The great window, which is the most salient feature in the common picture, is a magnificent piece of work in stone, twenty-four feet in height and sixteen in breadth.
It is all in the elm-tree order of architecture.

The old monks belonged to that school, and they wrought out branches, leaves and leaf-veins, and framed the lacework of their chisels with colored glass most exquisitely.
Melrose Abbey was the eldest daughter, I believe, of Rievaulx Abbey, in Yorkshire, which has already been noticed; a year or two older in its foundation than Fountain Abbey, in Studley Park.

The fecundity with which these ecclesiastical buildings multiplied and replenished England and Scotland is a marvel, considering the age in which they were erected and the small population and the poverty of the country.

But something on this aspect of the subject hereafter.
Here lie the ashes of Scottish kings, abbots and knights whose names figured conspicuously in the history of public and private wars which cover such a space of the country's life as an independent nation.

The Douglas family especially with several of its branches found a resting-place for their dust within these walls.