"knew, her mother dread,

Before Lord Cranstoun she should wed,

Would see her on her dying-bed."

But the Mountain Spirit declared there should be "no kind influence"

"On Teviot's tide, and Branksome's tower,

Till pride be quelled and love be free."

"The unearthly voices ceast,"

Yet they "rung in the Ladye's ear.

She raised her stately head,

And her heart throbbed high with pride:-
:-

"Your mountains shall bend,

And your streams ascend,

Ere Margaret be our foeman's bride!'"'

She went to the hall where her young son was playing among her armed retainers, and

"called to her William of Deloraine

A stark moss-trooping Scott,"

who occupied lands, giving him his name, that were in Ettrick Forest, adjoining those of Buccleuch. She commanded him to mount his horse and hasten to Melrose Abbey, and enjoined him there to seek "the Monk of St. Mary's aisle;" and she continued,

"Greet the Father well from me;

Say that the fated hour is come,

And to-night he shall watch with thee,

To win the treasure of the tomb:"" "What he gives thee, see thou keep; Stay not thou for food or sleep:

Be it scroll, or be it book,

Into it, Knight, thou must not look;
If thou readest, thou art lorn!

Better had'st thou ne'er been born.""

And thus mysteriously bidden, away the man-at-arms galloped by many a spot well known through the Border; past Goldiland and Hawick and Minto Crags and Bowden Moor, until he reached Melrose after midnight, when "'twas silence," and he "sought the convent's lonely wall.”

Already Scott had shown his faculty for intense localization, — that portion of his power rendering topography charming and making him peculiarly the Genius of place. And all this portion of the poem is delightfully demonstrative of this power, and others of his works associated with this region will add to this evidence,

as will be found when the long tour proposed leads hereabouts again in chapters xxxiii., xxxiv., and xxxv.

Few monastic remains are so celebrated latterly, and visited by so many persons as those of Melrose, and few are more deserving of such attention. The Abbey Church was one of the most beautiful edifices ever reared in Scotland, rivalling those of the wealthy English monastic institutions. Like very many Scotch, and a few similar English ecclesiastical establishments, it stands in a town; being closely upon a street of Melrose. It belonged to the great Order of Cistercians, the same once owning Fountains, Furness, Tintern, and many other Abbeys in England, glorious even now in their "proud decay;" and it illustrated the Latin lines expressing the style of site chosen by this Order, and by others:

"Bernardus valles, colles Benedictus amabat,
Oppida Franciscus, magnas Ignatius urbes;"

for Saint Bernard was the great saint of the Cistercians; and Melrose Abbey, though near a town, is in a valley, close to running waters that the Fathers also loved. The principal approach to it the writer found a common lane lined by little "refreshment " shops. But when once this lane is put behind one, and the grassy enclosure containing the ruin is explored, if the weather is fine, the exquisiteness of Scott's well-known descriptions is realized. The Abbey was founded by sainted King David, in the year 1136, and devastated during the wars and Reformation, in Henry VIII.'s time. Mr. Billings says, that no portion of the present buildings appears to be older than the fifteenth century. The style is a sort of Continental modification of English Perpendicular Pointed. The materials used are compact red and buff sandstones promiscuously placed. On exposed surfaces, age and weather-wear have imparted a rather uniform russet-gray color: faded red is, however, the prevailing tint, except beneath portions of stone-vaulted and ribbed roof remaining, where dampness has spread a mouldy gray.

Little remains of the Abbey except the church, and the walls of that are tolerably entire, except the west front and western portion of the nave, which have almost entirely disappeared. Of course the church was cruciform. It was two hundred and fifty feet by one hundred and thirty-seven feet, having a triple-aisled, eight-bayed nave, single-aisled transepts, —each with three bays of chapels eastward, — a short choir of two bays, and a single-aisled chancel,

lighted on each of its three outer sides by a long large window. These windows, and a large one in the gable of the south transept, are nobly beautiful examples of perpendicular and geometrical design. There was a central tower, only the western face of which, eighty-four feet high, remains. The north nave aisle was narrow, and had a blank exterior wall, beyond which were the cloisters. The south nave aisle was wider, and had a range of chapels along its entire length towards the south. A brutal attempt to alter the nave into a parish church was made in the early part of the seventeenth century,—an attempt that must always disfigure it. There was no triforium in the church. There was a diversely designed clere-story and magnificent groined roof. The sculptures and decorations were profuse. So durable is the red stone of which most of these are composed, that the delicately foliated capitals and elaborate crockets, canopies, and corbels, where unharmed by violence, are now almost as perfect as when finished, more than four hundred years ago.

