and believe in the gospel. But who doth not reverence the sacrament, that is a sign that he has no sin, no world, no death, no danger, no hell; that is to say, he believeth in none, although he be sunk in them over head and ears. Contrariwise, he needeth not either grace, eternal life, the kingdom of heaven, Christ, or God." IGNATIUS LOYOLA, FOUNDER OF THE JESUITS. zeal, or all these, perchance, inextricably mingled, wrought in the mind of him who, in that lone chamber, still reverently preserved and reverently shown, cast aside every dream of his youth and manhood, flung away every once-cherished purpose, and devoted the first hours of his slow recovery to toil on crutches up the ascent to the church of Our Lady of Montserrat, there to hang up his lance and sword, and to vow before her altar, with devotion unimagined by the knight of romance, all WHAT country but Spain could have his future days to will derived in gly produced that wonderful man, Ignatius Loyola, and how well befitting that land is his history! The handsome, bold young noble, entering life as page at the brilliant court of Ferdinand; then as a soldier of fortune, pursuing a career of romantic bravery in the desolating wars of the times; fierce, reckless, pleasureloving, seeking, amid enjoyment and keen excitement, food for his fevered spirit, until, in his thirtieth year, struck down by a cannon-ball at the siege of Pampeluna, wounded through both legs, he is borne, toilsomely and painfully, many a weary league in the rude litter to his native valley, Loyola-that valley to which he is to give so wide a renown. And there is he borne to his old ancestral mansion, to the chamber where he first saw light, a helpless and maimed sufferer, struck down in the full tide of life and hope. Here for long months he lay; and how clouded must his future prospects have appeared when, chafing under his slow recovery, and anxious to prevent the deformity he feared, he caused his wounds to be reopened, and a protruding bone sawed off! Terribly was the indomitable will of the founder of that mightiest order shown in this! but the agony was endured in vain Ignatius was a hopeless cripple. Still tossing on his restless bed, the thoughts of the knight turned to his favorite romances, and he asked for them. None could be found: so the lives of the saints were brought to him. What had been the history of "the Society of Jesus," where had been many an important, many a mysterious episode in the history of modern Europe, if that restless, chafing spirit, at this, the very crisis of his fate, had, like Luther, opened the Bible? Who shall say? But who shall also say what shaping thoughts, whether of wild enthusiasm, of towering ambition, of religious is his indomitable will displayed in all the incidents of his after-life; his weary pilgrimage to Jerusalem; his placing himself on the same form with boys studying grammar, that he might obtain the scanty knowledge without which he could not become a priest; his persevering efforts to establish his order, in spite of such determined opposition; even the legends of his miracles and visions, all bear the same impress of stern conflict and victory. Wonderfully did he rule his order, and yet rules it from the tomb! but Ignatius had been a soldier, and he carried into his community, as it has been truly said, the ideas and habits of a soldier. But then we think that the type of the genius of his "society" must not be sought for in the quiet orderly submission of the soldier of modern days; we must look rather at the blind submission to the one favorite leader, to that fierce, reckless spirit that yielded, indeed, implicit obedience to one, but as the price of unlimited freedom from all other rule which characterized the soldier of fortune in his own day. Such had he seen in the Spanish and Italian wars; such were the free companies that fought under Bourbon, Pescara, and De Leyra; such were they who, at the bidding of Cortez and Pizarro, followed them over unknown seas! and as devoted, as unscrupulous a band of followers had he. In so many ways are they, especially the Franciscan and Dominican, connected with the progress of society in Europe, with the advancing cause of freedom, with the earlier struggles of the Reformation, that we cannot but be interested in every attempt that is made to bring these influential communities before the attention of the historical student, well assured that a just appreciation of their efforts and their character cannot fail to throw additional light on the history of the middle ages. T was on a bright calm morning toward had not, therefore, proceeded far before he from the inn at Galashiels, where we had arrived at a late hour on the preceding evening, to visit Abbotsford and some of the adjacent scenes, which the genius of the mighty minstrel had invested with sufficient interest to our minds to render them the chief object of our northern tour. One of our party (we were four in number, and on foot-the true mode of enjoying such an excursion) was well acquainted with the locality of every spot with which