d not, in
conscience, declare you did not admire it.

We went into a minute examination with our guide, a young man, who
seemed to have a full sense of its peculiar beauties. I must say here,
that Walter Scott's description in the Lay of the Last Minstrel is as
perfect in most details as if it had been written by an architect as
well as a poet--it is a kind of glorified daguerreotype.

This building was the first of the elaborate and fanciful Gothic which I
had seen, and is said to excel in the delicacy of its carving any except
Roslin Castle. As a specimen of the exactness of Scott's description,
take this verse, where he speaks of the cloisters:--

"Spreading herbs and flowerets bright,
Glistened with the dew of night,
Nor herb nor floweret glistened there,
But were carved in the cloister arches as fair."

These cloisters were covered porticoes surrounding the garden, where the
monks walked for exercise. They are now mostly destroyed, but our guide
showed us the remains of exquisite carvings there, in which each group
was an imitation of some leaf or flower, such as the curly kail of
Scotland; a leaf, by the by, as worthy of imitation as the Greek
acanthus, the trefoil oak, and some other leaves, the names of which I
do not remember. These Gothic artificers were lovers of nature; they
studied at the fountain head; hence the never-dying freshness, variety,
and originality of their conceptions.

Another passage, whose architectural accuracy you feel at once, is
this:--

"They entered now the chancel tall;
The darkened, roof rose high, aloof
On pillars lofty, light, and small:
The keystone that locked, each ribbed aisle
Was a fleur-de-lis, or a quatre-feuille;
The corbels were carved grotesque and grim;
And the pillars, with, clustered shafts so trim,
With, base and with capital flourished around,
Seemed bundles of lances which garlands had bound."

The quatre-feuille here spoken of is an ornament formed by the junction
of four leaves. The frequent recurrence of the fleur-de-lis in the
carvings here shows traces of French hands employed in the architecture.
In one place in the abbey there is a rude inscription, in which a French
architect commemorates the part he has borne in constructing the
building.

These corbels are the projections from which, the arches spring, usually
carved in some fantastic mask or face; and on these the Shakspearian
imagination of the Gothic artists seems