It is a
cold, dreary, disheartening neighborhood, that of Abbotsford; at least,
it has appeared so to me at both of my visits,--one of which was on a
bleak and windy May morning, and this one on a chill, showery morning of
midsummer.
The entrance-way to the house is somewhat altered since my last visit;
and we now, following the direction of a painted finger on the wall, went
round to a side door in the basement story, where we found an elderly man
waiting as if in expectation of visitors. He asked us to write our names
in a book, and told us that the desk on the leaf of which it lay was the
one in which Sir Walter found the forgotten manuscript of Waverley, while
looking for some fishing-tackle. There was another desk in the room,
which had belonged to the Colonel Gardiner who appears in Waverley. The
first apartment into which our guide showed us was Sir Walter's study,
where I again saw his clothes, and remarked how the sleeve of his old
green coat was worn at the cuff,--a minute circumstance that seemed to
bring Sir Walter very near me. Thence into the library; thence into the
drawing-room, whence, methinks, we should have entered the dining-room,
the most interesting of all, as being the room where he died. But this
room seems not to be shown now. We saw the armory, with the gun of Rob
Roy, into the muzzle of which I put my finger, and found the bore very
large; the beautifully wrought pistol of Claverhouse, and a pair of
pistols that belonged to Napoleon; the sword of Montrose, which I
grasped, and drew half out of the scabbard; and Queen Mary's iron
jewel-box, six or eight inches long, and two or three high, with a lid
rounded like that of a trunk, and much corroded with rust.
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