[Illustration:  SIR WALTER SCOTT’S STUDY.]

The declining days of Sir Walter were not without sickness and sorrow, for he had spent all the money obtained by the sale of his books on this palatial mansion.  After a long illness, and as a last resource, he was taken to Italy; but while there he had another apoplectic attack, and was brought home again, only just in time to die.  He expressed a wish that Lockhart, his son-in-law, should read to him, and when asked from what book, he answered, “Need you ask?  There is but one.”  He chose the fourteenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, and when it was ended, he said, “Well, this is a great comfort:  I have followed you distinctly, and I feel as if I were yet to be myself again.”  In an interval of consciousness he said, “Lockhart!  I may have but a minute to speak to you, my dear; be a good man, be virtuous, be religious, be a good man.  Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here.”

A friend who was present at the death of Sir Walter wrote:  “It was a beautiful day—­so warm that every window was wide open, and so perfectly still that the sound of all others most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible—­as we kneeled around his bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes.”  We could imagine the wish that would echo in more than one mind as Sir Walter’s soul departed, perhaps through one of the open windows, “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.”

  So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,
  We start, for soul is wanting there;
  It is the loneliness in death
  That parts not quite with parting breath,
  But beauty with that fearful bloom,
  The hue which haunts it to the tomb,
  Expression’s last receding ray;
  A gilded halo hov’ring round decay.

[Illustration:  ABBOTSFORD.]

We passed slowly through the garden and grounds, and when we reached the road along which Sir Walter Scott had so often walked, we hurried on to see the old abbey of Melrose, which was founded by King David I. On our way we passed a large hydropathic establishment and an asylum not quite completed, and on reaching Melrose we called at one of the inns for tea, where we read a description by Sir Walter of his “flitting” from Ashiestiel, his former residence, to his grand house at Abbotsford.  The flitting took place at Whitsuntide in 1812, so, as he died in 1832, he must have lived at Abbotsford about twenty years.  He was a great collector of curios, and wrote a letter describing the comical scene which took place on that occasion.  “The neighbours,” he wrote, “have been very much delighted with the procession of furniture, in which old swords, bows, targets, and lances made a very conspicuous show.  A family of turkeys was accommodated within the helmet of some preux chevalier of ancient Border fame, and the very cows, for aught I know, were bearing banners and muskets.  I assure you that this caravan, attended by a dozen ragged, rosy, peasant children carrying fishing-rods and spears, and leading ponies, greyhounds, and spaniels, would, as it crossed the Tweed, have furnished no bad subject for the pencil.”