ANOTHER morning was devoted to visiting, under the same best of all Cicerones, the two famous ruins of Melrose and Dryburgh, which I had seen from a distance, when on the top of the Eildon. The Abbey of Melrose has been so often the subject of the pencil of exquisite artists—and of late, above all, so much justice has been done to its beauties by Mr Blore, that I need not trouble you with any description of its general effect. The glorious Oriel Window, on which the moon is made to stream in the Lay of the Last Minstrel, is almost as familiar to you as if yourself had seen it—and so, indeed, must be the whole of the most striking outlines of this venerable pile. But there is one thing about it of which you can have no idea—at least, I had none till I came to the spot—I mean the unrivalled richness and minuteness of all the decorations. Everywhere, without and within, the doors and windows are surrounded with specimens of sculpture, at once so delicately conceived, and so beautifully executed, that it would be quite ridiculous to compare them with any thing I ever saw, even in the most magnificent remains of Gothic architecture in England or Normandy. There is one cloister, in particular, along the whole length of which there runs a cornice of flowers and plants, entirely unrivalled, to my mind, by anything elsewhere extant—I do not say in Gothic architecture merely, but in any architecture whatever. Roses, and lilies, and thistles, and ferns, and heaths, in all their varieties, and oak-leaves and ash-leaves, and a thousand beautiful shapes besides, are chiselled with such inimitable truth, and such grace of nature, that the finest botanist in the world could not desire a better hortus siccus, so far as they go. The wildest productions of the forest, and the most delicate ones of the garden, are represented with equal fidelity and equal taste—and they are all arranged and combined in such a way, that it is evident they were placed there under the eye of some most skilful admirer of all the beauties of external Nature.