ese
compositions, but the splendor of his other literary productions. Had he
never written any thing but these, they would have made him a name as a
poet. As it was, I found the fanciful chime of the cadences in this
ballad ringing through my ears. I kept saying to myself--

"The Dryburgh bells do ring,
And the white monks do sing
For Sir Richard of Coldinghame."

And as I was wandering around in the labyrinth, of old, broken, mossy
arches, I thought--

"There is a nun in Dryburgh bower
Ne'er looks upon the sun;
There is a monk in Melrose tower,
He speaketh word to none.

That nun who ne'er beholds the day,
That monk who speaks to none,
That nun was Smaylhome's lady gay,
That monk the bold Baron."

It seems that there is a vault in this edifice which has had some
superstitious legends attached to it, from having been the residence,
about fifty years ago, of a mysterious lady, who, being under a vow
never to behold the light of the sun, only left her cell at midnight.
This little story, of course, gives just enough superstitious chill to
this beautiful ruin to help the effect of the pointed arches, the
clinging wreaths of ivy, the shadowy pines, and yew trees; in short, if
one had not a guide waiting, who had a bad cold, if one could stroll
here at leisure by twilight or moonlight, one might get up a
considerable deal of the mystic and poetic.

There is a part of the ruin that stands most picturesquely by itself, as
if old Time had intended it for a monument. It is the ruin of that part
of the chapel called St. Mary's Aisle; it stands surrounded by luxuriant
thickets of pine and other trees, a cluster of beautiful Gothic arches
supporting a second tier of smaller and more fanciful ones, one or two
of which have that light touch of the Moorish in their form which gives
such a singular and poetic effect in many of the old Gothic ruins. Out
of these wild arches and windows wave wreaths of ivy, and slender
harebells shake their blue pendants, looking in and out of the lattices
like little capricious fairies. There are fragments of ruins lying on
the ground, and the whole air of the thing is as wild, and dreamlike,
and picturesque as the poet's fanciful heart could have desired.

Underneath these arches he lies beside his wife; around him the
representation of the two things he loved most--the wild bloom and
beauty of nature, and the architectural memorial of by-gone history and
art.