These, with much elaborate and costly furnishing for the new interior, make up the Abbotsford of to-day. Mr. Hope Scott had not the 'yerd-hunger' of his illustrious predecessor. His was rather a 'stone-and-lime mania,' all to most excellent purpose, however. Most visitors to Abbotsford have the impression that Sir Walter was responsible for every part of the present edifice, whereas it is at least a third larger from that of Scott's day. From the south, the Hope Scott addition is easily recognisable, being of light freestone, in contrast to the darker hue of the 1824 pile, which is built of native red whin. The Hope Scott succession practically rescued Abbotsford when its fortunes were at their lowest, and its history almost at a standstill. After sixteen years, Abbotsford had once more a family life and a domestic happiness of a singularly exalted type. Everybody must admit the ideally happy life spent by Scott himself at Abbotsford--prior to 1826, at any rate. Few men enjoyed life more. His happiness, in the main, sprang from the physical side of things--the out-of-doors sports and exercises in which he revelled, and which were among the chief attractions of his Abbotsford. Scott was never happier than when he was making others happy. No man sacrificed himself more on that side. And surely that was religion at its reallest. Scott did not say much about religion. He had, like Lockhart, all a Scotsman's reticence on the subject. But that he gave it profound and reverent thought--that there was in him a vein of earnest religious feeling,[30] goes without saying, strong man of the world though he was, and exhibiting, as he did, many things outré to the ordinary religious sense--seldom going to church, for instance, (he read the Church of England Service-Book, however, to his household); and 'writing his task' on Sundays more often than he should.
'Trim Abbotsford so gay, The rose-trees flaunting there so bold, The ripening fruits in rind of gold, And thou their lord away.'