Chapter XII: Front Matter (12)

It was near the dinner-hour before we reached the house, and presently I saw assembled a larger company than I should have fancied to be at all compatible with {p.277} the existing accommodations of the place; but it turned out that Captain Ferguson, and the friends whom I have not as yet mentioned, were to find quarters elsewhere for the night. His younger brother, Captain John Ferguson of the Royal Navy (a favorite lieutenant of Lord Nelson's), had come over from Huntly Burn; there were present, also, Mr. Scott of Gala, whose residence is within an easy distance; Sir Henry Hay Macdougal of Mackerstoun, an old baronet, with gay, lively, and highly polished manners, related in the same degree to both Gala and the Sheriff; Sir Alexander Don, the member for Roxburghshire, whose elegant social qualities have been alluded to in the preceding chapter; and Dr. Scott of Darnlee, a modest and intelligent gentleman, who having realized a fortune in the East India Company's medical service, had settled within two or three miles of Abbotsford, and, though no longer practising his profession, had kindly employed all the resources of his skill in the endeavor to counteract his neighbor's recent liability to attacks of cramp. Our host and one or two others appeared, as was in those days a common fashion with country gentlemen, in the lieutenancy uniform of their county. How fourteen or fifteen people contrived to be seated in the then dining-room of Abbotsford I know not--for it seemed quite full enough when it contained only eight or ten; but so it was--nor, as Sir Harry Macdougal's fat valet, warned by former experience, did not join the train of attendants, was there any perceptible difficulty in the detail of the arrangements. Everything about the dinner was, as the phrase runs, in excellent style; and in particular the _potage à la Meg Merrilies_, announced as an attempt to imitate a device of the Duke of Buccleuch's celebrated cook,--by name Monsieur Florence,--seemed, to those at least who were better acquainted with the Kaim of Derncleugh than with the _cuisine_ of Bowhill,[116] a very laudable specimen of the art. {p.278} The champagne circulated nimbly--and I never was present at a gayer dinner. It had advanced a little beyond the soup when it received an accompaniment which would not, perhaps, have improved the satisfaction of southern guests, had any such been present. A tall and stalwart bagpiper, in complete Highland costume, appeared pacing to and fro on the green before the house, and the window being open, it seemed as if he might as well have been straining his lungs within the parlor. At a pause of his strenuous performance, Scott took occasion to explain that _John of Skye_ was a recent acquisition to the rising hamlet of Abbotstown; that the man was a capital hedger and ditcher, and only figured with the pipe and philabeg on high occasions in the after-part of the day; "but indeed," he added, laughing, "I fear John will soon be discovering that the hook and mattock are unfavorable to his chanter hand." When the cloth was drawn, and the never-failing salver of _quaighs_ introduced, John of Skye, upon some well-known signal, entered the room, but _en militaire_, without removing his bonnet, and taking his station behind the landlord, received from his hand the largest of the Celtic bickers brimful of Glenlivet. The man saluted the company in his own dialect, tipped off the contents (probably a quarter of an English pint of raw aqua vitæ) at a gulp, wheeled about as solemnly as if the whole ceremony had been a movement on parade, and forthwith recommenced his pibrochs and gatherings, which continued until long after the ladies had left the table, and the autumnal moon was streaming in upon us so brightly as to dim the candles.

[Footnote 116: I understand that this now celebrated
soup was _extemporized_ by M. Florence on Scott's first
visit to Bowhill after the publication of _Guy
Mannering_. Florence had _served_--and Scott having on
some sporting party made his personal acquaintance, he
used often afterwards to gratify the poet's military
propensities by sending up magnificent representations
in pastry, of citadels taken by the Emperor, etc.]

I had never before seen Scott in such buoyant spirits as he showed this evening--and I never saw him in {p.279} higher afterwards; and no wonder, for this was the first time that he, Lord Melville, and Adam Ferguson, daily companions at the High School of Edinburgh, and partners in many joyous scenes of the early volunteer period, had met since the commencement of what I may call the serious part of any of their lives. The great poet and novelist was receiving them under his own roof, when his fame was at its _acme_, and his fortune seemed culminating to about a corresponding height--and the generous exuberance of his hilarity might have overflowed without moving the spleen of a Cynic. Old stories of _the Yards_ and _the Cross-causeway_ were relieved by sketches of real warfare, such as none but Ferguson (or Charles Mathews, had he been a soldier) could ever have given; and they toasted the memory of _Green-breeks_ and the health of _the Beau_ with equal devotion.

