air of order and adjustment about it which reminds one of the
precise and chilling arrangements of a room from which has just been
carried out a corpse; all is silent and deserted.

The house is at present the property of Scott's only surviving daughter,
whose husband has assumed the name of Scott. We could not learn from our
informant whether any of the family was in the house. We saw only the
rooms which are shown to visitors, and a coldness, like that of death,
seemed to strike to my heart from their chilly solitude.

As we went out of the house we passed another company of tourists coming
in, to whom we heard our guide commencing the same recitation, "this
is," and "this is," &c., just as she had done to us. One thing about the
house and grounds had disappointed me; there was not one view from a
single window I saw that was worth any thing, in point of beauty; why a
poet, with an eye for the beautiful, could have located a house in such
an indifferent spot, on an estate where so many beautiful sites were at
his command, I could not imagine.

As to the external appearance of Abbotsford, it is as irregular as can
well be imagined. There are gables, and pinnacles, and spires, and
balconies, and buttresses any where and every where, without rhyme or
reason; for wherever the poet wanted a balcony, he had it; or wherever
he had a fragment of carved stone, or a bit of historic tracery, to put
in, he made a shrine for it forthwith, without asking leave of any
rules. This I take to be one of the main advantages of Gothic
architecture; it is a most catholic and tolerant system, and any kind of
eccentricity may find refuge beneath its mantle.

Here and there, all over the house, are stones carved with armorial
bearings and pious inscriptions, inserted at random wherever the poet
fancied. Half way up the wall in one place is the door of the old
Tolbooth at Edinburgh, with the inscription over it, "The Lord of armeis
is my protector; blissit ar thay that trust in the Lord. 1575."

A doorway at the west end of the house is composed of stones which
formed the portal of the Tolbooth, given to Sir Walter on the pulling
down of the building in 1817.

On the east side of the house is a rude carving of a sword with the
words, "Up with ye, sutors of Selkyrke. A.D. 1525." Another inscription,
on the same side of the house, runs thus:--

"By night, by day, remember ay
The goodness of ye Lord;
And thank his name, whose glor