H2 NIM ROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 



day, was a still more splendid structure which superstition reared 

 in the dark ages of this country the far-famed Abbey of Mel- 

 rose, which I ought to feel ashamed of myself for not having 

 gone purposely to inspect. But what said the poet of whom I 

 have just been speaking ? 



" If thou would'st view fair Melrose aright, 

 Go visit it by the pale moonlight." 



Now there was no moon during the week I was at Kelso ; neither 

 if there had, could I have spared a day or rather a night for that 

 purpose ; nor indeed, by his own admission, had Sir Walter him- 

 self ever seen it by that light, when he at the time strongly re- 

 commended it to others. But this goes for nothing. Although 

 a story may be fabulous the moral may be just, nor is truth 

 weakened by the ornamental language in which it is conveyed 

 to us. But I will borrow words more expressively elegant than 

 my own. " The shaft of the stately column," says a writer in 

 an Edinburgh Review,* " is not weakened by the Acanthus 

 which curls at its summit, nor is reason less enlightened when it 

 derives a ray from the imagination." The Douglas of" Chevy 

 Chace" lies interred in this abbey. 



From the circumstance of its being what may be called a 

 second-hand fixture, in addition to the unfavourable state of the 

 country from the remains of the frost, and Lord Elcho's and the 

 Galewood hounds also being out, we had a very small field, 

 which rendered the disappointment the less ; and to myself it 

 was none at all. I rode a horse King had sent me from Edin- 

 burgh in lieu of one I had returned to him, and which appeared 

 never to have seen hounds before. One solitary incident, then, 

 is all I have more to relate of this inauspicious day. When 

 within half a mile of the cover, Williamson turned out of the 

 road into the fields parallel to it, for the purpose of avoiding 

 thorns with which it was strewed, to the great annoyance of the 

 hounds, as they found their way into their feet. Perceiving 

 Frank Collison, who was in the rear of them, on a fine long- 

 tailed horse, which threw up his heels and squealed after he 

 leaped a fence, I observed to Mr. Callander " What a slapping 

 four-year-old colt old Frank has got under him this morning !" 

 Now what did this four-year-old colt prove to be, but old 

 Alphabet, in his nineteenth year / I was sorry, however, to 

 learn before I quitted Scotland, that there were symptoms of the 

 old horse failing at all events doubts were entertained whether 

 he would carry the duke another season, and for this reason : 



* January, 1835. Article, "British Scientific Association." 