When we rose from table, Scott proposed that we should all ascend his western turret, to enjoy a moonlight view of the valley. The younger part of his company were too happy to do so: some of the seniors, who had tried the thing before, found pretexts for hanging back. The stairs were dark, narrow, and steep; but the Sheriff piloted the way, and at length there were as many on the top as it could well afford footing for. Nothing could be more lovely than the panorama; all the harsher and more naked features being lost in the delicious moonlight; the Tweed and the Gala winding and sparkling beneath our feet; and the distant ruins of Melrose appearing, as if carved of alabaster, under the black mass of the Eildons. The poet, leaning on his battlement, seemed to hang over the beautiful vision as if he had never seen it before. "If I live," he exclaimed, "I will build me a higher tower, with a more spacious platform, and a staircase better fitted for an old fellow's scrambling." The piper was heard re-tuning his instrument below, and he called to him for Lochaber no More. John of Skye obeyed, and as the music rose, softened by {p.280} the distance, Scott repeated in a low key the melancholy words of the song of exile.

On descending from the tower, the whole company were assembled in the new dining-room, which was still under the hands of the carpenters, but had been brilliantly illuminated for the occasion. Mr. Bruce took his station, and old and young danced reels to his melodious accompaniment until they were weary, while Scott and the Dominie looked on with gladsome faces, and beat time now and then, the one with his staff, the other with his wooden leg. A tray with mulled wine and whiskey punch was then introduced, and Lord Melville proposed a bumper, with all the honors, to the _Roof-tree_. Captain Ferguson having sung Johnnie Cope, called on the young ladies for Kenmure's On and Awa'; and our host then insisted that the whole party should join, standing in a circle hand-in-hand _more majorum_, in the hearty chorus of

"Weel may we a' be,
Ill may we never see,
God bless the king and the gude companie!"

--which being duly performed, all dispersed. Such was _the handsel_ (for Scott protested against its being considered as _the house-heating_) of the new Abbotsford.

When I began this chapter, I thought it would be a short one, but it is surprising how, when one digs into his memory, the smallest details of a scene that was interesting at the time, shall by degrees come to light again. I now recall, as if I had seen and heard them yesterday, the looks and words of eighteen years ago. Awakening between six and seven next morning, I heard Scott's voice close to me, and looking out of the little latticed window of the then detached cottage called _the chapel_, saw him and Tom Purdie pacing together on the green before the door, in earnest deliberation over what seemed to be a rude daub of a drawing; and every time they approached my end of their parade, I was sure to {p.281} catch the words _Blue Bank_. It turned out in the course of the day, that a field of clay near Toftfield went by this name, and that the draining of it was one of the chief operations then in hand. My friend Wilson meanwhile, who lodged also in the chapel, tapped at my door, and asked me to rise and take a walk with him by the river, for he had some angling project in his head. He went out and joined in the consultation about the Blue Bank, while I was dressing; presently Scott hailed me at the casement, and said he had observed a volume of a new edition of Goethe on my table--would I lend it him for a little? He carried off the volume accordingly, and retreated with it to his den. It contained the Faust, and, I believe, in a more complete shape than he had before seen that masterpiece of his old favorite. When we met at breakfast, a couple of hours after, he was full of the poem--dwelt with enthusiasm on the airy beauty of its lyrics, the terrible pathos of the scene before the _Mater Dolorosa_, and the deep skill shown in the various subtle shadings of character between Mephistopheles and poor Margaret. He remarked, however, of the Introduction (which I suspect was new to him), that blood would out--that, consummate artist as he was, Goethe was a German, and that nobody but a German would ever have provoked a comparison with the Book of Job, "the grandest poem that ever was written." He added, that he suspected the end of the story had been left _in obscuro_, from despair to match the closing scene of our own Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. Mr. Wilson mentioned a report that Coleridge was engaged on a translation of the Faust. "I hope it is so," said Scott; "Coleridge made Schiller's Wallenstein far finer than he found it, and so he will do by this. No man has all the resources of poetry in such profusion, but he cannot manage them so as to bring out anything of his own on a large scale at all worthy of his genius. He is like a lump of coal rich with gas, which lies expending itself in puffs and {p.282} gleams, unless some shrewd body will clap it into a cast-iron box, and compel the compressed element to do itself justice. His fancy and diction would have long ago placed him above all his contemporaries, had they been under the direction of a sound judgment and a steady will.[117] I don't now expect a great original poem from Coleridge, but he might easily make a sort of fame for himself as a poetical translator,--that would be a thing completely unique and _sui generis_."

