During a sojourn of eighteen months in Great Britain, I have had the good fortune to meet with several distinguished literary characters, and have always managed, while at their places of abode, to see the table and favourite chair.  Wm. and Ellen Craft were seeing what they could see through a microscope, when Mrs. Dick returned to the room, and intimated that we could now see the old literary workshop.  I followed, and was soon in a room about fifteen feet square, with but one window, which occupied one side of the room.  The walls of the other three sides were lined with books.  And many of these looked the very personification of age.  I took my seat in the “old arm chair;” and here, thought I, is the place and the seat in which this distinguished man sat, while weaving the radiant wreath of renown which now in his old age surrounds him, and whose labours will be more appreciated by future ages than the present.

I took a farewell of the author of the “Solar System,” but not until I had taken a look through the great telescope in the observatory.  This instrument, through which I tried to see the heavens, was not the one invented by Galileo, but an improvement upon the original.  On leaving this learned man, he shook hands with us, and bade us “God speed” in our mission; and I left the philosopher, feeling I had not passed an hour more agreeably, with a literary character, since the hour which I spent with Poet Montgomery a few months since.  And, by-the-bye, there is a resemblance between the poet and the philosopher.  In becoming acquainted with great men, I have become a convert to the opinion, that a big nose is an almost necessary appendage to the form of a man with a giant intellect.  If those whom I have seen be a criterion, such is certainly the case.  But I have spun out this too long, and must close.

LETTER XV.

Melrose Abbey—­Abbotsford—­Dryburgh Abbey—­The Grave of Sir Walter Scott—­Hawick—­Gretna Green—­Visit to the Lakes.

YORK, March 26, 1851.

I closed my last letter in the ancient town of Melrose, on the banks of the Tweed, and within a stone’s throw of the celebrated ruins from which the town derives its name.  The valley in which Melrose is situated, and the surrounding hills, together with the Monastery, have so often been made a theme for the Scottish bards, that this has become the most interesting part of Scotland.  Of the many gifted writers who have taken up the pen, none have done more to bring the Eildon Hills and Melrose Abbey into note, than the author of “Waverley.”  But who can read his writings without a regret, that he should have so woven fact and fiction together, that it is almost impossible to discriminate between the one and the other.

We arrived at Melrose in the evening, and proceeded to the chapel where our meeting was to be held, and where our friends, the Crafts, were warmly greeted.  On returning from the meeting, we passed close by the ruins of Melrose, and, very fortunately, it was a moonlight night.  There is considerable difference of opinion among the inhabitants of the place as regards the best time to view the Abbey.  The author of the “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” says:—­