Let me, therefore, give due honour to the Melrose guide, and through him make any amende honorable that may be deemed requisite by his abused confrères. It is true that he resembles his Roslin brother in sticking straws through the perforations of exquisite bosses, to show you that the carving is perfected, both within and without, with that Chinese exactness to reality which the school of Mr. Ruskin accepts as an evidence of true devotional feeling; but this is a pardonable weakness of this young old-Covenanter guide, and as the straws in question are almost his only trade tricks, and are produced as a closing performance, with as much success as the juggler's sword-swallowing, or Frikell's hundred tankards, they may well be suffered to pass, or merely to be taken as the straws that show which way lies the wind of popular favour. Indeed, those straw-pierced bosses-seen to perfection in the ruins of the cloisters are well worthy of any amount of attention being bestowed upon them. They are elaborately undercut, and have been worked with amazing delicacy; they are wondrous bits of carving, veritable masonic jewels, in which the sculptor has triumphed over his material, and converted the shapeless block of stone into the model of some herb or flower that grew nigh at hand. The stone is a red sandstone, capable of receiving the utmost delicacy of finish, and yet able to withstand the mouldering attacks of time, and the ravages of the bleak Scotch winds and tempests. Thus, the carved work is so sharp and clean, that we can still trace upon it the marks of the chisel, and view the artist's thought in all its integrity and unimpaired beauty. Those were the days when the erection of a building, consecrated to God's service, was something more than a question of pounds, shillings, and pence, and nicely-calculated less or more.' The best energies were devoted to the service, and no details were too insignificant to be worked out with all the genius and labour that could be thrown into the work. The architect Built his great heart into the sculptured stones, And with him toil'd his children; and their lives The carvings at Melrose have all the effect of plastic work; the stone has been made so tractable and ductile, that we might almost imagine that modellings had been taken from the herbs and wild-flowers of the neighbourhood, and had been fixed upon the walls and capitals, and there petrified by a magic stroke of art. This is greatly evidenced in the fragmentary remains of the cloisters, chiefly from the variety in the design. As a matter of course, the observant eye of Scott had noted this, and his truthful pen has recorded it : Spreading herbs and flowerets bright Nor herb nor flower glisten'd there, But were carved in the cloister arches fair. And there we find them-the closest transcripts from nature. The curly kail is very prominent, and proves its adaptability as a model for decorative work. Ferns, trefoils, quatrefoils, acorns, fir-seeds, plantain leaves, house-leeks, and oak leaves may also be discerned twisting and twining round the capitals of the columns, and forming themselves into fillets and garlands for the arches of the door and canopies. The pilgrim's scallopshell also appears among the foliage, and the rose of Melrose. Over the deeply-recessed seats of the cloister CONSCIENTIOUS ART. 347 there is a cornice, on which are sixty little square rosettes; each of these is carved with the utmost delicacy, and no two are alike.* The eighth west of the doorway shows the Scotch thistle very gracefully treated. In all parts of the building the like delicacy of treatment is observed in the carved work, which is everywhere undercut with such conscientious' art, that the foliated work stands clear of the capital or key-stone. The key-stone that lock'd each ribbed aisle, With base and with capital flourish'd around, Seem'd bundles of lances which garlands had bound. Not all the corbels, however, are 'grotesque and grim ;' for one represents a delicate hand projecting from the wall, and holding a group of flowers, from behind which spring the triple ribs of the arch. But others are of a less poetical nature; for while one or two show us Angels that might from heaven have flown, the greater part depict monks and nuns, evil spirits and demons, with startling fidelity. From many a garnish'd niche around Stern saints and tortured martyrs frown'd. But frown'd' is too mild a term to express the contorted agony of their features, which painfully represent human suffering in its extremest point of agony. One boss, pieced with some other fragments, has been This is also the case with the hundreds of rosettes on the outer pinnacles of Roslin, very few of which are pairs. erected into a species of showman's altar, and does duty for the effigy of Michael Scott, the wizard-he who though legendary lore is by no means unanimous on this point; one version ascribing the deed to the wizard, another to the foul fiend himself, who was only vanquished by a vain endeavour to twist a rope of sand. To what base uses do we come at last! When Michael Scott, the philosopher and man of science, went as ambassador to Norway to bring to Scotland that Maid whose funeral obsequies were civil wars, how little could he dream that he should thus become showman's property! And as for his (or his familiar's) feat of cleaving Eildon hills in three, or carrying the mass away in a spade and dropping it in three parts, unfortunately for the credibility of the story, its anachronisms are betrayed by the fact that the Eildon hills were marked out in Roman times as distinguished by their triple summits, and were, on that account, called Tremontium, and formed at station for a Roman camp, which is still to be seen, and from which there is a magnificent view. I did not see it, it is true, for I had not the leisure to toil to the summit of the hill; but that the Eildon camp commands one of the most extensive views in the district, is plainly stated in Black and White ;* and Sir Walter Scott himself said, 'I can stand on Eildon hill, and point out forty-three spots famous in war and verse.' † * See Black's Picturesque Tourist of Scotland, p. 152; and White's Northumberland and the Border, p. 316. See Cunningham's Memoir of Scott, originally published, in 1832, in The Athenæum. CHAPTER XXXV. SCOTT'S FAVOURITE ABBEY. Ornamentation of Melrose Abbey-The 'East Oriel'-Scott IT would be but a useless and unsatisfactory task to IT describe the varied ornamentation of Melrose Abbey, as it appears before us seriatim, in our tour of the building. The elaborate devices, the decorated finials and brackets, the grotesque gurgoyles, the canopied niches (in one of which is a cripple on a blind man's back), the windows with their flamboyant traceries, the 'perpendicular' work crown of thorns, the open rosework balconies-all these would only form a rich catalogue, without presenting any adequate idea of their beauties. An elaborate list of them will be found in Grose, which, with few exceptions, holds good to this day. But, hackneyed as is the theme, it is impossible to pass over all mention of that architectural marvel, the eastern window of the chancel, the east oriel' as Scott wrongly terms it, apparently having in his mind the 'orient' east; though an oriel really has nothing to do with the east, and was always something either recessed or |