tongues of flame; and regularity and order seem at hazard in those advanced conceptions in which the bolder and less constrained French genius so delights. But in either Decorated, Perpendicular, or Flamboyant it is now the shape of the confining lines which strikes the eye, and no longer the shapes of the lights themselves. These are no longer mere openings in the stone, as in the original Norman idea and its earlier changes. You are bathed in light, but the pattern which you see is the pattern rather of its limitations and boundaries than of the openings through which it falls.

We had found the cathedral closed, but had sought out the good-natured verger, where we afterward left him, beneath the dark archway of the old priory wall, and near the pleasant deanery where Archbishop Tait, when Dean of Carlisle, suffered such terrible domestic bereavement. There was yet time for a rapid visit to the grim old castle which once frowned defiance at the Scot across Solway Firth. we stood upon its ramparts at the close of day, how the spirits of the past thronged around us, Roman warriors of Severus, building their great stone wall (of which a few re

As

mains may yet be seen), for a score of leagues hence to Newcastle on the eastern ocean; Saxon and Danish invaders and destroyers; William Rufus, making this northern limit of Roman occupation the defence of the English border when he built this castle; the bloody and bitter warfare between Wallace and Bruce and the Edwards of England, so much of which passed this way as through a stormy city of refuge; its submission to the Young Pretender when Prince Charlie came over the water in vain in "the forty-five;" and, earlier than all, the original Celtic occupancy of this soil, for Carlisle is again unique in being the single strictly English city which retains its original British name. But night was falling, and the signal for closing the gates about to strike. We hastened back through the gray old streets; and the sun had set in mist behind the Isle of Man ere we reached our hotel, to enjoy a delightful dinner, and then to spend a long evening in writing to the dear ones at home.

How closely the personal association of great names in literature clusters in the vicinity of Carlisle! Wordsworth, Southey, Shelley, Christopher North, Lord Brougham, Harriet

Martineau, Felicia Hemans, Doctor Arnold, and the Coleridges, father and son, densely people the Lake District; and, just to the north, Burns, the peasant-bard of the people, born at Ayr, lies buried at Dumfries; while Thomas and Jane Carlyle repose side by side, and nearer still, at Ecclefechan. But a wizard, greater to us than any, was beckoning us due north to the banks of the Tweed, rather than of Doon; and his spell was already upon us, for Sir Walter was wedded in the nave of Carlisle Cathedral on a Christmas Eve, as the eighteenth century was closing. An early start on a bright August morning, by the Waverley route on the North British Railway, soon bore us across the border, past Gretna Green, where runaway marriages are no longer fashionable, and Netherby Hall, where Young Lochinvar trod lightly a measure. Ere the sun was high, we were climbing the sides and breathing the bracing air of the close-shaven Cheviot Hills, and getting our first scattered glimpses of the Scottish heather.

A strange sight are these Cheviot Hills, smoothly tonsured to their summits, "huge, round-headed, and clothed with a dark robe

of russet," not a tree visible, and seldom a habitation, with here and there a stone hut and walled sheepfold for the lonely shepherd and his flock, and now and again an ancient domestic watch-tower, once fortified, in the days when foray and reprisal were the watchwords of the border. The Duke of Buccleuch and the Earls of Dalkeith and Minto are great landholders in this part of the Scottish lowlands; and after we crossed the watershed into the valley of the Tweed, we passed in turn Branksome Tower and Minto House, the former familiar in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel." But what was to E. quite as much to the purpose, she being by no means unimpressionable by royalty and nobility, notwithstanding her republican antecedents, was a real live duchess whom we saw at a station, duly authenticated, and very attractive, in spite of her simple travelling costume and lack of a visible coronet! In the valley of the Yarrow to the left, which Wordsworth has made famous, lies the Ettrick Forest, the former home of Hogg, the "Ettrick Shepherd." We now began in good earnest to listen delightedly to the rich broad burr of the Scottish dialect. At St. Boswell's we saw the last of

our Liverpool acquaintance, as he betook himself to the moors with guns and dogs beside him. We also left the train here, as this is the nearest station to Dryburgh Abbey, a mile away. We walked over the swaying suspension bridge across the shallow and pebbly bed of the Tweed, and a short tramp over the hill brought us to the stile through which, near the river again, the trees are visible which closely surround the ruined abbey. All is unspeakably peaceful here. Six centuries have come and gone, and left their memorial on crumbling wall and ivied and moss-grown cranny. One traces as little of real form and continuity as at Kenilworth, but disconnected parts remain of church and chapter-house, cloisters, refectory, and domestic buildings. No suggestion of fire and sword, but quiet decay among waving leaves and songs of birds, fit resting-place for the brave and gentle spirit of Scott, who lies under the roofed shelter of St. Mary's Aisle, with Lockhart, his son-in-law and biographer, by his side. As with Shakespeare, our first visit to the scenes associated with him was to his grave, and we were glad to have it so.

It is but five miles to Melrose up the river,