the slightest interest was associated; and was, moreover, admirably qualified to act as cicerone by an unbounded enthusiasm for everything connected, however remotely, with the person, the genius, or the memory of the illustrious poet. We woods and house of Abbotsford; and there, behind them, are the Eildon hills! There you see Gala-water chafing as it joins the Tweed. And yonder are the braes of Yarrow, and the vale of Ettrick!" It was impossible not to catch some portion of the enthusiasm with which he thus uttered names that we had often heard and read of with emotion, especially as the beautiful scenery to which they belonged was now spread in bright reality before us, and we learned to distinguish each amid the calm light shed around them from a cloudless autumn sky. Abbotsford is situated about two miles from Galashiels, between that town and Selkirk. The house occupies the crest of the last of a broken series of hills descending from the Eildons to the Tweed, whose silver stream it overhangs. The grounds are richly wooded, and diversified with an endless variety of "bushy dells and alleys green;" while through all the river, "Wandering at its own sweet will," gives its exquisite finish to a picture such as needs no association whatsoever, nothing but its own intrinsic loveliness, to leave its image indelibly impressed upon the mind. We soon arrived at the entrance gate, a lofty arch in an embattled wall; and here our attention was directed by our enthusiastic friend to the first instance of Sir Walter's anxiety to accumulate around his residence as many relics as possible of the olden time, in the rusty chains and rings, called "jougs," to which the bells were attached, and which had been brought from one of the ancient castles of the Douglasses in Galloway. The approach which is very short, as the high road runs through the grounds in rather close propinquity to the house-is by a broad trellised walk, overshadowed with roses and honeysuckles; on one side was a screen of open Gothic arches filled with invisible network, through which we caught delightful glimpses of a garden with flowerbeds, turrets, porches leading into avenues of rosaries, and bounded by noble foresttrees. We came at once upon the house, the external appearance of which utterly defies description. At either end rises a tall tower, but each totally different from the other; and the entire front is nothing but an assemblage of gables, parapets, eaves, indentations, water-spouts with strange droll faces, painted windows, Elizabethan chimneys; all apparently flung together in the very wantonness of irregularity, and yet producing, as we all agreed, a far more pleasing effect than any sample of architectural propriety, whether ancient or modern, that we had ever seen. narrow vaulted apartment running across the entire house, with an emblazoned window at either end. Here was an endless variety of armor and weapons, among them Rob Roy's gun, with his initials, R. M. G., around the touch-hole; Hofer's blunderbuss; the pistols taken from Bonaparte's carriage at Waterloo; a beautiful sword which Charles I. presented to Montrose; together with thumb-screws and other instruments of torture, the dark memorials of days of savage cruelty, we trust gone by forever. Beyond this armory is the dining-room, with a low carved roof, a large bow window, and an elegant dais. Its walls were hung in crimson, and thickly covered with pictures, among which were the Duke of Monmouth, by Lely; a portrait of Hogarth, by himself; and a picture of the head of Mary Queen of Scots-said to have been painted the day after her execution-with an appalling ghastliness of countenance, the remembrance of which for days afterward was like that of an unpleasant dream. A noble doorway-the fac-simile, as our well-informed guide apprised us, of the ancient royal palace of Linlithgow, and ornamented with stupendous antlers-admitted us into the lofty hall; the impression made upon entering which was such as never could be forgotten. There are but two windows, and these, although lofty, being altogether of painted glass, every pane being deep-dyed gorgeous armorial bearings, the sudden contrast between the less than "dim religious light" which they admitted, and the glare of day from which we had entered, together with the thought of whose roof-tree it was beneath which we stood, and whose the spirit that had called into existence the strange beauty with which we rather felt than saw ourselves to be surrounded, was oppressive-almost overpowering. Not a word was spoken for some moments, until our eyes became accustomed to the somber coloring of the apartment, which we then perceived to be about forty feet in length and twenty in breadth and height, the walls being of dark richly-carved oak, and the roof a series of pointed arches, from the center of each of which hung a richlyemblazoned shield. Around the cornice were also a number of similar shields. Our cicerone pointed out among them the bloody heart of Douglas, and the royal lion of Scotland. The floor of the splendid hall is paved with black