When all were in their places, the bearers moved slowly forward, preceded by two mutes in long cloaks, carrying poles covered with crape; and no sooner had the coffin passed through the double line formed by the company than the whole broke up, and followed in a thick press.  At the head was the Rev. J. Williams, rector of the Edinburgh Academy, dressed in his canonicals as a clergyman of the Church of England; and on his left hand walked Mr. Cadell, the well-known publisher of the Waverley Works.  There was a solemnity as well as a simplicity in the whole of this spectacle which we never witnessed on any former occasion.  The long-robed mutes—­the body, with its devotedly-attached and deeply-afflicted supporters and attendants—­the clergyman, whose presence indicated the Christian belief and hopes of those assembled—­and the throng of uncovered and reverential mourners stole along beneath the tall and umbrageous trees with a silence equal to that which is believed to accompany those visionary funerals which have their existence only in the superstitions of our country.  The ruined Abbey disclosed itself through the trees; and we approached its western extremity, where a considerable portion of vaulted roof still remains to protect the poet’s family place of interment, which opens to the sides in lofty Gothic arches, and is defended by a low rail of enclosure.  At one extremity of it, a tall, thriving young cypress rears its spiral form.  Creeping plants of different kinds, “with ivy never sere,” have spread themselves very luxuriantly over every part of the Abbey.  Amongst other decorations, we observed a plum-tree, which was, perhaps, at one period, a prisoner, chained to the solid masonry, but which having long since been emancipated, now threw out its wild, pendant branches, laden with purple fruit, ready to drop, as if emblematical of the ripening and decay of human life.

In such a scene as this, then, it was, that the coffin of Sir Walter Scott was set down on trestles placed outside the iron railing; and here that solemn service, beginning with those words so cheering to the souls of Christians, “I am the resurrection and the life,” was solemnly read by Mr. Williams.  The manly, soldier-like features of the chief mourner, on whom the eyes of sympathy were most naturally turned, betrayed at intervals the powerful efforts which he made to master his emotions, as well as the inefficiency of his exertions to do so.  The other relatives who surrounded the bier were deeply moved; and amid the crowd of weeping friends no eye and no heart could be discovered that was not altogether occupied in that sad and impressive ceremonial which was so soon to shut from them for ever him who had been so long the common idol of their admiration, and of their best affections. * * *