and Cromwells. And, as we sigh over the ruins of our Melrose, we are but re-echoing sighs heaved by the good monks five centuries ago, and repeated, alas! with too frequent recurrence on many a sad day when their beautiful home was laid desolate. One would have thought, that They dreamt not of a perishable home and yet, looking through those troublous pages of history, we can scarcely see the period when the whole extent of Melrose Abbey could have remained in a perfect state for more than a few score years at a time. Their masons must have been ever at work, and the monastic architects must have been kept in constant employment. One of them has left a record of himself carved on a tablet near a small door leading to a gallery on the west side of the south transept. It contains the following inscription :— John Murdo sometime callit was I, And born in Parysse certainly, And sweet Sanct John, to keep this haly Kirk fra scaith. • The stone-cutter,' says Mr. Billings, has packed the words where he could find room for them, without respect for the rhyming form in which they are here copied. The inscription cannot well be older than the sixteenth century; and it is not likely that Murdo, whose name would indicate a Scottish origin, performed any functions beyond repairs and restorations." *See Billings' Antiquities, vol. iv. a somewhat different reading of the black letter. 米 Bower's Description, p. 60, gives inscription, and a copy of it in CHAPTER XXXIV. SIGHTS AND SIGHT-SEERS. 1 Melrose Abbey Ruins-The Nave-Its State Fifty Years THE \HE buildings of Melrose Abbey, in their entirety, must have covered a large area; but the only remains are a chief portion of the church, and a fragment of the cloisters. The cloisters are situated in the northwest angle of the Abbey, and appear to have been quadrangular in plan. To judge from what is considered to have been a central seat on that southern portion of the cloister that yet remains, the length of the arcade must have been about 150 feet. Over the arcade were habitations for the monks on the east, west, and north. The church was built in the form of a St. John's cross, having a tower, once surmounted by a spire, at the junction with the transepts. The nave towards its western end is roofless, and has been sadly curtailed of its fair proportions. The eastern end of the nave is roofed, and its great blemish is the stone vaulting placed there in 1618, and hideously heavy when contrasted with the light and open beauty of the rest of the building, and with the vaulting of the aisles, south transept, and chancel. Service was held in this portion of the nave up to the commencement of the present century. Grose gives a description of the appearance that it then presented:On opening the door, it is not to be expressed the disagreeable scene which presented itself; the place is filled with stalls, in the disposition of which irregularity alone seems to have been studied; some are raised on upright beams, as scaffolds, tier above tier; others supported against the walls and pillars; no two are alike in form, height, or magnitude; the same confusion of little and great, high and low, covers the floor with pews; the lights are so obstructed that the place is as dark as a vault; the floor is nothing but the damp earth; nastiness and irregularity possess the whole scene.' These incongruities no longer offend the eye; they were removed in 1814. Not many years since an attempt was made to obtain the restoration of the nave for the purposes of a parish church; but the Duke of Buccleuch wisely abstained from patching up the middle-age ruin with modern work, and built the parishioners that neat church which, with its adjacent parsonage house, is passed on the road to Abbotsford. Although, to my eyes, the excessive trimness of the ruin is a little out of place, yet every one who reads Grose's description just quoted, and looks at Prout's views of the interior of the choir, tenanted by a herd of cattle, must feel grateful that the preserving care of the duke is extended to the building, and that what has been left of it is now most religiously preserved. * The shutting out the ruins from general access, and the enforced attendance of a guide, are points which * Published in Landscape Illustrations of the Waverley Novels, vol. ii. p. 46. (1830.) MODERN DESTRUCTIVES. 341 cannot be complained of in an age when every Jones and Smith thinks himself privileged to carve his illustrious name across the grim face of a stony abbot; or on a pillar of Gothic mould' to write some such legend as, 'John Jones and Mary Ann Smith visited this spot April 1, were much pleased and intend to come again;' or, if they abstain from these things, they content themselves with joining a pic-nic party, whose convenient luncheontable is the high altar. The ancient iconoclasts are matched by the modern destructives; and, despite the popular fallacy of the people never abusing their privileges, there is too much evidence to show, that when the people (whether Nob or Snob) are left to the uncontrolled exercise of their own sweet will, the original Adam bursts forth in some doing of what they ought not to do. A flower is plucked that should have been left to bloom; the leading shoot of a rare pinus or deoda is switched off with a cane; Bede's chair is hacked by penknives; a prioress's alabaster finger is broken off when the verger's back is turned; Chantrey's Sleeping Children have to be hemmed in with palisades in order to prevent a similarly surreptitious amputation; the scion of Charles's oak has to be encased with a tall iron fence, that it may not be cut up into lucifer matches by Boscobel tourists; and the remarkable stalactites of the Spar Cave of Strathaird, in the Isle of Skye, have been so hammered away to enrich geological cabinets, that the cave has been closed. While such things are, and while there are so many tempting things at Melrose, one cannot be surprised that the attendance of a guide should be deemed requisite to prevent some Mr. Smith from carrying off a nice little bracket which may adorn his summer-house at 'Ackney, and not only be ornamental but useful for the reception of a glass of grog or the teapot, on those occasions of Cockney revel when his friends come to take tea in the arbour.' And, indeed, might not the Cockney defend his act by quoting the precedent of Sir Walter Scott himself, whose spoliations from the Abbey went to enrich his house both in-doors and out, and helped to convert it into the extraordinary museum of which he was so proud? When Abbotsford was barely begun, Washington Irving visited Scott, and thus describes what he saw :-'About the place were strewed various morsels from the ruins of Melrose Abbey, which were to be incorporated in his mansion. He had already constructed out of similar materials a kind of Gothic shrine over a spring, and had surmounted it by a small stone cross.' No wonder that Scott should speak of the Abbey with affection. There is no telling,' said he, 'what treasures are hid in that glorious old pile. It is a famous place for antiquarian plunder; there are such rich bits of old-time sculpture for the architects, and old-time story for the poet. There is as rare picking in it as in a Stilton cheese, and in the same taste-the mouldier the better.' † Washington Irving's country woman, Mrs. Stowe, however, gives the following contradiction to, or explanation of, this story:-'I went up into a little room where an elderly woman professed to have quite a collection of the Melrose relics. Some years ago extensive restorations and repairs were made in the old abbey, in which Walter Scott took a deep interest. At that time, when the scaffolding was up for repairing the building, as I understood, Scott had the plaster-casts made of different parts, which he afterwards incorporated into his own dwelling at Abbotsford. I said to the good woman that I had understood, by Washington Irving's account, that Scott appropriated bonâ-fide fragments of the building, and alluded to the account which he gives of the little red sandstone lion from Melrose. She repelled the idea with great energy, and said she had often heard Sir Walter say that he would not carry off a bit of the building as big as his thumb. She showed me several plaster-casts that she had in her possession, which were taken at this time.'-Sunny Memories, Letter viii. But such cases were neither few nor far between. Horace Walpole, |