[Footnote 117: In the Introduction to _The Lay of the
Last Minstrel_, 1830, Sir Walter says: "Were I ever to
take the unbecoming freedom of censuring a man of Mr.
Coleridge's extraordinary talents, it would be on
account of the caprice and indolence with which he has
thrown from him, as in mere wantonness, those unfinished
scraps of poetry, which, like the Torso of antiquity,
defy the skill of his poetical brethren to complete
them. The charming fragments which the author abandons
to their fate are surely too valuable to be treated like
the proofs of careless engravers, the sweepings of whose
studios often make the fortune of some painstaking
collector." And in a note to _The Abbot_, alluding to
Coleridge's beautiful and tantalizing fragment of
_Christabel_, he adds: "Has not our own imaginative poet
cause to fear that future ages will desire to summon him
from his place of rest, as Milton longed

'To call up him who left half told
The story of Cambuscan bold'?"]

While this criticism proceeded, Scott was cutting away at his brown loaf and a plate of kippered salmon, in a style which strongly reminded me of Dandie Dinmont's luncheon at Mump's Hall; nor was his German topic at all the predominant one. On the contrary, the sentences which have dwelt on my memory dropt from him now and then, in the pauses, as it were, of his main talk;--for though he could not help recurring, ever and anon, to the subject, it would have been quite out of his way to make any literary matter the chief theme of his conversation, when there was a single person present who was not likely to feel much interested in its discussion.--How often have I heard him quote on such occasions Mr. Vellum's advice to the butler in Addison's excellent play of The Drummer: "Your conjuror, John, is indeed a twofold personage--but he _eats and drinks like other people_!"

{p.283} I may, however, take this opportunity of observing, that nothing could have been more absurdly unfounded than the statement which I have seen repeated in various sketches of his Life and Manners, that he habitually abstained from conversation on literary topics. In point of fact, there were no topics on which he talked more openly or more earnestly; but he, when in society, lived and talked for the persons with whom he found himself surrounded, and if he did not always choose to enlarge upon the subjects which his companions for the time suggested, it was simply because he thought or fancied that these had selected, out of deference or flattery, subjects about which they really cared little more than they knew. I have already repeated, over and again, my conviction that Scott considered literature, _per se_, as a thing of far inferior importance to the high concerns of political or practical life; but it would be too ridiculous to question that literature nevertheless engrossed, at all times and seasons, the greater part of his own interest and reflection: nor can it be doubted that his general preference of the society of men engaged in the active business of the world, rather than that of, so-called, literary people, was grounded substantially on his feeling that literature, worthy of the name, was more likely to be fed and nourished by the converse of the former than by that of the latter class.

