“If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright,
    Go visit it by the pale moonlight: 
    For the gay beams of lightsome day
    Gild but to flout the ruins gray.”

In consequence of this admonition, I was informed that many persons remain in town to see the ruins by moonlight.  Aware that the moon did not send its rays upon the old building every night in the year, I asked the keeper what he did on dark nights.  He replied that he had a large lantern, which he put upon the end of a long pole, and with this he succeeded in lighting up the ruins.  This good man laboured hard to convince me that his invention was nearly, if not quite as good, as Nature’s own moon.  But having no need of an application of his invention to the Abbey, I had no opportunity of judging of its effect.  I thought, however, that he had made a moon to some purpose, when he informed me that some nights, with his pole and lantern, he earned his four or five shillings.  Not being content with a view by “moonlight alone,” I was up the next morning before the sun, and paid my respects to the Abbey.  I was too early for the keeper, and he handed me the key through the window, and I entered the rooms alone.  It is one labyrinth of gigantic arches and dilapidated halls, the ivy growing and clinging wherever it can fasten its roots, and the whole as fine a picture of decay as imagination could create.  This was the favourite resort of Sir Walter Scott, and furnished him much matter for the “Lay of the Last Minstrel.”  He could not have selected a more fitting place for solitary thought than this ancient abode of monks and priests.  In passing through the cloisters, I could not but remark the carvings of leaves and flowers, wrought in stone in the most exquisite manner, looking as fresh as if they were just from the hands of the artist.  The lapse of centuries seems not to have made any impression upon them, or changed their appearance in the least.  I sat down among the ruins of the Abbey.  The ground about was piled up with magnificent fragments of stone, representing various texts of Scripture, and the quaint ideas of the priests and monks of that age.  Scene after scene swept through my fancy as I looked upon the surrounding objects.  I could almost imagine I saw the bearded monks going from hall to hall, and from cell to cell.  In visiting these dark cells, the mind becomes oppressed by a sense of the utter helplessness of the victims who once passed over the thresholds and entered these religious prisons.  There was no help or hope but in the will that ordered their fate.  How painful it is to gaze upon these walls, and to think how many tears have been shed by their inmates, when this old Monastery was in its glory.  I ascended to the top of the ruin by a circuitous stairway, whose stone steps were worn deep from use by many who, like myself, had visited them to gratify a curiosity.  From the top of the Abbey, I had a splendid view of the surrounding hills and the beautiful valley through which flows the Gala Water and Tweed.  This is unquestionably the most splendid specimen of Gothic architectural ruin in Scotland.  But any description of mine conveys but a poor idea to the fancy.  To be realized, it must be seen.