' Croft." In fact, the Abbey of Melrose was a sort
of inn, not only to the poor, but to some of the greatest men of the
time. The Scottish kings from time to time, and wealthy subjects too,
added fresh grants; so that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the
Abbey had accumulated vast possessions and immunities; had many tenants,
great husbandmen, with many granges and numerous herds. It had much
other property in Ayrshire, Dumfriesshire, Selkirkshire, and
Berwickshire.

But the abbey church which David built was not that of which we have now
the remains. The whole place was repeatedly burned down by the English
invaders. In 1215 the rebellious barons of King John of England swore
fealty to Alexander II. of Scotland, at the altar of Melrose. Edward I.,
in 1295-6, when at Berwick, granted the monks of Melrose restitution of
the lands of which they had been deprived; but in 1332 Edward II. burned
down the abbey and killed the abbot William de Peeblis and several of
his monks. Robert I., of Scotland, in 1326 or four years afterward, gave
£2,000 sterling to rebuild it; and Edward II., of England, came from New
Castle at Christmas, 1341, and held his yule in the abbey, and made
restitution of the lands and other property which his father had seized
during the late war. In 1378 Richard II. granted a protection to the
abbot and his lands; but in 1385 he burned down Melrose and other
religious houses on his expedition into Scotland.

Robert Bruce, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, granted a
revenue to restore the abbey; and betwixt this period and the
Reformation arose the splendid structure, the ruins of which yet charm
every eye. It is in the highest style of the decorated order, every
portion is full of work of the most exquisite character, occasionally
mingled with the perpendicular. They are the only ruins of the church
which remain, and they present the finest specimen of Gothic
architecture and sculpture that Scotland possesses. One of Scotland's
most discriminating writers says, "To say that Melrose is beautiful, is
to say nothing. It is exquisitely--splendidly lovely. It is an object
possest of infinite grace and unmeasurable charm; it is fine in its
general aspect, and in its minutest details. It is a study--a glory."
The church is two hundred and eighty-seven feet in length, and at the
greatest breadth one hundred and fifty-seven feet. The west is wholly
ruined; but the great eastern window remains, and one above the southern
door, which are extremely fine. The pillars that remain to support the
roof are of singular grace, and wherever you turn you behold objects
that rivet the attention by their richness of sculpture, tho often only
in fragments. The only wonder is that so much has escaped the numberless
assaults of enemies.

During the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth, the abbey
was continually suffering from their inroads, in which the spirit of
vengeance against the Scots who resisted their schemes of aggression was
mixed strongly with that of enmity to Popery. In the year 1545, it was
twice burned and ransacked by the English, first under Sir Ralph Eyre
and Sir Bryan Layton, and again by the Earl of Hertford. At the
Reformation, when all its lands and immunities were invested in the
Crown, they were valued at £1,758 Scots, besides large contributions in
kind. Among them, in addition to much corn were one hundred and five
stones of butter, ten dozens of capons, twenty-six dozens of poultry,
three hundred and seventy-six more fowl, three hundred and forty loads
of peats, etc. Queen Mary granted Melrose and its lands and tithes to
Bothwell, but they were forfeited on his attainder. They then passed to
a Douglas, and afterward to Sir James Ramsay, who rescured James VI. in
the conspiracy of Gowrie; then to Sir Thomas Hamilton in 1619, who was
made Earl of Melrose, and afterward Earl of Haddington.

About a century ago they became the property of the family of Buccleuch,
in which they remain. The Douglas built himself a house out of the
ruins, which may still be seen about fifty yards to the north of the
church. The ruins are preserved with great care, and are shown by a
family which is at once intelligent and courteous. The person going
round, most generally, points out the shattered remains of thirteen
figures at the great eastern window, in their niches, said to have been
those of our Savior and his Apostles. They were broken to pieces by a
fanatic weaver of Gattonside. A head is also pointed out, said to be
that of Michael Scott, the magician, who exerted his power so
wonderfully, according to tradition, in this neighborhood, as to split,
the Eildon hill into three parts....

