NIMRO&S NORTHERN TOUR. 75 



having its walls adorned with some good pictures, and displaying 

 other ornaments tastefully blended with the various insignia of 

 the chase. 



Even supposing the character of my Tour to have been strictly 

 sporting, I could not omit a short description of the town of 

 Kelso and its immediate neighbourhood, each of which is full of 

 interest to those who occasionally look back upon past times. 

 The town itself indeed, is one of the prettiest in Scotland at 

 all events of those towns I saw ; and the ruins of the abbey 

 the transept and towers of which are still complete, at the end 

 of nearly a thousand years* exhibit as beautiful a specimen of 

 Saxon architecture as is to be seen anywhere. Old Camden's 

 notice of this abbey, by- the-by, is not much amiss. "Not far 

 off Hume Castle," says he, " lieth Kelso, formerly famous for a 

 monastery founded by King David the first among thirteen 

 more, for the propagation of God's glory, but to the great im- 

 pairing of the crown lands" But it was with the situation of 

 Kelso that I was most gratified. It stands in a sort of vale of 

 Tempe, abounding in everything that pleases the eye of taste ; 

 and upon the classic banks of the Tweed and Teviot, who join 

 their waters as they flow through it, are to be seen noble spe- 

 cimens both of nature and of art. The variety of landscape in 

 fact appears to have no bounds when viewed and appreciated in 

 its merely pastoral character ; but when associated with the 

 deeds of "auld lang syne," and contrasted with its present 

 peaceable appearance, the soul of that man must be dead indeed 

 who could stand quite unmoved upon Kelso-bridge, on his first 

 visit to this country. At one glance of his eye he could see a 

 palace in which a duke lives ; with another, a ruin before which 

 a monarch died. He would see all that remains of by far the 

 strongest of the border fortresses, and observe the ravages the 

 hand of time has made, for he might almost exclaim, " Periere 

 ruinae." Of course I am alluding to the castle of Roxburgh on 

 the Duke of Roxburgh's domain; and his recollections of his- 

 tory would furnish him with the names and characters of its 

 illustrious inhabitants in olden times. Kings were born, mar- 

 riages were celebrated, birthdays were kept within its massive 

 walls, and though last, not least, the crown of Scotland was here 

 tendered to the crown of England. Here then is the transition 

 of all human greatness ; for in the words of Dyer, that very 

 celebrated describer of a ruin 



" 'Tis now the raven's bleak abode ; 

 ; Tis now the apartment of the toad ; 



* Founded 1128. 