Before breakfast was over, the post-bag arrived, and its contents were so numerous, that Lord Melville asked Scott what election was on hand--not doubting that there must be some very particular reason for such a shoal of letters. He answered that it was much the same most days, and added, "though no one has kinder friends in the franking line, and though Freeling and Croker especially are always ready to stretch the point of privilege in my favor, I am nevertheless a fair contributor to the revenue, for I think my bill for letters seldom comes under £150 a year; and as to coach-parcels, they {p.284} are a perfect ruination." He then told with high merriment a disaster that had lately befallen him. "One morning last spring," he said, "I opened a huge lump of a despatch, without looking how it was addressed, never doubting that it had travelled under some omnipotent frank like the First Lord of the Admiralty's, when, lo and behold, the contents proved to be a MS. play, by a young lady of New York, who kindly requested me to read and correct it, equip it with prologue and epilogue, procure for it a favorable reception from the manager of Drury Lane, and make Murray or Constable bleed handsomely for the copyright; and on inspecting the cover, I found that I had been charged five pounds odd for the postage. This was bad enough--but there was no help, so I groaned and submitted. A fortnight or so after, another packet, of not less formidable bulk, arrived, and I was absent enough to break its seal, too, without examination. Conceive my horror when out jumped the same identical tragedy of The Cherokee Lovers, with a second epistle from the authoress, stating that, as the winds had been boisterous, she feared the vessel entrusted with her former communication might have foundered, and therefore judged it prudent to forward a duplicate."

Scott said he must retire to answer his letters, but that the sociable and the ponies would be at the door by one o'clock, when he proposed to show Melrose and Dryburgh to Lady Melville and any of the rest of the party that chose to accompany them; adding that his son Walter would lead anybody who preferred a gun to the likeliest place for a blackcock, and that Charlie Purdie (Tom's brother) would attend upon Mr. Wilson, and whoever else chose to try a cast of the salmon-rod. He withdrew when all this was arranged, and appeared at the time appointed, with perhaps a dozen letters sealed for the post, and a coach-parcel addressed to James Ballantyne, which he dropt at the turnpike-gate as we drove to Melrose. Seeing it picked up by a dirty urchin, and carried {p.285} into a hedge pot-house, where half-a-dozen nondescript wayfarers were smoking and tippling, I could not but wonder that it had not been the fate of some one of those innumerable packets to fall into unscrupulous hands, and betray the grand secret. That very morning we had seen two post-chaises drawn up at his gate, and the enthusiastic travellers, seemingly decent tradesmen and their families, who must have been packed in a manner worthy of Mrs. Gilpin, lounging about to catch a glimpse of him at his going forth. But it was impossible in those days to pass between Melrose and Abbotsford without encountering some odd figure, armed with a sketch-book, evidently bent on a peep at the Great Unknown; and it must be allowed that many of these pedestrians looked as if they might have thought it very excusable to make prize, by hook or by crook, of a MS. chapter of the Tales of my Landlord.

Scott showed us the ruins of Melrose in detail; and as we proceeded to Dryburgh, descanted learnedly and sagaciously on the good effects which must have attended the erection of so many great monastic establishments in a district so peculiarly exposed to the inroads of the English in the days of the Border wars. "They were now and then violated," he said, "as their aspect to this hour bears witness; but for once that they suffered, any lay property similarly situated must have been _harried_ a dozen times. The bold Dacres, Liddells, and Howards, that could get easy absolution at York or Durham for any ordinary breach of a truce with the Scots, would have had _to dree a heavy dole_ had they confessed plundering from the fat brothers, of the same order perhaps, whose lines had fallen to them on the wrong side of the Cheviot." He enlarged, too, on the heavy penalty which the Crown of Scotland had paid for its rash acquiescence in the wholesale robbery of the Church at the Reformation. "The proportion of the soil in the hands of the clergy had," he said, "been very great--too great to be {p.286} continued. If we may judge by their share in the public burdens, they must have had nearly a third of the land in their possession. But this vast wealth was now distributed among a turbulent nobility, too powerful before; and the Stuarts soon found, that in the bishops and lord abbots they had lost the only means of balancing their factions, so as to turn the scale in favor of law and order; and by and by the haughty barons themselves, who had scrambled for the worldly spoil of the church, found that the spiritual influence had been concentrated in hands as haughty as their own, and connected with no feelings likely to buttress their order any more than the Crown--a new and sterner monkery, under a different name, and essentially plebeian. Presently the Scotch were on the verge of republicanism, in state as well as kirk, and I have sometimes thought it was only the accession of King Jamie to the throne of England that could have given monarchy a chance of prolonging its existence here." One of his friends asked what he supposed might have been the annual revenue of the abbey of Melrose in its best day. He answered that he suspected, if all the sources of their income were now in clever hands, the produce could hardly be under £100,000 a year; and added: "Making every allowance for modern improvements, there can be no question that the sixty brothers of Melrose divided a princely rental. The superiors were often men of very high birth, and the great majority of the rest were younger brothers of gentlemen's families. I fancy they may have been, on the whole, pretty near akin to your Fellows of All Souls--who, according to their statute, must be _bene nati, bene vestiti, et mediocriter docti_. They had a good house in Edinburgh, where, no doubt, my lord abbot and his chaplains maintained a hospitable table during the sittings of Parliament." Some one regretted that we had no lively picture of the enormous revolution in manners that must have followed the downfall of the ancient Church in {p.287} Scotland. He observed that there were, he fancied, materials enough for constructing such a one, but that they were mostly scattered in records--"of which," said he, "who knows anything to the purpose except Tom Thomson and John Riddell? It is common to laugh at such researches, but they pay the good brains that meddle with them;--and had Thomson been as diligent in setting down his discoveries as he has been in making them, he might, long before this time of day, have placed himself on a level with Ducange or Camden. The change in the country-side," he continued, "must indeed have been terrific; but it does not seem to have been felt very severely by a certain Boniface of St. Andrews, for when somebody asked him, on the subsidence of the storm, what he thought of all that had occurred,--'Why,' answered mine host, 'it comes to this, that the moder_au_tor sits in my meikle chair, where the dean sat before, and in place of calling for the third stoup of Bordeaux, bids Jenny bring ben anither bowl of toddy.'"

