London to Joint O 1 Groat's. 



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paper. It must be true that pure, unaided literary 

 labor never built before a mansion of this magnitude 

 and filled it with such treasures of art and history. 

 This will forever make it and the pictures of it a monu- 

 ment of peculiar interest. I have said that it is brim 

 full of the author. It is equally full of all he wrote 

 about ; full of the interesting topographs of Scotland's 

 history, back to the twilight ages ; full inside and out, 

 and in the very garden and stable walls. The studio 

 of an artist was never fuller of models of human or 

 animal heads, or of counterfeit duplicates of nature's 

 handiwork, than Sir Walter's mansion is of things his 

 pen painted on in the long life of its inspirations. The 

 very porchway that leads into the house is hung with 

 petrified stag-horns, doubtless dug up in Scottish bogs, 

 and illustrating a page of the natural history of the 

 country in some pre-historic century. The halls are 

 panelled with Scotland, with carvings in oak from the 

 old palace of Dunfermline. Coats of arms of the 

 celebrated Border chieftains are arrayed in line around 

 the walls. The armoury is a miniature arsenal of all 

 arms ever wielded since the time of the Druids. And 

 a history attaches to nearly every one of the weapons. 

 History hangs its webwork everywhere. It is built, 

 high and low, into the face of the outside walls. 

 Quaint, old, carved stones from abbey and castle ruins, 



