and Tweed runs hoarsely below, the simple spirit holds
uncomplaining and undaunted on his way: "I did not like them to
think that I could ever be beaten by anything," he says. But at
length the hand, tired with the pen, falls, and twilight creeps
upon the darkening mind.

I paid a pious pilgrimage last summer, as you perhaps remember, to
Abbotsford. I don't think I ever described it to you. My first
feeling was one of astonishment at the size and stateliness of the
place, testifying to a certain imprudent prosperity. But the sight
of the rooms themselves; the desk, the chair, the book-lined
library, the little staircase by which, early or late, Scott could
steal back to his hard and solitary work; the death-mask, with its
pathetic smile; the clothes, with hat and shoes, giving, as it
were, a sense of the very shape and stature of the man--these
brought the whole thing up with a strange reality.

Of course, there is much that is pompous, affected, unreal about
the place; the plaster beams, painted to look like oak; the ugly
emblazonries; the cruel painted glass; the laboriously collected
objects--all these reveal the childish side of Scott, the
superficial self which slipped from him so easily when he entered
into the cloud.

And then the sight of his last resting-place; the ruined abbey, so
deeply embowered in trees that the three dim Eildon peaks are
invisible; the birds singing in the thickets that clothe the ruined
cloisters--all this made a parable, and brought before one with an
intensity of mystery the wonder of it all. The brief life, so full
of plans for permanence; the sombre valley of grief; the quiet end,