The name of Melrose is clearly derived from the Ancient British,
Melross, the projection of the meadow. Moel in Welsh and Maol in Irish
signify something bald, naked, bare. Thus Moal-Ross, in the language of
the Irish monks who first built the church here, would signify the naked
promontory. Moel in Welsh is now usually applied to a smooth mountain,
as Moel-Siabod; and we find Ross continually showing its Celtic origin
where there is a promontory, as Ross on the Moray-frith, and Ross in
Herefordshire from a winding of the Wye. But some old sculptor, on a
stone still preserved in the village, has made a punning derivation for
it, by carving a mell, or mallet, and a rose over it. This stone was
part of a wall of the old prison, long since pulled down.

The site of Melrose, like all monastic ones, is fine. The abbey stands
on a broad level near the Tweed, but is surrounded by hills and fields
full of beauty, and peopled with a thousand beings of romance,
tradition, and poetry. South of the village rise the three peaks of the
Eildon hill, bearing aloft the fame of Michael Scott and Thomas the
Rhymer. On the banks of the Tweed, opposite to Melrose, lies Gattonside,
buried in its gardens and orchards, and still retaining its faith in
many a story of the supernatural; and about three miles westward, on the
same bank of the river, stands Abbotsford, raised by a magician more
mighty than Michael Scott. How is it possible to approach that haunted
abode without meeting on the way the most wonderful troop of wild, and
lofty, and beautiful beings that ever peopled earth or the realm of
imagination? Scotch, English, Gallic, Indian, Syrian come forth to meet
you. The Bruce, the Scottish Jameses, Coeur de Lion, Elizabeth,
Leicester, Mary of Scots, James I. of England, Montrose, Claverhouse,
Cumberland the Butcher. The Covenanters are ready to preach, and fight
anew, the Highland clans rise in aid of the Stuart. What women of
dazzling beauty--Flora M'Ivor, Rose Bradwardine, Rebecca the noble
Jewess, Lucy Ashton, and Amy Robsart, the lovely Effie Deans, and her
homely yet glorious sister Jenny, the bewitching Di Vernon, and Minna
and Brenda Troil, of the northern isles, stand radiant amid a host of
lesser beauties. Then comes Rob Roy, the Robin Hood of the hills; then
Balfour of Burley issues, a stalwart apparition, from his hiding-place,
and of infinite humor and strangeness of aspect. Where is there a band
like this--the Baron of Bradwardine, Dominie Sampson, Meg Merrilies,
Monkbarns, Edie Ochiltree, Old Mortality, Bailie Nicol Jarvie, Andrew
Fairservice, Caleb Balderston, Flibbertigibbet, Mona of the Fitful head,
and that fine fellow the farmer of Liddesdale, with all his Peppers and
Mustards raffling at his heels? But not even out of Melrose need you
move a step to find the name of a faithful servant of Sir Walter. Tom
Purdie lies in Melrose Abbey-Yard; and Scott himself had engraven on his
tomb that he was "the Wood-forester of Abbotsford," probably the title
which Tom gave himself. Those who visit Melrose will take a peep at the
gravestone of Tom Purdie, who sleeps amid a long line of the dead,
reaching from the days of Aidan to our own, as alive he filled a little
niche in the regard! of a master who has given to both high and low so
many niches in the temple of immortality.



CARLYLE'S BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY HOMES [Footnote: From "Fresh Fields." By
special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers,
Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1884.]

BY JOHN BURROUGHS.

There was no road in Scotland or England which I should have been so
glad to have walked over as that from Edinburgh to Ecclefechan, a
distance covered many times by the feet of him whose birth and burial
place I was about to visit. Carlyle as a young man had walked it with
Edward Irving (the Scotch say "travel" when they mean going afoot), and
he had walked it alone, and as a lad with an elder boy, on his way to
Edinburgh College. He says in his "Reminiscences" he nowhere else had
such affectionate, sad, thoughtful, and in fact interesting and salutary
journeys....

