meet us at
Melrose two days after. {246}

We ordered dinner on our return to the inn, and went to view the inside
of the Chapel of Roslin, which is kept locked up, and so preserved from
the injuries it might otherwise receive from idle boys; but as nothing is
done to keep it together, it must in the end fall. The architecture
within is exquisitely beautiful. The stone both of the roof and walls is
sculptured with leaves and flowers, so delicately wrought that I could
have admired them for hours, and the whole of their groundwork is stained
by time with the softest colours. Some of those leaves and flowers were
tinged perfectly green, and at one part the effect was most exquisite:
three or four leaves of a small fern, resembling that which we call
adder's tongue, grew round a cluster of them at the top of a pillar, and
the natural product and the artificial were so intermingled that at first
it was not easy to distinguish the living plant from the other, they
being of an equally determined green, though the fern was of a deeper
shade.

We set forward again after dinner. The afternoon was pleasant.
Travelled through large tracts of ripe corn, interspersed with larger
tracts of moorland--the houses at a considerable distance from each
other, no longer thatched huts, but farm-houses resembling those of the
farming counties in England, having many corn-stacks close to them. Dark
when we reached Peebles; found a comfortable old-fashioned public-house,
had a neat parlour, and drank tea.

SIXTH WEEK.

_Sunday_, _September_ 8_th_.--The town of Peebles is on the banks of the
Tweed. After breakfast walked up the river to Neidpath Castle, about a
mile and a half from the town. The castle stands upon a green hill,
overlooking the Tweed, a strong square-towered edifice, neglected and
desolate, though not in ruin, the garden overgrown with grass, and the
high walls that fenced it broken down. The Tweed winds between green
steeps, upon which, and close to the river side, large flocks of sheep
pasturing; higher still are the grey mountains; but I need not describe
the scene, for William has done it better than I could do in a sonnet
which he wrote the same day; the five last lines, at least, of his poem
will impart to you more of the feeling of the place than it would be
possible for me to do:--

Degenerate Douglass! thou unworthy Lord
Whom mere despite of heart could so far please,
And love of havoc (for