Built and rebuilt, burnt and reburnt, mutilated, dismembered, consecrated and desecrated, make up the history of this celebrated edifice, and that of its like, from Land's End to John O'Groat's.

It is a slight but a very appreciable mitigation of these destructive acts that it was ruined _artistically_; just as some enthusiastic castle and abbey- painter would have suggested.
Although I spent the night at Melrose, it was a dark and cloudy one, so that I could not see the abbey by moonlight--a view so much prized and celebrated.

The next day I literally walked from morning till evening among the tombstones of antiquity and monuments of Scotch history invested with an interest which will never wane.

In the first place, I went down the Tweed a few miles and crossed it in a ferry-boat to see Dryburgh Abbey.

Here, embowered among the trees in a silver curve of the river, stands this grand monument of one of the most remarkable ages of the world.