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.
FAMILY.
Sir Walter Scott had two sons and two daughters. The elder daughter, Sophia Charlotte, was married, April 28, 1820, to Mr. John Gibson Lockhart, advocate, editor of the Quarterly Review. The eldest son, Walter, who has succeeded to the baronetcy, is now in his thirty-second year, and Major of the 15th or King's Hussars. In 1825, he married Jane, daughter and sole heiress of John Jobson, Esq., an opulent Scottish merchant, with which lady, report affirmed at the time, Major Scott received a fortune of 60,000l. The estate of Abbotsford was also settled by Sir Walter upon the young pair; but, as the owner is stated not to have been at this time in a state of solvency, though he thought himself so, and his estate now proves to be encumbered with heavy debts, the deed of entail, of course, becomes invalid, and the paternal property must be sold by the creditors of the estate. There is, however, ample reason to hope that such a step will be averted, by the gratitude of the public, and that Abbotsford will be preserved for the family. The younger son, Charles, who is, we believe, a junior clerk in the Foreign Office, is unmarried; as is the younger daughter, Anne. The death of Lady Scott occurred May 15, 1826. Mrs. Lockhart's children are as yet the only descendants of Sir Walter in the second generation.