Not to be entirely cheated out of my walk, I left the train at Lockerby,
a small Scotch market-town, and accomplished the remainder of the
journey to Ecclefechan on foot, a brief six-mile pull. It was the first
day of June; the afternoon sun was shining brightly. It was still the
honeymoon of travel with me, not yet two weeks in the bonnie land; the
road was smooth and clean as the floor of a sea beach, and firmer, and
my feet devoured the distance with right good will....

Four miles from Lockerby I came to Mainhill, the name of a farm where
the Carlyle family lived many years, and where Carlyle first read
Goethe, "in a dry ditch," Froude says, and translated "Wilhelm Meister."
The land drops gently away to the south and east, opening up broad views
in these directions, but it does not seem to be the bleak and windy
place Froude describes it. The crops looked good, and the fields smooth
and fertile. The soil is rather a stubborn clay, nearly the same as one
sees everywhere....

The Carlyles were living on this farm while their son was teaching
school at Annan, and later at Kircaldy with Irving, and they supplied
him with cheese, butter, ham, oatmeal, etc., from their scanty stores. A
new farmhouse has been built since then, tho the old one is still
standing; doubtless the same Carlyle's father refers to in a letter to
his son, in 1817, as being under way. The parish minister was expected
at Mainhill. "Your mother was very anxious to have the house done before
he came, or else she said she would run over the hill and hide herself."

From Mainhill the highway descends slowly to the village of Ecclefechan,
the site of which is marked to the eye, a mile or more away, by the
spire of the church rising up against a background of Scotch firs, which
clothe a hill beyond. I soon enter the main street of the village, which
in Carlyle's youth had an open burn or creek flowing through the center
of it. This has been covered over by some enterprising citizen, and
instead of a loitering little burn, crossed by numerous bridges, the eye
is now greeted by a broad expanse of small cobble-stones. The cottages
are for the most part very humble, and rise from the outer edges of the
pavement, as if the latter had been turned up and shaped to make their
walls. The church is a handsome brown-stone structure, of recent date,
and is more in keeping with the fine fertile country about than with the
little village in its front. In the cemetery back of it, Carlyle lies
buried. As I approached, a girl sat by the roadside, near the gate,
combing her black locks and arranging her toilet; waiting, as it proved,
for her mother and brother, who lingered in the village. A couple of
boys were cutting nettles against the hedge; for the pigs, they said,
after the sting had been taken out of them by boiling. Across the street
from the cemetery the cows of the villagers were grazing.

I must have thought it would be as easy to distinguish Carlyle's grave
from the others as it was to distinguish the man while living, or his
fame when dead; for it never occurred to me to ask in what part of the
inclosure it was placed. Hence, when I found myself inside the gate,
which opens from the Annan road through a high stone wall, I followed
the most worn path toward a new and imposing-looking monument on the far
side of the cemetery; and the edge of my fine emotion was a good deal
dulled against the marble when I found it bore a strange name. I tried
others, and still others, but was disappointed. I found a long row of
Carlyles, but he whom I sought was not among them. My pilgrim enthusiasm
felt itself needlessly hindered and chilled. How many rebuffs could one
stand? Carlyle dead, then, was the same as Carlyle living; sure to take
you down a peg or two when you came to lay your homage at his feet.

Presently I saw "Thomas Carlyle" on a big marble slab that stood in a
family inclosure. But this turned out to be the name of a nephew of the
great Thomas. However, I had struck the right plat at last; here were
the Carlyles I was looking for, within a space probably of eight by
sixteen feet, surrounded by a high iron fence. The latest made grave was
higher and fuller than the rest, but it had no stone or mark of any kind
to distinguish it. Since my visit, I believe, a stone or monument of
some kind has been put up. A few daisies and the pretty blue-eyed
speedwell were growing amid the grass upon it. The great man lies with
his head toward the south or southwest, with his mother, sister, and
father to the right of him, and his brother John to the left. I was glad
to learn that the high iron fence was not his own suggestion. His father
had put it around the family plot in his lifetime. Carlyle would have
liked to have it cut down about half-way. The whole look of the
cemetery, except in the size of the head-stones, was quite American....