At Dryburgh, Scott pointed out to us the sepulchral aisle of his Haliburton ancestors, and said he hoped, in God's appointed time, to lay his bones among their dust. The spot was, even then, a sufficiently interesting and impressive one; but I shall not say more of it at present.

On returning to Abbotsford, we found Mrs. Scott and her daughters doing penance under the merciless curiosity of a couple of tourists who had arrived from Selkirk soon after we set out for Melrose. They were rich specimens--tall, lanky young men, both of them rigged out in new jackets and trousers of the Macgregor tartan; the one, as they had revealed, being a lawyer, the other a Unitarian preacher, from New England. These gentlemen, when told on their arrival that Mr. Scott was not at home, had shown such signs of impatience, that the servant took it for granted they must have serious business, and asked if they would wish to speak a word with his {p.288} lady. They grasped at this, and so conducted themselves in the interview, that Mrs. Scott never doubted they had brought letters of introduction to her husband, and invited them accordingly to partake of her luncheon. They had been walking about the house and grounds with her and her daughters ever since that time, and appeared at the porch, when the Sheriff and his party returned to dinner, as if they had been already fairly enrolled on his visiting list. For the moment, he too was taken in--he fancied that his wife must have received and opened their credentials--and shook hands with them with courteous cordiality. But Mrs. Scott, with all her overflowing good-nature, was a sharp observer; and she, before a minute had elapsed, interrupted the ecstatic compliments of the strangers, by reminding them that her husband would be glad to have the letters of the friends who had been so good as to write by them. It then turned out that there were no letters to be produced--and Scott, signifying that his hour for dinner approached, added, that as he supposed they meant to walk to Melrose, he could not trespass further on their time. The two lion-hunters seemed quite unprepared for this abrupt escape. But there was about Scott, in perfection, when he chose to exert it, the power of civil repulsion; he bowed the overwhelmed originals to his door, and on reëntering the parlor, found Mrs. Scott complaining very indignantly that they had gone so far as to pull out their note-book, and beg an exact account, not only of his age--but of her own. Scott, already half relenting, laughed heartily at this misery. He observed, however, that, "if he were to take in all the world, he had better put up a sign-post at once,--