and white marble, brought, we were told, from the Hebrides; and magnificent suits of armor, with a profusion of swords of every variety, occupy the niches, or are suspended on the walls. From the hall we were shown into a Sole friends thy woods and streams were left; A narrow passage of sculptured stone conducted us from this apartment to a delicious breakfast-room, with shelves full of books at one end, and the other walls well covered with beautiful drawings in water-color, by Turner. Over the chimney-piece was an oil painting of a castle overhanging the sea, which our cicerone affirmed to be the Wolf's Crag. A number of curious-looking cabinets formed the most remarkable feature in the furniture of this apartment; but its chief charm was in the lovely prospect from the windows, which on one side overlook the Tweed, and give a view of the Yarrow and of the Ettrick upon the other. While standing here, looking out upon the glad water sparkling in the sunshine, with the overhanging woods now putting on the golden livery of autumn, and thinking how often must the mighty minstrel's eye and mind have drunk in poetic inspiration as he gazed upon the same bright scene, one of our party repeated, in a low tone of deep feeling, the lines from the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," which are in some respects so touchingly applicable to the closing scenes of the life of their gifted author :"Still as I view each well-known scene, Think what is now, and what hath been, Seems as to me of all bereft, And thus I love them better still, Even in extremity of ill. By Yarrow's stream still let me stray, The windows were open; it was the very On passing from this room, which we left most reluctantly, we came into a greenhouse with an old fountain playing before it-one that had formerly stood by the cross of Edinburgh, and had been made to flow with wine at the coronations of the Stuarts. This brought us into the drawing room, a large and very handsome apartment, elegantly furnished with ancient ebony, crimson silk hangings, mirrors, and portraits—among the latter, a noble portrait of Dryden, one of Peter Lely's best. After pausing here for some minutes, we passed into the largest room of all, the library-a most magnificent apartment, about fifty feet in length by thirty in width, with a projection in the center, opposite the fireplace, containing a large bow window. The roof is of richly-carved oak, as are also the bookcases, which reach high up the walls. The books were elegantly bound, amounting, we were told, in number, to about twenty thousand volumes, all arranged according to their subjects. Among them were presentation copies from almost every living author in the world. Our attention was arrested in particular by a Montfaucon," in fifteen folio volumes, with the royal arms emblazoned on the binding, the gift of King George IV. There were cases opposite 66 the fireplace, wired and locked, one containing books and MSS., relating to the insurrections of 1715 and 1745; and another, treatises on magic and diablerie, said to be of extreme rarity and value. In one corner stood a tall silver urn upon a porphyry stand, upon which we could not but it was filled with human bones, and bore look with an intensely mournful interest; the inscription, "Given by George Gordon, Lord Byron, to Sir Walter Scott, Bart." There was but one bust-a Shakspeare; and one picture-Sir Walter's ment. eldest son in hussar uniform, in the apart facing the south, is a small room, the most Connected with this noble library, and interesting of all-the retreat of the poet where many of the most admired prowritten. ductions of his genius were conceived and cept a small writing-table in the center, It contained no furniture, exand one chair besides for a single privileged an arm-chair covered with black leather, visitor. On either side of the fireplace were shelves with a few volumes, chiefly folios; and a gallery running round three ing stair at one corner, also contained sides of the room, and reached by a hangtraits-those of Claverhouse and Rob Roy. some books. There were but two porinto the gardens, forming the lower comIn one corner was a little closet opening partment of one of the towers, in the upper part of which was a private staircase the last portion of the mansion which we accessible from the gallery. This was hurried ramble through the groundswere permitted to explore; and after a where exquisite walks, with innumerable gleamy lakes and most picturesque and seats and arbors, commanding views of lovely waterfalls, told eloquently of the matchless taste that had there found recreation from its toil-we bid a long adieu to Abbotsford. Our next visit was to Melrose Abbey, which, "Like some tall rock with lichens gray," rose before us as we turned down a narrow street of the little town of Melrose. It is, in truth, perhaps the very loveliest pile of monastic ruins that the eye can see or the imagination can conceive. The windows, and especially the glorious east window with all its elaborate tracery—upon the repairs of which, (as of the entire |
