ABBOTSFORD.

DESCRIPTION.

Some years ago, there was not a more unlovely spot in this part of the world, than that on which Abbotsford now exhibits all its quaint architecture and beautiful accompaniment of garden and woodland. A mean farm house stood on part of the site of the present edifice; a "kale-yard" bloomed where the stately embattled court-yard now spreads itself; and for many thousand acres of flourishing plantations, half of which have all the appearance of being twice as old as they really are, there was but a single long straggling stripe of unthriving firs. The river, however, must needs remain in statu quo; and any place so near those clearest and sweetest of all waters, never could

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have been quite destitute of charms. The scene, however, was no doubt wild enough,

a naked moor-a few little turnip fields painfully reclaimed from it-a Scotch cottage-a Scotch farm yard, and some Scots firs. It is difficult to imagine a more complete contrast to the present Abbotsford.

Sir Walter Scott was a most zealous agriculturist, and arboriculturist especially; and it was allowed that he had done things with this estate, since it came into his possession, which would have been reckoned wonders, even if they had occupied the whole of a clever and skillful man's attention, during more years than he was Laird of Abbotsford. There is some excellent arable land on the banks of the Tweed, towards the little town of Melrose, which lies some three* miles from the mansion; but the bulk of the property is hilly country, with deep narrow dells interlacing it. Of this be planted fully one half, and it is admitted on all hands, that the rising forest has been laid out, arranged, and managed with consummate taste, care, and success. So much so, that the general appearance of Tweedside, for some miles, is already quite altered

and improved by the graceful ranges of the woodland; and that the produce of these plantations must, in the course of twenty or thirty years more, add immensely to the yearly rental of the estate. In the meantime, the shelter afforded by the woods to the sheep walks reserved amidst them, has prodigiously improved the pasturage, and half the surface yields already double the rent the whole was ever thought capable of affording while in the old unprotected condition. All through those woods there were broad riding ways, kept in capital order, and conducted in such excellent taste, that we might wander for weeks amidst their windings without exhausting the beauties of the poet's lounge. There are scores of charming waterfalls in the ravines, and near every one of them you find benches or bowers at the most picturesque points of view. There are two or three small mountain lakes included in the domain-one of them not so small neither-being nearly a mile in circumference; and of these, also, every advantage has been taken. On the whole, it is already a very beautiful scene; and when the trees have gained their proper dignity of elevation, it

Amidst these

must be a very grand one.
woods, the late Sir Walter, when at home,
usually spent many hours daily, either on
his pony or on foot, with axe and pruning
knife in hand. Here was his study; he, it
seems, like Jacques, was never at a loss to
find "books in trees."

"The Muse nae poet ever fand her
Till by himsel' he learned to wander
Adown some trotting burn's meander,
An' no think lang."

As Burns says; and one of his burns, by the by, is Huntley Burn, where Thomas of Ercildoune met the Queen of Faery. The rencontre, according to the old Rymer himself, occurred beside "The Eildon Tree." That landmark has long since disappeared, but most of the walks have the Eildon Hills in some one or other of their innumerable aspects, for background. But I am keeping you too long away from "The roof-tree of Monkbarns," which is situated on the brink of the last of a series of irregular hills, descending from an elevation of the Eildons, stepwise, to the Tweed. On all sides except towards the river, the house connects itself with the