When the hearse drew near to his own Melrose, the bell
tolled sadly from the steeple of the church; and as we entered the
street, we saw that here, as elsewhere, the inhabitants had vied with
each other in unaffected and unpretending demonstrations of their
individual affliction. In the little market-place we found the whole
male population assembled, all decently dressed in deep mourning,
drawn up in two lines, and standing with their hats off, silent and
motionless. The effect of the procession when crossing the Fly Bridge
over the Tweed, and still more when winding around that high and long
sweep of the road which is immediately opposite to the promontory of Old
Melrose, was extremely striking and picturesque; and the view, looking
back from the high ground towards the Eildon hills and Melrose, over
the varied vale of the Tweed, till the eye was arrested by the distant
mountains, then seen under a rich Claude effect; and the devious course
of the river, betrayed by fragments of water that sparkled here and
there amid the yellow stubbles and green pastures, was exquisitely
beautiful. But nothing gave so much interest to this glorious scene
as the far-off woods of Abbotsford, then dimmed by the warm haze, and
melting, as it were, from their reality, and so reminding us even yet
more forcibly of the fleeting nature of all the things of this
perishable world.
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