l abbey was visible from many parts of the little
property. On the other side of the river the old British barrier called
"the Catrail" was full in view. As yet the place was not planted,--the
only effort made in this direction by its former owner, Dr. Douglas,
having been a long narrow stripe of firs, which Scott used to compare to a
black hair-comb, and which gave the name of "The Doctor's Redding-Kame" to
the stretch of woods of which it is still the central line. Such was the
place which he made it the too great delight of the remainder of his life
to increase and beautify, by spending on it a good deal more than he had
earned, and that too in times when he should have earned a good deal more
than he ought to have thought even for a moment of spending. The cottage
grew to a mansion, and the mansion to a castle. The farm by the Tweed made
him long for a farm by the Cauldshiel's loch, and the farm by the
Cauldshiel's loch for Thomas the Rhymer's Glen; and as, at every step in
the ladder, his means of buying were really increasing--though they were
so cruelly discounted and forestalled by this growing land-hunger,--Scott
never realized into what troubles he was carefully running himself.

Of his life at Abbotsford at a later period when his building was
greatly enlarged, and his children grown up, we have a brilliant
picture from the pen of Mr. Lockhart. And though it does not belong to
his first years at Abbotsford, I cannot do better than include it here
as conveying probably better than anything I could elsewhere find, the
charm of that ideal life which lured Scott on from one project to
another in that scheme of castle-building, in relation to which he
confused so dangerously the world of dreams with the harder world of
wages, capital, interest, and rent.

"I remember saying to William Allan one morning, as the
whole party mustered before the porch after breakfast, 'A
faithful sketch of what you at this moment see would be more
interesting a hundred years hence than the grandest
so-called historical picture that you will ever exhibit in
Somerset House;' and my friend agreed with me so cordially
that I often wondered afterwards he had not attempted to
realize the suggestion. The subject ought, however, to have
been treated conjointly by him (or Wilkie) and Edwin
Landseer.

"It was a clear, bright September morning, with a sharpness
in the air that double