CHAPTER XXXVII.

ROSLIN CHAPEL.

Scott's Cottage at Lasswade-His Friends and PursuitsRosabelle and the 'Lay'-Attractions of Roslin-Roslin Strawberries-A Roslin Excursion Fifty Years Ago-Something to suit all Tastes-Historical and Legendary Associations-Mr. Gladstone's Cerberean View-The Chapel-The Guide-The North Front-The Interior-Poetical Architecture - Thoughts in Stone-Billings' Views-Father Hay's Sketches-Grose's Method of Cooking a Sketch-Sculptured Foliage-Variety in Design-Singular Ornamentation-The Lady Chapel-Its Carvings and Restoration-Roslin Chapel Reopened for Divine Service.

ARLY in the present century a pleasant cottage,

EARLY

near Lasswade, on the romantic banks of the Esk, was tenanted by that famous sheriff of Selkirk, who, in immortalising himself, has so greatly benefited his country. At that time, Sir Walter Scott was happily married, was thirty years of age, and had an income of 800l. a year; and to the Lasswade cottage, and to the neighbourhood of his noble friends, Lord Melville and the Duke of Buccleuch, he escaped' (to use his own word) whenever the vacations of the Court permitted him so much leisure; and it was there that he spent the sunniest portion of some of his happiest years. Thither came his friend, Dr. John Leyden, borderer and balladmonger, and Sir John Stoddart also the latter in search of materials for his Remarks on Local Scenery in Scotland;' and Sir Walter guided him to

" ROSABELLE AND THE LAY.'

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the spots he wished to see, Roslin and Hawthornden, and every other local celebrity. They talked of Southey and Coleridge, of the Metrical Ballads' and 'Christabel,' and their conversation gave the lame young poet a hint how to treat a subject that was then simmering' in his brain.

Scott was already celebrated as the author of The Border Minstrelsy,' then lately published; and his lovely neighbour, Lady Dalkeith, had asked him to compose a ballad on a certain goblin story. To hear was to obey, and the ballad was written. The conversation with Mr. Stoddart, as they strolled by Roslin's 'castled rock,' turned his thoughts in a new direction, and in due time the ballad became developed into the stately proportions of that poem which, under the name of 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel,' was published in 1805, when its author was thirty-three years of age, and which at once took the reading world by storm, and formed the turning point of Scott's life. In his ballad of 'The Gray Brother' he had already celebrated the beauties that surrounded his summer residence at Lasswade; and of these, one was 'Roslin's rocky glen.' In his new poem he took advantage of a legend of the lordly owners of Roslin, the proud St. Clairs, and wove it into a 'piteous lay,' usually known as the dirge of Rosabelle,' and considered to be one of the most successful imitations of the old ballads.

In the year after this dirge of Rosabelle had directed special attention to Roslin, a coach was started to convey tourists to the spot, and a small inn was built for their accommodation. It was an easy journey, for the village lay but seven miles due south of Edinburgh, and being pleasantly situated on high ground over the romantic glen through which the North Esk river

winds its devious way, it well repaid a visit. There was the ruined castle, the wondrous chapel, and the lovely glen; there was something to please everyone's taste, and there were Roslin's famous strawberries to gratify their palates. With these combined attractions, and with the glamour of poetry thrown over the whole by the Northern Wizard's spell, the tourists' coach from Edinburgh to Roslin proved a grand success, and the little village awoke and found itself famous in song and in popular favour. Year by year the stream of visitors steadily increased-unlike other streams, swelling in the summer, and drying up in the winter—and now Roslin is the annual goal of thousands.

Before this period the Roslin strawberries had wellnigh been Roslin's chief attraction. To go to Roslin and eat strawberries was one of the proper things to be achieved by an inhabitant of Edinburgh during the summer months. Whatever might be the antiquarian, architectural, and natural attractions of the spot, yet they were in a measure secondary to the allurements of the delicious fruit. Dr. Alexander Campbell, writing of Roslin before Scott's Lay' was published, speaks of the beauties of the chapel being 'greatly overrated;' but, at the mention of the strawberries, he cannot contain his raptures. 'It is incredible,' he says, 'what numbers crowd to this scene of sylvan delight, where the heart gladdens at the delicious feast; and, when wearied of ranging among the woods and cliffy precipices of the murmuring Esk, they return but to renew the toil in the song and the dance till morning dawns; for, before their horses are harnessed, and their curricles, chaises, and coaches are hurled from the courtyard, Phoebus, in full speed along the impurpled pathway of the east, meets them on their return home

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ward from the rural revels of a Roslin excursion.' Such was one of the enjoyments of Edinburgh society at the end of the last century. The 'coaches,' however, were private ones; and the first stage-coach was that one for the tourists which (as in the case of the Trosachs' coach) may be said to have been started by Sir Walter Scott.

But we need not marvel at Roslin being so much visited by tourists from far and near. The manifold attractions of this charming spot are to be found in an unusual and extraordinarily beautiful combination of the most pleasing objects both in art and nature. Whatever the peculiar tastes and idiosyncrasies of the tourist may be, at Roslin he may depend upon having an opportunity to gratify them to the top of his bent. Is he a lover of fine scenery? What can be finer than that wide stretch of wild-looking, yet richly-cultivated landscape, bounded by the long range of the Pentland hills, whose varied outline will remind him (if he be a Worcestershire man) of his own loved Malverns; or, if he be a travelled Thane, of the higher heights of the Andes ? Is he a lover of castle ruins? There is the once stately home of the St. Clairs, now battered and worn, but still possessing many evidences of its former grandeur. Is he an ecclesiologist? In yonder 'chapel' he will see a choir that is unique as an architectural gem. Is he an artist? Every yard of the ground will bring him to a fresh subject for his pencil, and he may pitch his tent here for months and months, and yet not be able to paint a tithe of Roslin's beauties. Is he a photographer? Here are pictures sufficient to fill his camera and bath for every working day during the summer season. Is he a poet? He may wander up yonder glen by the banks of the murmuring Esk river

to classic Hawthornden, or stand under Ben Jonson's sycamore, or roam through Drummond's halls and cypress grove. Is he a matter-of-fact utilitarian? There is the bleaching-mill, where the waters of the romantic Esk are compelled to wash out foul linen. Is he a retired manufacturer or millowner? Are there not paper-mills, carpet-mills, gunpowder-mills, and coalmines close at hand? Is he a lover of history? At Roslin he is surrounded by scenes made famous by Bruce and Wallace, by Queen Mary and David Rizzio, by Robert III. and his Queen Annabella Drummond, by Comyn and Frazer, and by St. Clairs without end. Is he a true-blue politician? There, within sight, is 'Melville's beechy grove' and Melville Castle, where lived that great statesman to whom even Pitt accounted himself second. Is he of an antiquarian and archæological turn? There is the old Roman road called 'The Cast' (via ad castra), the military camp at Mavisbank, and the tumulus at Pennycuik, where you might hope to unearth urns, fibulæ, and the spoils of war. Is he a lover of legendary stores? At Roslin he can learn of the grandeur of the St. Clairs-of the hair breadth escapes of Sir Alexander Ramsay in the caves of Hawthornden-of the day of the triple battle between the Scots and the English-of the laird of Gilmerton Grange, who fired the house in which were his beautiful daughter and that guilty abbot, her lover, so that both perished in the flames-of the lady of Woodhouselee, a white-robed, restless spectre, with her infant in her arms-of the Baron of Pennycuik, sitting upon the Buckstane when the king hunts at the Borough Muir, and winding those three blasts of the horn by which he holds the tenure of his property, and justifies his family motto, Free for a Blast'—and of the lass who waded