After tea we walked on down again towards the Tweed, our host and his friends waiting on us to the boat.  As we passed through the village of Dryburgh, all the inhabitants of the cottages seemed to be standing in their doors, bowing and smiling, and expressing their welcome in a gentle, kindly way, that was quite touching.

As we were walking towards the Tweed, the Eildon Hill, with its three points, rose before us in the horizon.  I thought of the words in the Lay of the Last Minstrel:—­

  “Warrior, I could say to thee,
  The words that cleft Eildon Hill in three,
  And bridled the Tweed with a curb of stone.”

I appealed to my friends if they knew any thing about the tradition; I thought they seemed rather reluctant to speak of it.  O, there was some foolish story, they believed; they did not well know what it was.

The picturesque age of human childhood is gone by; men and women cannot always be so accommodating as to believe unreasonable stories for the convenience of poets.

At the Tweed the man with the skiff was waiting for us.  In parting with my friend, I said, “Farewell.  I hope we may meet again some time.”

“I am sure we shall, madam,” said he; “if not here, certainly hereafter.”

After being rowed across I stopped a few moments to admire the rippling of the clear water over the pebbles.  “I want some of these pebbles of the Tweed,” I said, “to carry home to America.”  Two hearty, rosy-cheeked Scotch lasses on the shore soon supplied me with as many as I could carry.

We got into our carriage, and drove up to Melrose.  After a little negotiation with the keeper, the doors were unlocked.  Just at that moment the sun was so gracious as to give a full look through the windows, and touch with streaks of gold the green, grassy floor; for the beautiful ruin is floored with green grass and roofed with sky:  even poetry has not exaggerated its beauty, and could not.  There is never any end to the charms of Gothic architecture.  It is like the beauty of Cleopatra,—­

  “Age cannot wither, custom, cannot stale
  Her infinite variety.”

Here is this Melrose, now, which has been berhymed, bedraggled through infinite guide books, and been gaped at and smoked at by dandies, and been called a “dear love” by pretty young ladies, and been hawked about as a trade article in all neighboring shops, and you know perfectly well that all your raptures are spoken for and expected at the door, and your going off in an ecstasy is a regular part of the programme; and yet, after all, the sad, wild, sweet beauty of the thing comes down on one like a cloud; even for the sake of being original you could not, in conscience, declare you did not admire it.

We went into a minute examination with our guide, a young man, who seemed to have a full sense of its peculiar beauties.  I must say here, that Walter Scott’s description in the Lay of the Last Minstrel is as perfect in most details as if it had been written by an architect as well as a poet—­it is a kind of glorified daguerreotype.