The tournament ground is still kept green and in beautiful order, near Stirling castle, as a memento of the olden time, and as we passed away down the beautiful Firth, a turn of the river gave us a very advantageous view of it.  So gay it looked, so festive in the bright sunshine, one almost seemed to see the graceful forms of knight and noble pricking their good steeds to the encounter, or the stalwart Douglas, vindicating his claim to be indeed a chief by conquest in the rougher sports of the yeomanry.

Passing along the Firth to Edinburgh, we again passed two or three days in that beautiful city, which I could not be content to leave so imperfectly seen, if I had not some hope of revisiting it when the bright lights that adorn it are concentred there.  In summer almost every one is absent.  I was very fortunate to see as many interesting persons as I did.  On this second visit I saw James Simpson, a well-known philanthropist, and leader in the cause of popular education.  Infant schools have been an especial care of his, and America as well as Scotland has received the benefit of his thoughts on this subject.  His last good work has been to induce the erection of public baths in Edinburgh, and the working people of that place, already deeply in his debt for the lectures he has been unwearied in delivering for their benefit, have signified their gratitude by presenting him with a beautiful model of a fountain in silver as an ornament to his study.  Never was there a place where such a measure would be more important; if cleanliness be akin to godliness, Edinburgh stands at great disadvantage in her devotions.  The impure air, the terrific dirt which surround the working people, must make all progress in higher culture impossible; and I saw nothing which seemed to me so likely to have results of incalculable good, as this practical measure of the Simpsons in support of the precept,

  “Wash and be clean every whit.”

We returned into England by the way of Melrose, not content to leave Scotland without making our pilgrimage to Abbotsford.  The universal feeling, however, has made this pilgrimage so common that there is nothing left for me to say; yet, though I had read a hundred descriptions, everything seemed new as I went over this epitome of the mind and life of Scott.  As what constitutes the great man is more commonly some extraordinary combination and balance of qualities, than the highest development of any one, so you cannot but here be struck anew by the singular combination in Scott’s mind of love for the picturesque and romantic with the plainest common sense,—­a delight in heroic excess with the prudential habit of order.  Here the most pleasing order pervades emblems of what men commonly esteem disorder and excess.

Amid the exquisite beauty of the ruins of Dryburgh, I saw with regret that Scott’s body rests in almost the only spot that is not green, and cannot well be made so, for the light does not reach it.  That is not a fit couch for him who dressed so many dim and time-worn relics with living green.