'Porter, ale, and British spirits,
Painted bright between twa trees;'[118]

and that no traveller of respectability could ever be at a loss for such an introduction as would insure his best {p.289} hospitality." Still he was not quite pleased with what had happened--and as we were about to pass, half an hour afterwards, from the drawing-room to the dining-room, he said to his wife, "Hang the Yahoos, Charlotte--but we should have bid them stay dinner." "Devil a bit," quoth Captain John Ferguson, who had again come over from Huntly Burn, and had been latterly assisting the lady to amuse her Americans, "Devil a bit, my dear,--they were quite in a mistake, I could see. The one asked Madame whether she deigned to call her new house Tully-Veolan or Tillietudlem; and the other, when Maida happened to lay his nose against the window, exclaimed _pro-di-gi-ous_! In short, they evidently meant all their humbug not for you, but for the culprit of Waverley, and the rest of that there rubbish." "Well, well, Skipper," was the reply, "for a' that, the loons would hae been nane the waur o' their kail."

[Footnote 118: Macneill's _Will and Jean_.]

From this banter it may be inferred that the younger Ferguson had not as yet been told the Waverley secret--which to any of that house could never have been any mystery. Probably this, or some similar occasion soon afterwards, led to his formal initiation; for during the many subsequent years that the veil was kept on, I used to admire the tact with which, when in their topmost high-jinks humor, both "Captain John" and "The Auld Captain" eschewed any the most distant allusion to the affair.

And this reminds me, that at the period of which I am writing, none of Scott's own family, except of course his wife, had the advantage in that matter of the Skipper. Some of them, too, were apt, like him, so long as no regular confidence had been reposed in them, to avail themselves of the author's reserve for their own sport among friends. Thus one morning, just as Scott was opening the door of the parlor, the rest of the party being already seated at the breakfast-table, the Dominie was in the act of helping himself to an egg, marked with {p.290} a peculiar hieroglyphic by Mrs. Thomas Purdie, upon which Anne Scott, then a lively rattling girl of sixteen, lisped out, "That's a mysterious-looking egg, Mr. Thomson--what if it should have been meant for _the Great Unknown_?" Ere the Dominie could reply, her father advanced to the foot of the table, and having seated himself and deposited his stick on the carpet beside him, with a sort of whispered whistle--"What's that Lady Anne's[119] saying?" quoth he; "I thought it had been well known that the _keelavined_ egg must be a soft one for _the Sherra_." And so he took his egg, and while all smiled in silence, poor Anne said gayly, in the midst of her blushes, "Upon my word, papa, I thought Mr. John Ballantyne might have been expected." This allusion to Johnny's glory in being considered as the accredited representative of Jedediah Cleishbotham produced a laugh,--at which the Sheriff frowned--and then laughed too.

[Footnote 119: When playing, in childhood, with the
young ladies of the Buccleuch family, she had been
overheard saying to her namesake Lady Anne Scott, "Well,
I do wish I were Lady Anne too--it is so much prettier
than Miss;" thenceforth she was commonly addressed in
the family by the coveted title.]

I remember nothing particular about our second day's dinner, except that it was then I first met my dear and honored friend William Laidlaw. The evening passed rather more quietly than the preceding one. Instead of the dance in the new dining-room, we had a succession of old ballads sung to the harp and guitar by the young ladies of the house; and Scott, when they seemed to have done enough, found some reason for taking down a volume of Crabbe, and read us one of his favorite tales,--

"Grave Jonas Kindred, Sibyl Kindred's sire,
Was six feet high, and looked six inches higher," etc.

But jollity revived in full vigor when the supper-tray was introduced; and to cap all merriment, Captain Ferguson dismissed us with The Laird of Cockpen. Lord and Lady Melville were to return to Melville Castle next {p.291} morning, and Mr. Wilson and I happened to mention that we were engaged to dine and sleep at the seat of my friend and relation, Mr. Pringle of Torwoodlee, on our way to Edinburgh. Scott immediately said that he would send word in the morning to the Laird, that he and Adam Ferguson meant to accompany us--such being the unceremonious style in which country neighbors in Scotland visit each other. Next day, accordingly, we all rode over together to Mr. Pringle's beautiful seat--the "distant Torwoodlee" of The Lay of the Last Minstrel, but distant not above five or six miles from Abbotsford--coursing hares as we proceeded, but inspecting the antiquities of the _Catrail_ to the interruption of our sport. We had another joyous evening at Torwoodlee. Scott and Ferguson returned home at night, and the morning after, as Wilson and I mounted for Edinburgh, our kind old host, his sides still sore with laughter, remarked that "the Sheriff and the Captain together were too much for any company."

