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Rh while the old walls gave "a solemn echo" to their steps and to Johnson's strong voice, he talked about retirement from the world. For such a discourse there could not easily have been found a more fitting scene.

"I never read of an hermit (he said) but in imagination I kiss his feet: never of a monastery, but I could fall on my knees and kiss the pavement. But I think putting young people there, who know nothing of life, nothing of retirement, is dangerous and wicked. It is a saying as old as Hesiod—

That is a very noble line: not that young men should not pray, or old men not give counsel, but that every season of life has its proper duties. I have thought of retiring, and have talked of it to a friend; but I find my vocation is rather to active life."

Here, too, it was a different scene upon which he looked from that which meets our view. The gravestones which are now set against the walls of the cloisters were then buried beneath the rubbish of the cathedral. On the other side of this wall, in the grounds of the priory, were situated those "two vaults or cellars" where our travellers found a strange inmate.

I made as diligent an inquiry as I could after this kinswoman of the royal family of Scotland, but all in vain.

The memory has been preserved of "some cellar-looking places," but no tradition of human habitation has come down to our time.