A young man and his wife were working in a nursery of young trees, a few
paces from the graves and I conversed with them through a thin place in
the hedge. They said they had seen Carlyle many times, and seemed to
hold him in proper esteem and reverence. The young man had seen him come
in summer and stand, with uncovered head, beside the graves of his
father and mother. "And long and reverently did he remain there, too,"
said the young gardener. I learned this was Carlyle's invariable custom:
every summer did he make a pilgrimage to this spot, and with bared head
linger beside these graves. The last time be came, which was a couple of
years before he died, he was so feeble that two persons sustained him
while he walked into the cemetery.



BURNS'S LAND [Footnote: From "Our Old Home." Published by Houghton,
Mifflin Co.]

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

We left Carlisle at a little past eleven, and within the half-hour were
at Gretna Green. Thence we rushed onward into Scotland through a flat
and dreary tract of country, consisting mainly of desert and bog, where
probably the moss-troopers were accustomed to take refuge after their
raids into England. Anon, however, the hills hove themselves up to view,
occasionally attaining a height which might almost be called
mountainous. In about two hours we reached Dumfries, and alighted at the
station there....

We asked for Burns's dwelling; and a woman pointed across a street to a
two-story house, built of stone, and whitewashed, like its neighbors,
but perhaps of a little more respectable aspect than most of them, tho I
hesitate in saying so. It was not a separate structure, but under the
same continuous roof with the next. There was an inscription on the
door, bearing no reference to Burns, but indicating that the house was
now occupied by a ragged or industrial school. On knocking, we were
instantly admitted by a servant-girl, who smiled intelligently when we
told our errand, and showed us into a low and very plain parlor, not
more than twelve or fifteen feet square. A young woman, who seemed to be
a teacher in the school, soon appeared, and told us that this had been
Burns's usual sitting-room, and that he had written many of his
songs here.

She then led us up a narrow staircase into a little bedchamber over the
parlor. Connecting with it, there is a very small room, or windowed
closet, which Burns used as a study; and the bedchamber itself was the
one where he slept in his later lifetime, and in which he died at last.
Altogether, it is an exceedingly unsuitable place for a pastoral and
rural poet to live or die in,--even more unsatisfactory than
Shakespeare's house, which has a certain homely picturesqueness that
contrasts favorably with the suburban sordidness of the abode
before us....

Coming to St. Michael's Church, we saw a man digging a grave, and,
scrambling out of the hole, he let us into the churchyard, which was
crowded full of monuments. There was a footpath through this crowded
churchyard, sufficiently well worn to guide us to the grave of Burns,
but a woman followed behind us, who, it appeared, kept the key to the
mausoleum, and was privileged to show it to strangers. The monument is a
sort of Grecian temple, with pilasters and a dome, covering a space of
about twenty feet square. It was formerly open to all the inclemencies
of the Scotch atmosphere, but is now protected and shut in by large
squares of rough glass, each pane being of the size of one whole side of
the structure. The woman unlocked the door, and admitted us into the
interior. Inlaid into the floor of the mausoleum is the gravestone of
Burns--the very same that was laid over his grave by Jean Armour, before
this monument was built. Displayed against the surrounding wall is a
marble statue of Burns at the plow, with the Genius of Caledonia
summoning the plowman to turn poet. Methought it was not a very
successful piece of work; for the plow was better sculptured than the
man, and the man, tho heavy and cloddish, was more effective than the
goddess. Our guide informed us that an old man of ninety, who knew
Burns, certifies this statue to be very like the original.

