But, to return to the orchard gateway—it is droll enough, immediately under the pious and tender inscription to his parents, in Latin, to see standing this sentence, in plain English—"Man-traps and spring-guns placed in this orchard." Quere? Are they, too, dedicated to his best of parents, or only to his poor brethren of mankind?
Dryburgh is a sweet old monastic seclusion. Here, lying deep below the surrounding country, the river sweeps on between high, rocky banks, overhung with that fine growth of trees which no river presents in more beauty, abundance, and luxuriance. A hush prevails over the spot, which tells you that some ancient sanctity is there. You feel that there is some hidden glory of religious art and piety somewhere about, though you do not see it. As you advance, it is up a lane overhung with old ashes. There are primitive-looking cottages, also overshadowed by great trees. There are crofts, with thick, tall hedges, and cattle lying in them with a sybaritic luxury of indolence. You are still, as you proceed, surrounded by an ocean of foliage, and ancient stems; and a dream-like feeling of past ages seems to pervade not only the air, but the ground. I do not know how it is, but I think it must be by a mesmeric influence that the monks and the holy dreamers of old have left on the spots which they inhabited their peculiar character. You could not construct such a place now, taking the most favorable materials for it. Take a low, sequestered spot, full of old timber and cottages, and old gray walls; and employ all the art that you could, to give it a monastic character—it would be in vain. You would feel it at once; the mind would not admit it to be genuine. No, the old monastic spots are full of the old monastic spirit. The very ground, and the rich old turf, are saturated with it. Dig up the soil, it has a monastery look. It is fat, and black, and crumbling. The trees are actual monks themselves. They stand and dream of the Middle Ages. With the present age and doings they have no feelings, no sympathies. They keep a perpetual vigil, and the sound of anthems has entered into their very substance. They are solemn piles of the condensed silence of ages, of cloistered musings; and the very whisperings of their leaves seem to be muttered aves and ora pro nobises.
This feeling lies all over Dryburgh like a living trance; and the arrangements of these odd Buchans for admitting you to the tomb of Scott, enable you to see the most of it. You perceive a guide-post, and this tells you to go on to the house where the keys are kept. You descend a long lane amid these old trees and crofts, and arrive at a gate and lodge, which seem the entrance to some gentleman's grounds. Here probably you see too a gentleman's carriage waiting, and present yourself to go in. But you are told that, though this is the place, you must not enter there. You must go on still farther to the house where the keys are kept. At length, you find yourself at the bottom of another stretch of lane, and here you stop, for the simple reason that you can go no farther—you have arrived at the bank of the river. Necessarily then looking about you, you see on one side a gate in a tall wall, which looks into an orchard, and on the other a cottage in a garden. On this cottage there is a board, bearing this long-sought-after inscription—"The abbey keys kept here." You knock, and ask if you can see the abbey; and a very careless "Yes," assures you that you can. The people appointed to show the ruins and Scott's grave, are become notorious for their lumpish, uncivil behavior. It would seem as if the owner of the place had ordered them to make it as unpleasant to visitors as possible; a thing very impolitic in them, for they are making a fortune by it. Indeed, Scott is the grand benefactor of all the neighborhood, Dryburgh, Melrose, and Abbotsford. At Abbotsford and Melrose they are civil, at Dryburgh the very reverse. They seem as though they would make you feel that it was a favor to be admitted to the grounds of Lord Buchan; and you are pointed away at the gate of exit with a manner which seems to say, "There!—begone!"
The woman of the cottage was already showing a party; and her sister, just as sulky, ungracious a sort of body as you could meet with, was my guide. The gate in the wall was thrown open, and she said, "You must go across the grass there." I saw a track across the grass, and obediently pursued it; but it was some time before I could see any thing but a very large orchard of young trees, and I began to suppose this another Pomarium dedicated by old Lord Buchan to his parents, and to wish him and his Pomaria under the care of a certain old gentleman; but, anon!—the ruins of the abbey began to tower magnificently above the trees, and I forgot the planter of orchards and his gracious guides. The ruins are certainly very fine, and finely relieved by the tall, rich trees, which have sprung up in and around them. The interior of the church is now greensward, and two rows of cedars grow where formerly stood the pillars of the aisles. The cloisters and south transept are more entire, and display much fine workmanship. There is a window aloft, I think in the south transept, peculiarly lovely. It is formed of, I believe, five stars cut in stone, so that the open center within them forms a rose. The light seen through this window gives it a beautiful effect. There is the old chapter-house also entire, with an earthen floor, and a circle drawn in the center, where the bodies of the founder and his lady are said to lie. But even here the old lord has been with his absurdities; and at one end, by the window, stands a fantastic statue of Locke, reading in an open book, and pointing to his own forehead with his finger. The damp of the place has blackened and mildewed this figure, and it is to be hoped will speedily eat it quite up. What has Locke to do in the chapter-house of a set of ancient friars?
The grave of Scott, for a tomb he has not yet got, is a beautiful fragment of the ruined pile, the lady aisle. The square from one pillar of the aisle to the next, which in many churches, as in Melrose, formed a confessional, forms here a burial-place. It is that of the Scotts of Haliburton, from whom Scott descended; and that was probably one reason why he chose this place, though its monastic beauty and associations were, no doubt, the main causes. The fragment consists of two arches' length, and the adjoining one is the family burial-place of the Erskines. The whole, with its tier of small Norman sectional arches above, forms, in fact, a glorious tomb, much resembling one of the chapel tombs in Winchester; and the trees about it are dispersed by nature and art so as to give it the utmost picturesque effect. It is a mausoleum well befitting the author of the Lay of the Last Minstrel; and, though many wonder that he should have chosen to be interred in another man's ground and property, yet, independent of all such considerations, we must say, that it would be difficult to select a spot more in keeping with Scott's character, genius, and feelings. But that which surprises every one, is the neglect in which the grave itself remains. After thirteen years it is still a mere dusty and slovenly heap of earth. His mother lies on his right hand, that is, in front of him, and his wife on his left. His mother has a stone laid on her grave, but neither Scott nor his wife has any thing but the earth which covers them; and lying under the arched ruin, nature herself is not allowed, as she otherwise would, to fling over the poet the verdant mantle with which she shrouds the grave of the lowliest of her children. The contrast is the stranger now, that so splendid a monument is raised to his honor in Edinburgh; and that both Glasgow and Selkirk have their statue-crowned column to the author of Waverley. The answer to inquiries is, that his son has been out of the country; but a plain slab, bearing the name, and the date of his death, would confer a neatness and an air of respectful attention on the spot, which would accord far more gratefully with the feelings of its thousands and tens of thousands of visitors than its present condition.
As this goes to press, I hear that at length a stone is preparing for Sir Walter's grave.
Gateway of Glasgow College