Bidding farewell to Abbotsford, I cannot but confess a sentiment of
remorse for having visited the dwelling-place--as just before I visited
the grave of the mighty minstrel and romancer with so cold a heart and in
so critical a mood,--his dwelling-place and his grave whom I had so
admired and loved, and who had done so much for my happiness when I was
young. But I, and the world generally, now look at him from a different
point of view; and, besides, these visits to the actual haunts of famous
people, though long dead, have the effect of making us sensible, in some
degree, of their human imperfections, as if we actually saw them alive.
I felt this effect, to a certain extent, even with respect to
Shakespeare, when I visited Stratford-on-Avon. As for Scott, I still
cherish him in a warm place, and I do not know that I have any pleasanter
anticipation, as regards books, than that of reading all his novels over
again after we get back to the Wayside.

[This Mr. Hawthorne did, aloud to his family, the year following his
return to America.--ED.]

It was now one or two o'clock, and time for us to take the rail across
the borders. Many a mile behind us, as we rushed onward, we could see
the threefold Eildon Hill, and probably every pant of the engine carried
us over some spot of ground which Scott has made fertile with poetry.
For Scotland--cold, cloudy, barren little bit of earth that it is--owes
all the interest that the world feels in it to him. Few men have done so
much for their country as he. However, having no guide-book, we were
none the wiser for what we saw out of the window of the rail-carriage;
but, now and then, a castle appeared, on a commanding height, visible for
miles round, and seemingly in good repair,--now, in some low and
sheltered spot, the gray walls of an abbey; now, on a little eminence,
the ruin of a border fortress, and near it the modern residence of the