"If thou would'st view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight;
For the gay beams of lightsome day
Gild but to flout the ruins grey.
When the broken arches are black in night,
And each shafted oriel glimmers white;
When the cold light's uncertain shower
Streams on the ruin'd central tower,
When buttress and buttress, alternately,
Seem framed of ebon and ivory;
When silver edges the imagery,
And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die;
When distant Tweed is heard to rave,
And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave;
Then go--but go alone the while--
Then view St. David's ruin'd pile;
And home returning, soothly swear,
Was never scene so sad and fair!"


One of your correspondents (with whom I had once a disputation on the
_weighty_ subject of ghosts) sent you a version of the subjoined
epitaph, with a trifling alteration in the spelling, (which is copied
from a very ancient tomb-stone in Melrose Abbey,) with these remarks,
(see MIRROR, vol. 4, p. 392):--"The following beautiful lines were
written by a cow-boy [!] in Sussex on a wall, with a piece of red chalk,
[mark the precision.] They have only been inserted in a Sussex paper,
and may be quite unknown to many London readers," &c. &c. &c. This is a
regular hoax.