At the head was the Rev. J. Williams, rector of the Edinburgh Academy,
dressed in his canonicals as a clergyman of the Church of England; and
on his left hand walked Mr. Cadell, the well-known publisher of the
Waverley Works. There was a solemnity as well as a simplicity in the
whole of this spectacle which we never witnessed on any former occasion.
The long-robed mutes--the body, with its devotedly-attached and
deeply-afflicted supporters and attendants--the clergyman, whose
presence indicated the Christian belief and hopes of those assembled--and
the throng of uncovered and reverential mourners stole along beneath the
tall and umbrageous trees with a silence equal to that which is believed
to accompany those visionary funerals which have their existence only in
the superstitions of our country. The ruined Abbey disclosed itself
through the trees; and we approached its western extremity, where a
considerable portion of vaulted roof still remains to protect the poet's
family place of interment, which opens to the sides in lofty Gothic
arches, and is defended by a low rail of enclosure. At one extremity
of it, a tall, thriving young cypress rears its spiral form.
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