DAME JANE JOBSON, HIS WIDOW, DIED AT LONDON, 19 MARCH, 1877, AGED 76 YEARS.
These tombs and inscriptions follow each other from the back to the front of the aisle. And on the right of the others is Lockhart's, at right angles, with a bronze medallion at the top:
HERE, AT THE FEET OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, LIE THE MORTAL REMAINS OF JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART, HIS SON-IN-LAW, BIOGRAPHER AND FRIEND. BORN 14 JUNE, 1794. DIED 25 NOV., 1854.
If we be wise, we shall make the return journey by Dryburgh village and Newtown. What a magnificent river the Tweed is here, looking either up or down from the Baillie Suspension Bridge, or the high red bank beyond! Surely the Eildons never backgrounded a pleasanter picture than this. All the landscape is, in sooth, among the fairest of fair scenes, on which we shall want to feast the eye again and again, to be dreaming of Dryburgh when, it may be, over the seas and far away. On a summer's day, or at the early autumn, or even 'mid winter's mantling white, it seems to carry a perpetual charm.
Kelso, as a shrine of Scott, may not be left unvisited. Here he was schooled (partly), but better, it was at Kelso that the whole world of Romance opened out to his delighted fancy. Robert Burns is said to have gazed in wondrous and even prayerful rapture on the vision of Kelso Bridge and the Tweed, forming an almost perfect picture. And this, with the Abbey, 'like some antique Titan predominating over the dwarfs of a later world'; ruined Roxburgh, between Tweed's and Teviot's flow; and the near neighbourhood of other memory-moving spots, were just the scenes which made the best appeal to Scott, which influenced him most, and the fruits of whose inspiration we still daily reap. Jedburgh has some claim on the Scott student and for the lover of old romance. His best hours will be spent by its venerable Abbey, in the most excellent of situations (how well those old monks could gauge the lie of the land!), girt about with well-kept gardens, overlooking the bosky banks of the Jed--a veritable poem in Nature and Art.
'Bosom'd in woods where mighty rivers run, Kelso's fair vale expands before the sun; Its rising downs in vernal beauty swell, And fringed with hazel winds each flowery dell; Green-spangled plains to dimpling lawns succeed, And Tempé rises on the banks of Tweed. Blue o'er the river Kelso's shadow lies, And copse clad isles amid the waters rise.'