short of
L100,000 would make the place habitable. Lord Byron's few apartments
contain some modern upholstery, but serve only to show what ought to
have been there. They are now digging round the cloisters for a
traditionary cannon, and in their progress, about five days ago, they
discovered a corpse in too decayed a state to admit of removal. I saw
the drinking-skull [Footnote: When the father of the present Mr. Murray
was a student in Edinburgh, he wrote to his father (April 10,1827): "I
saw yesterday at a jeweller's shop in Edinburgh a great curiosity, no
less than Lord Byron's skull cup, upon which he wrote the poem. It is
for sale; the owner, whose name I could not learn (it appears he does
not wish it known), wants L200 for it."] and the marble mausoleum erected
over Lord Byron's dog. I came away with my heart aching and full of
melancholy reflections--producing a lowness of spirits which I did not
get the better of until this morning, when the most enchanting scenery I
have ever beheld has at length restored me. I am far more surprised that
Lord Byron should ever have lived at Newstead, than that he should be
inclined to part with it; for, as there is no possibility of his being
able, by any reasonable amount of expense, to reinstate it, the place
can present nothing but a perpetual memorial of the wickedness of his
ancestors. There are three, or at most four, domestics at board wages.
All that I was asked to taste was a piece of bread-and-butter. As my
foot was on the step of the chaise, when about to enter it, I was
informed that his lordship had ordered that I should take as much game
as I liked. What makes the steward, Joe Murray, an interesting object to
me, is that the old man has seen the abbey in all its vicissitudes of
greatness and degradation. Once it was full of unbounded hospitality and
splendour, and now it is simply miserable. If this man has feelings--of
which, by the way, he betrays no symptom--he would possibly be miserable
himself. He has seen three hundred of the first people in the county
filling the gallery, and seen five hundred deer disporting themselves in
the beautiful park, now covered with stunted offshoots of felled trees.
Again I say it gave me the heartache to witness all this ruin, and I
regret that my romantic picture has been destroyed by the reality."

Among the friends that welcomed Mr. Murray to Edinburgh was Mr. William
Blackwood, who then, and for a long time after, was clo