it very excusable to make prize, by hook or by
crook, of a MS. chapter of the Tales of my Landlord.

Scott showed us the ruins of Melrose in detail; and as we proceeded to
Dryburgh, descanted learnedly and sagaciously on the good effects
which must have attended the erection of so many great monastic
establishments in a district so peculiarly exposed to the inroads of
the English in the days of the Border wars. "They were now and then
violated," he said, "as their aspect to this hour bears witness; but
for once that they suffered, any lay property similarly situated must
have been _harried_ a dozen times. The bold Dacres, Liddells, and
Howards, that could get easy absolution at York or Durham for any
ordinary breach of a truce with the Scots, would have had _to dree a
heavy dole_ had they confessed plundering from the fat brothers, of
the same order perhaps, whose lines had fallen to them on the wrong
side of the Cheviot." He enlarged, too, on the heavy penalty which the
Crown of Scotland had paid for its rash acquiescence in the wholesale
robbery of the Church at the Reformation. "The proportion of the soil
in the hands of the clergy had," he said, "been very great--too great
to be {p.286} continued. If we may judge by their share in the public
burdens, they must have had nearly a third of the land in their
possession. But this vast wealth was now distributed among a turbulent
nobility, too powerful before; and the Stuarts soon found, that in the
bishops and lord abbots they had lost the only means of balancing
their factions, so as to turn the scale in favor of law and order; and
by and by the haughty barons themselves, who had scrambled for the
worldly spoil of the church, found that the spiritual influence had
been concentrated in hands as haughty as their own, and connected with
no feelings likely to buttress their order any more than the Crown--a
new and sterner monkery, under a different name, and essentially
plebeian. Presently the Scotch were on the verge of republicanism, in
state as well as kirk, and I have sometimes thought it was only the
accession of King Jamie to the throne of England that could have given
monarchy a chance of prolonging its existence here." One of his
friends asked what he supposed might have been the annual revenue of
the abbey of Melrose in its best day. He answered that he suspected,
if all the sources of their income were now in clever hands, the
produce could hardly be under L100,0