There was much talk between the Sheriff and Mr. Pringle about the Selkirkshire Yeomanry Cavalry, of which the latter had been the original commandant. Young Walter Scott had been for a year or more Cornet in the corps, and his father was consulting Torwoodlee about an entertainment which he meant to give them on his son's approaching birthday. It was then that the new dining-room was to be first _heated_ in good earnest; and Scott very kindly pressed Wilson and myself, at parting, to return for the occasion--which, however, we found it impossible to do. The reader must therefore be satisfied with what is said about it in one of the following letters:--

TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., M. P., ROKEBY.

ABBOTSFORD, 5th November, 1818.

MY DEAR MORRITT,--Many thanks for your kind letter of 29th
October. The matter of the colts being as {p.292} you
state, I shall let it lie over until next year, and then
avail myself of your being in the neighborhood to get a good
pair of four-year-olds, since it would be unnecessary to buy
them a year younger, and incur all the risks of disease and
accident, unless they could have been had at a proportional
under-value.

* * * * * * leaves us this morning after a visit of about a
week. He improves on acquaintance, and especially seems so
pleased with everything, that it would be very hard to
quarrel with him. Certainly, as the Frenchman said, _il a un
grand talent pour le silence_. I take the opportunity of his
servant going direct to Rokeby to charge him with this
letter, and a plaid which my daughters entreat you to accept
of as a token of their _warm_ good wishes. Seriously you
will find it a good bosom friend in an easterly wind, a
black frost, or when your country avocations lead you to
face a _dry wap of snow_. I find it by far the lightest and
most comfortable integument which I can use upon such
occasions.

We had a grand jollification here last week;--the whole
troop of Forest Yeomanry dining with us. I assure you the
scene was gay and even grand, with glittering sabres, waving
standards, and screaming bagpipes; and that it might not
lack spectators of taste, who should arrive in the midst of
the hurricane, but Lord and Lady Compton, whose presence
gave a great zest to the whole affair. Everything went off
very well, and as cavalry have the great advantage over
infantry, that their _legs_ never get drunk, they retired in
decent disorder about ten o'clock. I was glad to see Lord
and Lady Compton so very comfortable, and surrounded with so
fine a family, the natural bond of mutual regard and
affection. She has got very jolly, but otherwise has
improved on her travels. I had a long chat with her, and was
happy to find her quite contented and pleased with the lot
she has drawn in life. It is a brilliant one in many
respects, to be sure; but still I have seen the story of the
poor {p.293} woman, who, after all rational subjects of
distress had been successively remedied, tormented herself
about the screaming of a neighbor's peacock--I say, I have
seen this so often realized in actual life, that I am more
afraid of my friends making themselves uncomfortable, who
have only imaginary evils to indulge, than I am for the
peace of those who, battling magnanimously with real
inconvenience and danger, find a remedy in the very force of
the exertions to which their lot compels them.

I sympathize with you for the _dole_ which you are _dreeing_
under the inflictions of your honest proser. Of all the
boring machines ever devised, your regular and determined
story-teller is the most peremptory and powerful in his
operations. This is a rainy day, and my present infliction
is an idle cousin, a great amateur of the pipes, who is
performing incessantly in the next room for the benefit of a
probationary minstrel, whose pipes scream _à la distance_,
as the young hoarse cock-chicken imitates the gallant and
triumphant screech of a veteran Sir Chanticleer. Yours
affectionately,

W. SCOTT.

{p.295} APPENDIX

THE DURHAM GARLAND

IN THREE PARTS

[The following is the _Garland_ referred to at pages 4 and 26, in connection with the novel of Guy Mannering. The ballad was taken down from the recitation of Mrs. Young of Castle-Douglas, who, as her family informed Mr. Train, had long been in the habit of repeating it over to them once in the year, in order that it might not escape from her memory.]