tic. The
building has this interest, that it was throughout his own conception,
thought, and choice; that he expressed himself in every stone that was
laid, and made it a kind of shrine, into which he wove all his treasures
of antiquity, and where he imitated, from the beautiful, old, mouldering
ruins of Scotland, the parts that had touched him most deeply.

The walls of one room were of carved oak from the Dunfermline Abbey; the
ceiling of another imitated from Roslin Castle; here a fireplace was
wrought in the image of a favorite niche in Melrose; and there the
ancient pulpit of Erskine was wrought into a wall. To him, doubtless,
every object in the house was suggestive of poetic fancies; every
carving and bit of tracery had its history, and was as truly an
expression of something in the poet's mind as a verse of his poetry.

A building wrought out in this way, and growing up like a bank of coral,
may very possibly violate all the proprieties of criticism; it may
possibly, too, violate one's ideas of mere housewifery utility; but by
none of these rules ought such a building to be judged. We should look
at it rather as the poet's endeavor to render outward and visible the
dream land of his thoughts, and to create for himself a refuge from the
cold, dull realities of life, in an architectural romance.

These were thoughts which gave interest to the scene as we passed
through the porchway, adorned with petrified stags' horns, into the long
entrance hall of the mansion. This porch was copied from one in
Linlithgow palace. One side of this hall was lighted by windows of
painted glass. The floor was of black and white marble from the
Hebrides. Round the whole cornice there was a line of coats armorial,
richly blazoned, and the following inscription in old German text:

"These be the coat armories of the clanns and chief men of name wha
keepit the marchys of Scotland in the old tyme for the kynge. Trewe men
war they in their tyme, and in their defence God them defendyt."

There were the names of the Douglases, the Elliots, the Scotts, the
Armstrongs, and others. I looked at this arrangement with interest,
because I knew that Scott must have taken a particular delight in it.

The fireplace, designed from a niche in Melrose Abbey, also in this
room, and a choice bit of sculpture it is. In it was an old grate, which
had its history also, and opposite to it the boards from the pulpit of
Erskine were wrought into a kind of s