When we came back to the house, and after taking coffee in the drawing room, Miss S. took me over the interior, a most delightful place, full of all sorts of out-of-the-way snuggeries, and comfortable corners, and poetic irregularities.  There she showed me a picture of one of the early ancestors of the family, the poet Drummond, hanging in a room, which tradition has assigned to him.  It represents a man with a dark, Spanish-looking face, with the broad Elizabethan ruff, earnest, melancholy eyes, and an air half cavalier, half poet, bringing to mind the chivalrous, graceful, fastidious bard, accomplished scholar, and courtier of his time, the devout believer in the divine right of kings, and of the immunities and privileges of the upper class generally.  This Drummond, it seems, was early engaged to a fair young lady, whose death rendered his beautiful retreat of Hawthornden insupportable to him, and of course, like other persons of romance, he sought refuge in foreign travel, went abroad, and remained eight years.  Afterwards he came back, married, and lived here for some time.

Among other traditions of the place, it is said that Ben Jonson once walked all the way from London to visit the poet in this retreat; and a tree is still shown on the grounds under which they are said to have met.  It seems that Ben’s habits were rather too noisy and convivial to meet altogether the taste of his fastidious and aristocratic host; and so he had his own thoughts of him, which, being written down in a diary, were published by some indiscreet executor, after they were both dead.

We were shown an old, original edition of the poems.  I must confess I never read them.  Since I have seen the material the poet and novelist has on this ground, all I wonder at is, that there have not been a thousand poets to one.  I should have thought they would have been as plenty as the mavis and merle, and sprouting out every where, like the primroses and heather bells.

Our American literature is unfortunate in this respect—­that our nation never had any childhood, our day never had any dawn; so we have very little traditionary lore to work over.

We came home about five o’clock, and had some company in the evening.  Some time to-day I had a little chat with Mrs. W. on the Quakers.  She is a cultivated and thoughtful woman, and seemed to take quite impartial views, and did not consider her own sect as by any means the only form of Christianity, but maintained—­what every sensible person must grant, I think—­that it has had an important mission in society, even in its peculiarities.  I inferred from her conversation that the system of plain dress, maintained with the nicety which they always use, is by no means a saving in a pecuniary point of view.  She stated that one young friend, who had been brought up in this persuasion, gave it as her reason for not adopting its peculiar dress, that she could not afford it; that is to say, that for a given sum of money she could make a more creditable appearance were she allowed the range of form, shape, and trimming, which the ordinary style of dressing permits.