The bones of the poet, and of Jean Armour, and of some of their
children, lie in the vault over which we stood. Our guide (who was
intelligent, in her own plain way, and very agreeable to talk withal)
said that the vault was opened about three weeks ago, on occasion of the
burial of the eldest son of Burns. [Footnote: This was written in 1860.]
The poet's bones were disturbed, and the dry skull, once so brimming
over with powerful thought and bright and tender fantasies, was taken
away and kept for several days by a Dumfries doctor. It has since been
deposited in a new leaden coffin, and restored to the vault.

We went into the church, and found it very plain and naked, without
altar-decorations, and having its floor quite covered with unsightly
wooden pews. The woman led us to a pew cornering on one of the
side-aisles, and, telling us that it used to be Burns's family pew,
showed us his seat, which is in the corner by the aisle. It is so
situated, that a sturdy pillar hid him from the pulpit, and from the
minister's eye; "for Robin was no great friends with the ministers,"
said she. This touch--his seat behind the pillar, and Burns himself
nodding in sermon time, or keenly observant of profane things--brought
him before us to the life. In the corner-seat of the next pew, right
before Burns, and not more than two feet off, sat the young lady on whom
the poet saw that unmentionable parasite which he has immortalized in
song. We were ungenerous enough to ask the lady's name, but the good
woman could not tell it. This was the last thing which we saw in
Dumfries worthy of record; and it ought to be noted that our guide
refused some money which my companion offered her, because I had already
paid her what she deemed sufficient.

At the railway station we spent more than a weary hour, waiting for the
train, which at last came up, and took us to Mauchline. We got into an
omnibus, the only conveyance to be had, and drove about a mile to the
village, where we established ourselves at the Loudoun Hotel, one of the
veriest country inns which we have found in Great Britain. The town of
Mauchline, a place more redolent of Burns than almost any other,
consists of a street or two of contiguous cottages, mostly whitewashed,
and with thatched roofs. It has nothing sylvan or rural in the immediate
village, and is as ugly a place as mortal man could contrive to make, or
to render uglier through a succession of untidy generations. The fashion
of paving the village street, and patching one shabby house on the
gable-end of another, quite shuts out all verdure and pleasantness; but,
I presume, we are not likely to see a more genuine old Scotch village,
such as they used to be in Burns's time, and long before, than this of
Mauchline. The church stands about midway up the street, and is built of
red freestone, very simple in its architecture, with a square tower and
pinnacles. In this sacred edifice, and its churchyard, was the scene of
one of Burns's most characteristic productions, "The Holy Fair."

Almost directly opposite its gate, across the village street, stands
Posie Nansie's inn, where the "Jolly Beggars" congregated. The latter is
a two-story, red-stone, thatched house, looking old, but by no means
venerable, like a drunken patriarch. It has small, old-fashioned
windows, and may well have stood for centuries--tho seventy or eighty
years ago, when Burns was conversant with it, I should fancy it might
have been something better than a beggar's alehouse....

[Burns's farm of] Moss Giel is not more than a mile from Mauchline, and
the road extends over a high ridge of land, with a view of far hills and
green slopes on either side. Just before we reached the farm, the driver
stopt to point out a hawthorn, growing by the wayside, which he said was
Burns's "Lousie Thorn"; and I devoutly plucked a branch, altho I have
really forgotten where or how this illustrious shrub has been
celebrated. We then turned into a rude gateway, and almost immediately
came to the farmhouse of Moss Giel, standing some fifty yards removed
from the high-road, behind a tall hedge of hawthorn, and considerably
overshadowed by trees.

The biographers talk of the farm of Moss Giel as being damp and
unwholesome; but I do not see why, outside of the cottage walls, it
should possess so evil a reputation. It occupies a high, broad ridge,
enjoying, surely, whatever benefit can come of a breezy site, and
sloping far downward before any marshy soil is reached. The high hedge,
and the trees that stand beside the cottage, give it a pleasant aspect
enough to one who does, not know the grimy secrets of the interior; and
the summer afternoon was now so bright that I shall remember the scene
with a great deal of sunshine over it.

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