280 FISHING GOSSIP. 



stood in comparative proximity ; and it was but 

 natural too, having disparted the shutters and raised 

 the blind, to gaze out, if not by moonlight, by starry 

 influences of a purer order, in the direction of the 

 Abbey. More conspicuous than even the outline of 

 its mouldering walls were the stately yews that keep 

 sentinelship in their vicinity. The effect imparted 

 by them heightened greatly the solemn interest of the 

 scene, but not more than did the moaning of the ad- 

 jacent river, and the hooting at intervals of an owl 

 which had left the monastic ivies, and sate perched 

 high up among the plumes of one of the aforesaid 

 sentinels, within fifty yards of where I stood. Not 

 readily shall I forget the impression produced upon 

 me under this appropriate combination of circum- 

 stances ; but to describe how the emotions were 

 worked upon until they lapsed into the condition 

 best expressed as a state of reverie, is not easy. To 

 me, when a mere boy, and during my attendance at 

 the Edinburgh University classes, Sir Walter Scott 

 in the flesh, the towering figure, not ungainly in 

 itself, but made so to a slight extent, in the view of 

 the distant observer, through the medium of a mal- 

 formed limb the peaked forehead small but saga- 

 cious eyes, which were given effect to by their shaggy, 

 singularly shaggy brows, all were familiar. As 

 one of the deputy-clerks of Session, sitting in his 

 place before the First Division of the Court, I had 



