96 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



There, too, imagination may busy itself with the life of one 

 whose name alone is carved on a stone, thus : 



+ ELGSE 



TARGA 



Did a stormy, eventful career end in this sign of hope and 

 reconciliation ? or is it a record of peaceful, lifelong devotion, 

 the gravestone of an abbess or a sister ? Does an unrequited 

 love there leave its memory in stone ? None can tell. All is 

 voiceless and silent now ; and Heloise Targa's sorrows are as 

 if they had never been, till the day dawns that she thus hope- 

 fully looks on to. 



On the Leader, Cowdenknowes, at once recalls the 

 ballad, 



" Oh, the broom, and the bonny, bonny broom, 



And the broom of the Cowdenknows, 

 And aye sae sweet as the lassie sang 

 I' the bought, milking the ewes." 



And the denotement, which showed " the bonny May, with 

 yellow hair and grass-green sleeve," who her lover was, 



" I am the Laird of the Oakland hills, 



I ha'e thirty plows and three, 

 And I hae gotten the bonniest lass 

 That's in a' the south countrie." 



Having "seen Melrose aright" (by moonlight, from the 

 window of our room in the adjoining Abbey Hotel), next 

 morning is devoted to examining the rich carving and details 

 of the ruined pile. The rose window which represents the 

 Crown of Thorns is duly admired, and the antiquary may note 

 a few inscriptions, as the motto of the last abbot, Durum 

 patientcr frango. Another stone bears " Heir lyes the race of 

 the Hous of Zair." Most of the sculptured emblems are of a 

 very funereal character. One stone is specially noticeable : an 



