DRYBURGH ABBEY. HISTORY. THE ruins of Dryburgh are situated upon a beautiful peninsula on the northern bank of the Tweed, about four miles below Melrose, and though they can neither be compared with that superb ruin for grandeur of outline, nor richness of workmanship, they are nevertheless eminently beautiful, and deeply interesting; the impressiveness of their general effect being greatly heightened by the deep gloom occasioned by the surrounding trees, many of which have attained a great age, while others, in the very prime of leafy life, give a pleasing contrast to the hoary pile which here and there raises itself above their topmost branches. There is the greatest reason, from the name, to believe that, previously to the erection of a Christian fane upon the spot, Dryburgh was a site of pagan worship, the name in Celtic, signifying the circle of oaks, while Druid itself seems to be derived from the first syllable of the same word, namely Drys, an oak, both in Celtic and Greek. This belief is strongly corroborated by the discovery, as late as in 1812, of certain vestiges of that idolatry, upon a rising ground in the neighbourhood called the Bass Hill, and amongst others an instrument used for killing the victims in sacrifice, which was in the possession of the late earl of Buchan. When these superstitions yielded to the influence of the gospel, Dryburgh, like Old Melrose, became the abode of a society of early missionaries, of whom Moden was elected abbot in 522, a man of humble piety, who devoted a great part of his time to meditation, prayer, and mortifying austerities, not forgetting, at the same time, the more active duties of his sacred function. He frequently preached to the rude inhabitants of the banks of the Forth, the Clyde, and other distant parts of the province, in a strain of eloquence, said, by the legends of the time, to |