This building was the first of the elaborate and fanciful Gothic which I had seen, and is said to excel in the delicacy of its carving any except Roslin Castle.  As a specimen of the exactness of Scott’s description, take this verse, where he speaks of the cloisters:—­

  “Spreading herbs and flowerets bright,
  Glistened with the dew of night,
  Nor herb nor floweret glistened there,
  But were carved in the cloister arches as fair.”

These cloisters were covered porticoes surrounding the garden, where the monks walked for exercise.  They are now mostly destroyed, but our guide showed us the remains of exquisite carvings there, in which each group was an imitation of some leaf or flower, such as the curly kail of Scotland; a leaf, by the by, as worthy of imitation as the Greek acanthus, the trefoil oak, and some other leaves, the names of which I do not remember.  These Gothic artificers were lovers of nature; they studied at the fountain head; hence the never-dying freshness, variety, and originality of their conceptions.

Another passage, whose architectural accuracy you feel at once, is this:—­

  “They entered now the chancel tall;
  The darkened, roof rose high, aloof
  On pillars lofty, light, and small: 
  The keystone that locked, each ribbed aisle
  Was a fleur-de-lis, or a quatre-feuille;
  The corbels were carved grotesque and grim;
  And the pillars, with, clustered shafts so trim,
  With, base and with capital flourished around,
  Seemed bundles of lances which garlands had bound.”

The quatre-feuille here spoken of is an ornament formed by the junction of four leaves.  The frequent recurrence of the fleur-de-lis in the carvings here shows traces of French hands employed in the architecture.  In one place in the abbey there is a rude inscription, in which a French architect commemorates the part he has borne in constructing the building.

These corbels are the projections from which, the arches spring, usually carved in some fantastic mask or face; and on these the Shakspearian imagination of the Gothic artists seems to have let itself loose to run riot:  there is every variety of expression, from, the most beautiful to the most goblin and grotesque.  One has the leer of fiendish triumph, with budding horns, showing too plainly his paternity; again you have the drooping eyelids and saintly features of some fair virgin; and then the gasping face of some old monk, apparently in the agonies of death, with his toothless gums, hollow cheeks, and sunken eyes.  Other faces have an earthly and sensual leer; some are wrought into expressions of scorn and mockery, some of supplicating agony, and some of grim, despair.