But William of Deloraine saw "fair Melrose aright," in complete order; and this description is in detail to assist to better understanding of what he saw. Telling his errand to the aged "Monk of Saint Mary's aisle," he was, by him, ushered through a "steel-clenched postern door,”"- the archway of which yet remains perfect at the inner angle of the cloisters, and thus entered the church, all perfect then. The vaulted, intricately ribbed, and richly embossed roof rose high: pillar and wall, screen and altar, were beautiful with delicate, unbroken decoration; and through richly painted glass, glorious with bright forms of angels and saints and holy beings once mortal, came the "dim, religious light."

When

"The moon on the east oriel shone

Through slender shafts of shapely stone,

By foliaged tracery combined."
"Full in the midst, his Cross of Red
Triumphant Michael brandished,

And trampled the Apostate's pride.
The moonbeam kiss'd the holy pane,
And threw on the pavement a bloody stain."

"They sate them down on a marble stone,"
And watched until "the Cross of Red
Points to the grave of the mighty dead."

"An iron bar the Warrior took,

And the Monk made a sign with his wither'd hand,”

and William of Deloraine opened a tomb thus designated, that of Michael Scott, the learned Knight of Balwearie, deemed in life a skilful magician, and buried there, long before, on a St. Michael's Eve.

Deloraine in terror took the wizard's "Book of Might" from his opened grave, and from his cold, dead hand that held it; and soon, during the early morning, hastened with the magic volume back to the lady who had sent for it.

"The sun had brighten'd Cheviot gray,

when Margaret,

The sun had brighten'd the Carter's side;
And soon beneath the rising day

Smiled Branksome Towers and Teviot's tide," —

"lovelier than the rose so red,

Yet paler than the violet pale,"
Had "early left her sleepless bed,

The fairest maid of Teviot dale."

With doubt and haste and care, she stole away secretly,

"through the greenwood,"

"To meet Baron Henry, her own true knight."

She found him, and for a few short moments the two lovers were together; meanwhile the baron's horse was held by his Dwarf, scarce an earthly man."

"Distorted like some dwarfish ape,"
"He was waspish, arch, and litherlie;
But well Lord Cranstoun served he."

Suddenly this creature

"Waves his long lean arm on high,

And signs to the lovers to part and fly;
No time was then to vow or sigh."

Margaret hurried away: Lord Henry vaulted to the saddle, and soon was encountered by William of Deloraine, then returning from Melrose.

and quickly

"Few were the words, and stern and high,

That mark'd the foeman's feudal hate."

"Their very coursers seem'd to know

That each was other's mortal foc; ""

"The meeting of these champions proud

Seemed like the bursting thunder-cloud.”

They fought, and decisively indeed; for Deloraine was unhorsed, and Cranstoun, leaving his elfin page to attend the wounded man

to Branksome, hurried away for life. those times.

He knew the vengeance of

The Dwarf soon found "the Mighty Book."

"Much he marvell'd a knight of pride,

Like a book-bosom'd priest should ride:
He thought not to search or stanch the wound,
Until the secret he had found."

Then he performed his master's bidding, and took William of Deloraine to Branksome, where

"He flung the warrior on the ground."

"As he repass'd the outer court,

He spied the fair young child at sport; "

and, with characteristic malice, decoyed him away to a wild forest. There both were found by a Lancashire yeoman, who took the son of Lord Buccleuch to Lord Dacre of the English Marches. Meanwhile, the Dwarf, transforming himself by the spell he had read from the Magic Book, assumed the boy's place at Branksome, where "It may be hardly thought or said,

The mischief that the urchin made."

That night, the whole Border-land was aroused by beacon-fires, spreading alarm of a foray from England; and during its anxious hours the castle was prepared for defence. Spiritedly the Minstrel sings to us of the widely extending commotion; and how

"Watt Tinlinn, from the Liddel-side;
Comes wading through the flood,"
With "tidings of the English foe;"

telling the Ladye

"Belted Will Howard is marching here,
And hot Lord Dacre, with many a spear,

And all the German hackbut-men,

Who have long lain at Askerten:

They cross'd the Liddel at curfew hour,

And burned my little lonely tower."